Garunar according to Lord Buddha’s high philosophy means compassion that
humanity could learn to nurture, along with Metta, Muditar and Upikkhar, the noble virtues of Buddhist thought culture. Garunar the University, personal and
innovatively tutorial using textual, electronic and virtual technology, is based in
Asia and in international cities around the world.
A monk sips morning tea
it’s quiet,
the chrysanthemum’s flowering.
Matsuo Basho
At the root of its foundation, the University is a liberal, empowering and open-minded royal lyceum on par with Tagore’s or Aristotle’s schools of thought. Founded by passionate royal commissioners, Asian leaders and intellectuals, Garunar is a private university with a progressive mission to lead social, political and economic reform in Southeast Asia and the Orient in general. The University is founded upon classical ideals of both Eastern, American and European higher education, the proper study of wo/mankind, in Sir Isaiah Berlin’s words. Currently the university is affiliated with the Royal Institution, selective blue chip enterprises, business leaders and Asia Link academic institutions.
The University welcomes applications from undergraduates wishing to study in innovative and progressive modern studies in which the faculties offer dynamic degrees, scholarship and research supervision affiliated with the quality of global human lives. Undergraduate and Graduate Studies:
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Nobel Prizes and the Immune System
The Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have rewarded several breakthroughs that revealed the way in which our bodies protect us against microscopic threats of almost any description. Each of these breakthroughs have provided us with a better understanding of how the immune system senses an attack, how it recognizes and deals with intruders without destroying its own cells and tissues, but also how it can malfunction and unleash its destructive forces upon itself. Click on each link to see a Speed Read, a brief summary of the breakthroughs for which each Nobel Prize was awarded.
Passive Aggressive Treatment Emil von Behring (1901)Von Behring identified factors in blood that neutralize the toxic products from tetanus and diphtheria bacteria, and he showed how these agents could be used to prevent illness and death caused by diphtheria microbes.
Multiple Lines of Defence Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich (1908)The immune system works through more than one mechanism: Mechnikov identified phagocyte cells that engulf and devour intruders, Ehrlich’s side-chain theory proposed how antibodies released in blood tackle invaders.
A Shock Response Charles Richet (1913)Richet discovered anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction to toxins, which showed how the immune system can damage its host as well as provide protection against disease.
Complementary Forces Jules Bordet (1919)Factors in blood serum work with antibodies to destroy bacteria, and Bordet’s discovery of these complement proteins allowed the creation of tests that could diagnose many dangerous infectious diseases.
Blood Relations Karl Landsteiner (1930)Landsteiner’s discovery of human blood groups, and his system for typing blood, allowed blood transfusions to be carried out without the risk of adverse reactions.
Raising Self-Awareness Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet and Peter Medawar (1960)The concept of immunological tolerance showed how the body learns to recognize its own cells and tissues, which prevents the immune system from mounting a response against itself.
Anatomy of a Killer Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter (1972)The two scientists independently deciphered the structure of antibodies, which revealed how seemingly identical-looking molecules can target specifically any one of a countless number of invaders for destruction.
Seeking Signs of Compatibility Baruj Benacerraf, Jean Dausset and George Snell (1980)Breakthroughs from the three researchers helped to build a picture for how a specific set of proteins found on the surface of cells can regulate the immune response.
Creating Supply on Demand Nils Jerne, Georges Kohler and César Milstein (1984)Jerne’s theories provided a clearer image of how the immune system engages antibodies to fight invaders, Köhler and Milstein’s techniques for producing specific antibodies on demand helped to create better diagnostic tests and new treatments against diseases.
Assembly Instructions for Antibodies Susumu Tonegawa (1987)By uncovering the genetic mechanism for the construction of antibodies, Tonegawa revealed how the body can generate millions and millions of antibody proteins from a much smaller number of genes.
Double-Checking Cells Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel (1996)Doherty and Zinkernagel’s discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells uncovered the general mechanisms used by the cellular component of the immune system to distinguish foreign agents from its own cells and tissues. Ref: http://nobelprize.org/
Benazir Bhutto’s life has been a rollercoaster of high political drama, acute personal loss, early triumph followed by downfall and charges of corruption. Ginny Dougary meets her in exile in Dubai, as she plans her return to power in Pakistan – Times OnlineBenazir Bhutto’s life has been a rollercoaster of high political drama, acute personal loss, early triumph followed by downfall and charges of corruption. Ginny Dougary meets her in exile in Dubai, as she plans her return to power in Pakistan – Times Online
It is very sad and tearful that Bhutto’s opponents have killed her. She stood tall with democracy and stood fearlessly against extremists. She appeared to be listening to criticism, by basing her political manifesto on poverty and education which Pakistan’s uneducated direly need to bring about a stable and civil society.
I believe it is too early for democracy until a larger percentage of the population is educated enough to bring people into power who are not corrupt and nepotist.
However, this is all likely to be swept away as democracy will be pushed through and we may end up with someone that again loots the treasury and pushes the country to bankruptcy like in the 90’s.
Perhaps this will be the lesser of two evils, the other… perhaps the West dare not worth thinking about.
Abid, Shipley, UK
There are three most public parties in pakistan,in which one is Pakistan Peoples Party,headed by Benazir Bhutto,I know Ms Bhutto well as I am the resident of her native province.She ruled Pakistan very democratically .Now a days Pakistan needs a leader like her i think she must to come Pakistan and end her exile period now.on the otherhand corruption is now rooted in the society of Pakistan and no one ruler deny it.The reasons of corruption is a long story which starts from the begning of pakistan .
Aakash Santorai, Hyderabad, Pakistan
Breakthrough in Developing Super-Material Graphene
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2010) — A collaborative research project has brought the world a step closer to producing a new material on which future nanotechnology could be based. Researchers across Europe, including the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), have demonstrated how an incredible material, graphene, could hold the key to the future of high-speed electronics, such as micro-chips and touchscreen technology.
Graphene has long shown potential, but has previously only been produced on a very small scale, limiting how well it could be measured, understood and developed. A paper published on the 17th January, in Nature Nanotechnology explains how researchers have, for the first time, produced graphene to a size and quality where it can be practically developed, and successfully measured its electrical characteristics. These significant breakthroughs overcome two of the biggest barriers to scaling up the technology.
Graphene is a relatively new form of carbon made up of a single layer of atoms arranged in a honeycomb shaped lattice. Despite being one atom thick and chemically simple, graphene’s is extremely strong and highly conductive, making it ideal for high-speed electronics, photonics and beyond.
Graphene is a strong candidate to replace semiconductor chips. Moore’s Law observes that the density of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, but silicon and other existing transistor materials are thought to be close to the minimum size where they can remain effective. Graphene transistors can potentially run at faster speeds and cope with higher temperatures. Graphene could be the solution to ensuring computing technology to continue to grow in power whilst shrinking in size, extending the life of Moore’s law by many years.
Large microchip manufacturers such as IBM and Intel have openly expressed interest in the potential of graphene as a material on which future computing could be based.
Graphene also has potential for exciting new innovations such as touchscreen technology, LCD displays and solar cells. Its unparalleled strength and transparency make it perfect for these applications, and its conductivity would offers a dramatic increase in efficiency on existing materials.
Until now graphene of sufficient quality has only been produced in the form of small flakes of tiny fractions of a millimeter, using painstaking methods such as peeling layers off graphite crystals with sticky tape. Producing useable electronics requires much larger areas of material to be grown. This project saw researchers, for the first time, produce and successfully operate a large number of electronic devices from a sizable area of graphene layers (approximately 50 mm2).
The graphene sample, was produced epitaxially — a process of growing one crystal layer on another — on silicon carbide. Having such a significant sample not only proves that it can be done in a practical, scalable way, but also allowed the scientists to better understand important properties.
The second key breakthrough of the project was measuring graphene’s electrical characteristics with unprecedented precision, paving the way for convenient and accurate standards to be established. For products such as transistors in computers to work effectively and be commercially viable, manufacturers must be able to make such measurements with incredible accuracy against an agreed international standard.
The international standard for electrical resistance is provided by the Quantum Hall Effect, a phenomenon whereby electrical properties in 2D materials can be determined based only on fundamental constants of nature.
The effect has, until now, only been demonstrated with sufficient precision in a small number of conventional semiconductors. Furthermore, such measurements need temperatures close to absolute zero, combined with very strong magnetic fields, and only a few specialised laboratories in the world can achieve these conditions.
Graphene was long tipped to provide an even better standard, but samples were inadequate to prove this. By producing samples of sufficient size and quality, and accurately demonstrate Hall resistance, the team proved that graphene has the potential to supersede conventional semiconductors on a mass scale.
Furthermore graphene shows the Quantum Hall Effect at much higher temperatures. This means the graphene resistance standard could be used much more widely as more labs can achieve the conditions required for its use. In addition to its advantages of operating speed and durability, this would also speed the production and reduce costs of future electronics technology based on graphene
Prof Alexander Tzalenchuk from NPL’s Quantum Detection Group and the lead author on the Nature Nanotechnology paper observes: “It is truly sensational that a large area of epitaxial graphene demonstrated not only structural continuity, but also the degree of perfection required for precise electrical measurements on par with conventional semiconductors with a much longer development history.”
The research team isn’t content to leave it there. They are hoping to go on to demonstrate even more precise measurement, as well as accurate measurement at even higher temperatures. They are currently seeking EU funding to drive this forward.
Dr JT Janssen, an NPL Fellow who worked on the project, said: “We’ve laid the groundwork for the future of graphene production, and will strive in our ongoing research to provide greater understanding of this exciting material. The challenge for industry in the coming years will be to scale the material up in a practical way to meet new technology demands. We have taken a huge step forward, and once the manufacturing processes are in place, we hope graphene will offer the world a faster and cheaper alternative to conventional semiconductors.”
The research was a joint project carried by the National Physical Laboratory; Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden; Politecnico di Milano, Italy; Linköping University, Sweden and Lancaster University, UK. Measurement was carried out by the Quantum Detection Group at the UK’s at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK.
Technical detail
The sample was grown epitaxially by removing all silicon atoms in a controlled way from a single surface layer of silicon carbide and allowing the remaining carbon to form the nearly ideal graphene monolayer. The next step was to use standard microfabrication techniques, such as the electron beam lithography and reactive ion etching, to produce devices ranging in lateral size from a few micrometers (1 micrometer = 0.001 mm) to hundreds of micrometers and still only one carbon atom thick. All devices measured so far showed the desired electronic characteristics.
Where now?
Measuring resistance
Growing to a usable size while maintaining quality
A technology for the future
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Rabindranath Tagore
The Gardener
When I go alone at night to my love-tryst,
birds do not sing, the wind does not stir,
the houses on both sides pf the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow lous at
every step and I am ashamed.
When I sit on my balcony and listen to his footsteps,
leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the waster
is still in the river like the sword on the
knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly -
I do not know how to quiet it.
When my love comes and sits by my side,
when my body trembles and my eyelids droop,
the night darkens, the winds blow out the lamp,
and the clouds draw veils over the stars.
It is the jewel at my own breast that shines
and gives light. I do not know how to hide it.”
Gitanjali
“When thou commandest me to sing, it seems that my heart would break
with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.
All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet
harmony- and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight
across the sea.
I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer
I come before thy presence.
I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet which
I could never aspire to reach.
Drunk with joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art
my Lord”.
“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This
frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with
fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and
hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in
joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.”
The Flower School
"When storm-clouds rumble in the sky and
June showers come down,
The moist east wind comes marching over the heath
to blow its bagpipes amongst the bamboos.
The crowds of flowers come out of a sudden,
from nobody knows where,
and dance upon the grass in wild glee.
Mother, I really think the flowers go to school underground.
They do their lessons with doors shut,
and if they want to come out to play before it is time,
their master makes them stand in a corner.
When the rains come they have their holidays.
Branches clash together in the forest,
and the leaves rustle in the wild wind,
the thunder-clouds clap their giant hands and
the flower children rush out i dresses of
pink, yellow and white.
Do you know, mother, their home is in the sky,
where the stars are.
Haven't you seen how eager they are to get there?
Don't you know why they are in such a hurry?
Of course, I can guess to whom they raise their arms,
they have their mother as I have my own."
Women, Poverty & Economics
Women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty. Statistics indicate that women are more likely than men to be poor and at risk of hunger because of the systematic discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets. Poverty implications are widespread for women, leaving many without even basic rights such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation, medical care and decent employment. Being poor can also mean they have little protection from violence and have no role in decision making.
According to some estimates, women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor. They are often paid less than men for their work, with the average wage gap in 2008 being 17 percent. Women face persistent discrimination when they apply for credit for business or self-employment and are often concentrated in insecure, unsafe and low-wage work. Eight out of ten women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with global economic changes taking a huge toll on their livelihoods.
The current financial crisis is likely to affect women particularly severely. In many developing countries where women work in export-led factories, or in countries where migrant women workers are the backbone of service industries, women’s jobs have taken the greatest hit. The International Labour Organization estimates that the economic downturn could lead to 22 million more unemployed women in 2009, jeopardizing the gains made in the last few decades in women’s empowerment.
In many countries, however, the impact goes far beyond the loss of formal jobs, as the majority of women tend to work in the informal sector, for example as domestics in cities, and do not show up in official unemployment numbers. Economic policies and institutions still mostly fail to take gender disparities into account, from tax and budget systems to trade regimes. And with too few seats at the tables where economic decisions are made, women themselves have limited opportunity to influence policy.
Berlin, l’ours d’or et les vieux frères - Berlinale 2012 E.U.
Je suis donc celui qui n’a pas vu l’Ours. Le jury présidé par Mike Leigh a décerné la récompense suprême de la Berlinale à Cesare deve morire de Paolo (80 ans) et Vittorio (82 ans) Taviani.
Ils ont tourné ce film dans une prison où les détenus, condamnés pour la plupart à des longues peines, ont monté une représentation du Jules César de Shakespeare. Trente cinq ans après leur triomphe à Cannes pour Padre padrone, les frères pourront décider de savoir qui garde l’Ours, qui garde la Palme.
Le reste du palmarès est un peu décevant. Il fait la part belle aux films à sujet, Just The Wind (ce n’est que le vent) de Bence Flieghauf qui décrit la persécutions des Roms en Hongrie et Rebelle, de Kim Nguyen, portrait d’une enfant soldat au Congo démocratique. Le premier a reçu le prix du jury et le second le prix d’interprétation féminine pour Rachel Mwanza.
L’Ours d’argent du meilleur réalisateur est allé à Christian Petzold. Barbara avait été accueilli avec un énorme enthousiasme pour la critique allemande, et c’est vrai qu’on y retrouve toutes les qualités du cinéma de Petzold: la rigueur, l’art de créer la tension qui à chaque fois se réincarne dans la même actrice, toujours égale à elle-même, toujours différente, Nina Hoss.
Le film danois, Une affaire royale de Nikolaj Arcel emporte deux trophées, meilleur acteur à Mikel Boe Folsgaard et meilleur scénario.
Les films les plus novateurs ont recueilli des récompenses mineures: une mention spéciale à L’Enfant d’en haut, d’Ursula Meier et le prix Alfred Bauer, qui récompense justement l’innovation, à Tabu, de Miguel Gomes.
En 2011, le jury présidé par Isabella Rossellini avait distingué Une séparation et Le Cheval de Turin dans un lot de films très inégal. Mike Leigh et ses collègues ont procédé inversement.
UN Women’s Approach
Advancing women’s economic security and rights has always been a core UN Women priority. UN Women supports women to reshape conditions at both ends of the economic spectrum — from boosting women’s participation in economic policy-making to supporting efforts to provide women and their communities with practical skills needed for securing sustainable livelihoods.
In more than 40 countries, for example, UN Women supports national and local initiatives to include gender perspectives in budgeting processes, and to collect and use sex-disaggregated data in public policy formulation to ensure that macro-economic policy frameworks address women’s priorities. UN Women also works to strengthen women’s rights to land and inheritance, increase their access to credit and decent work, and empower women migrant workers as well as home-based workers.
by Professor E.F. Schumacher (a friend of Prime Minister U Nu)
“Right Livelihood” is one of the requirements of the Buddha’s Noble
Eightfold Path. It is clear, therefore, that there must be such a thing as
Buddhist economics.
Buddhist countries have often stated that they wish to remain faithful to
their heritage. So Burma: “The New Burma sees no conflict between religious
values and economic progress. Spiritual health and material well-being are
not enemies: they are natural allies.”[1] Or: “We can blend successfully
the religious and spiritual values of our heritage with the benefits of
modern technology.”[2] Or: “We Burmans have a sacred duty to conform both
our dreams and our acts to our faith. This we shall ever do.”[3]
All the same, such countries invariably assume that they can model their
economic development plans in accordance with modern economics, and they
call upon modern economists from so-called advanced countries to advise
them, to formulate the policies to be pursued, and to construct the grand
design for development, the Five-Year Plan or whatever it may be called. No
one seems to think that a Buddhist way of life would call for Buddhist
economics, just as the modern materialist way of life has brought forth
modern economics.
Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind
of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute
and invariable truths, without any presuppositions. Some go as far as to
claim that economic laws are as free from “metaphysics” or “values” as the
law of gravitation. We need not, however, get involved in arguments of
methodology. Instead, let us take some fundamentals and see what they look
like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist economist.
There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human
labor. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider “labor” or
work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the
employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a
minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the
point of view of the workman, it is a “disutility”; to work is to make a
sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of
compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of
the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the
point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.
The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice are, of
course, extremely far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get
rid of it, every method that “reduces the work load” is a good thing.
The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called “division of
labor” and the classical example is the pin factory eulogized in Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Here it is not a matter of ordinary
specialization, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but of
dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that
the final product can be produced at great speed without anyone having had
to contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases,
unskilled movement of his limbs.
The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to
enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in
a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a
becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are
endless. To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless,
boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short
of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with
people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of
attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally,
to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a
complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence,
namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living
process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the
bliss of leisure.
From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of
mechanization which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a
man’s skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a
mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave.
How to tell the one from the other? “The craftsman himself,” says Ananda
Coomaraswamy, a man equally competent to talk about the modern West as the
ancient East, “can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction
between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance
for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them
by the craftmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its
significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the
essentially human part of the work. “[4] It is clear, therefore, that
Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern
materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a
multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character.
Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work,
properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses
those who do it and equally their products. The Indian philosopher and
economist J. C. Kumarappa sums the matter up as follows:
If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will
stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the
physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to
produce the best he is capable of. It directs his free will along the
proper course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels.
It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values
and develop his personality.[5]
If a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position, not
simply because he lacks an income but because he lacks this nourishing and
enlivening factor of disciplined work which nothing can replace. A modern
economist may engage in highly sophisticated calculations on whether full
employment “pays” or whether it might be more “economic” to run an economy
at less than full employment so as to ensure a greater mobility of labor, a
better stability of wages, and so forth. His fundamental criterion of
success is simply the total quantity of goods produced during a given
period of time. “If the marginal urgency of goods is low,” says Professor
Galbraith in The Affluent Society, “then so is the urgency of employing the
last man or the last million men in the labor force.”[6] And again:
If . . . we can afford some unemployment in the interest of stability–a
proposition, incidentally, of impeccably conservative antecedents–then we
can afford to give those who are unemployed the goods that enable them to
sustain their accustomed standard of living.
From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by
considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more
important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the
worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the subhuman, a
surrender to the forces of evil. The very start of Buddhist economic
planning would be a planning for full employment, and the primary purpose
of this would in fact be employment for everyone who needs an “outside”
job: it would not be the maximization of employment nor the maximization of
production. Women, on the whole, do not need an “outside” job, and the
large-scale employment of women in offices or factories would be considered
a sign of serious economic failure. In particular, to let mothers of young
children work in factories while the children run wild would be as
uneconomic in the eyes of a Buddhist economist as the employment of a
skilled worker as a soldier in the eyes of a modern economist.
While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly
interested in liberation. But Buddhism is “The Middle Way” and therefore in
no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in
the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of
pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist
economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. From an economist’s
point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter
rationality of its pattern– amazingly small means leading to
extraordinarily satisfactory results.
For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used
to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption,
assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a
man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach
excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human
well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the
minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain
amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to
attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the
smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that
involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the
more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. It would be highly
uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated tailoring, like the
modem West, when a much more beautiful effect can be achieved by the
skillful draping of uncut material. It would be the height of folly to make
material so that it should wear out quickly and the height of barbarity to
make anything ugly, shabby, or mean. What has just been said about clothing
applies equally to all other human requirements. The ownership and the
consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the
systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means.
Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole
end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of
production–land, labor, and capital–as the means. The former, in short,
tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of
consumption, while the latter tries to maximize consumption by the optimal
pattern of productive effort. It is easy to see that the effort needed to
sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of
consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain
a drive for maximum consumption. We need not be surprised, therefore, that
the pressure and strain of living is very much less in, say, Burma than it
is in the United States, in spite of the fact that the amount of
labor-saving machinery used in the former country is only a minute fraction
of the amount used in the latter.
Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal
pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by
means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live
without great pressure and strain and to fulfill the primary injunction of
Buddhist teaching: “Cease to do evil; try to do good.” As physical
resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of
a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other’s
throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who
live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get
involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on
world-wide systems of trade.
From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from
local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life,
while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce
for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and
justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the
modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport
services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune
and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist economist would hold that
to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby
signifies failure rather than success. The former tends to take statistics
showing an increase in the number of ton/miles per head of the population
carried by a country’s transport system as proof of economic progress,
while to the latter-the Buddhist economist–the same statistics would
indicate a highly undesirable deterioration in the pattern of consumption.
Another striking difference between modern economics and Buddhist economics
arises over the use of natural resources. Bertrand de Jouvenel, the eminent
French political philosopher, has characterized “Western man” in words
which may be taken as a fair description of the modern economist:
He tends to count nothing as an expenditure, other than human effort; he
does not seem to mind how much mineral matter he wastes and, far worse, how
much living matter he destroys. He does not seem to realize at all that
human life is a dependent part of an ecosystem of many different forms of
life. As the world is ruled from towns where men are cut off from any form
of life other than human, the feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not
revived. This results in a harsh and improvident treatment of things upon
which we ultimately depend, such as water and trees. [7]
The teaching of the Buddha, on the other hand, enjoins a reverent and
non-violent attitude not only to all sentient beings but also, with great
emphasis, to trees. Every follower of the Buddha ought to plant a tree
every few years and look after it until it is safely established, and the
Buddhist economist can demonstrate without difficulty that the universal
observation of this rule would result in a high rate of genuine economic
development independent of any foreign aid. Much of the economic decay of
Southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to
a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.
Modern economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable
materials, as its very method is to equalize and quantify everything by
means of a money price. Thus, taking various alternative fuels, like coal,
oil, wood, or water-power: the only difference between them recognized by
modern economics is relative cost per equivalent unit. The cheapest is
automatically the one to be preferred, as to do otherwise would be
irrational and “uneconomic.” From a Buddhist point of view, of course, this
will not do; the essential difference between non-renewable fuels like coal
and oil on the one hand and renewable fuels like wood and water-power on
the other cannot be simply overlooked. Non-renewable goods must be used
only if they are indispensable, and then only with the greatest care and
the most meticulous concern for conservation. To use them heedlessly or
extravagantly is an act of violence, and while complete non-violence may
not be attainable on this earth, there is nonetheless an ineluctable duty
on man to aim at the ideal of non-violence in all he does.
Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great economic
achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at
attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population
basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on
capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and
could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the
world’s resources of non-renewable fuels–coal, oil and natural gas–are
exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in
quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is
an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to
violence between men.
This fact alone might give food for thought even to those people in
Buddhist countries who care nothing for the religious and spiritual values
of their heritage and ardently desire to embrace the materialism of modern
economics at the fastest possible speed. Before they dismiss Buddhist
economics as nothing better than a nostalgic dream, they might wish to
consider whether the path of economic development outlined by modern
economics is likely to lead them to places where they really want to be.
Towards the end of his courageous book The Challenge of Man’s Future,
Professor Harrison Brown of the California Institute of Technology gives
the following appraisal:
Thus we see that, just as industrial society is fundamentally unstable and
subject to reversion to agrarian existence, so within it the conditions
which offer individual freedom are unstable in their ability to avoid the
conditions which impose rigid organization and totalitarian control.
Indeed, when we examine all of the foreseeable difficulties which threaten
the survival of industrial civilization, it is difficult to see how the
achievement of stability and the maintenance of individual liberty can be
made compatible. [8]
Even if this were dismissed as a long-term view there is the immediate
question of whether “modernization,” as currently practiced without regard
to religious and spiritual values, is actually producing agreeable results.
As far as the masses are concerned, the results appear to be disastrous–a
collapse of the rural economy, a rising tide of unemployment in town and
country, and the growth of a city proletariat without nourishment for
either body or soul.
It is in the light of both immediate experience and long-term prospects
that the study of Buddhist economics could be recommended even to those who
believe that economic growth is more important than any spiritual or
religious values. For it is not a question of choosing between “modern
growth” and “traditional stagnation.” It is a question of finding the right
path of development, the Middle Way between materialist heedlessness and
traditionalist immobility, in short, of finding “Right Livelihood.”
NOTES.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
‘If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better gather that destiny through the words that have shaped the heart’s desire of the world.’ And that’s exactly what William Butler Yeats did: he caught the heart’s desire. He caught it in language which is beautiful and which is dripping in imagery – and, particularly in the early poems – mysticism. The Song of Wandering Aengus, The Stolen Child. Joyce said of him that he had a surrealist imagination few painters could match. He was born in 1865 to John Butler Yeats the son of a rector in the Church of Ireland and to Susan Pollexfen whose shipbuilding family came from Sligo- where Yeats at his request is buried, beneath Ben Bulben’s head. His epitaph? ‘Cast a cold eye/ On life, on death/ Horseman, pass by’. Yeats learned early that art is what matters. His father was a solicitor and he gave up his practice to study painting in London. Indeed Yeats later studied art in Dublin before in one of literature’s luckiest volte – face he decided on poetry. The publication in 1889 when Yeats was twenty-four of The Wanderings of Osian was a seminal moment, not only in Irish literary history, but also its political history. Yeats’s book, based on the Fenian cycle, brought Irish mythology to the Irish people in English -’the language’ as he pointed out ‘in which modern Ireland thinks and does its business’. This was at a time in Ireland when there was a powerful movement to rescue the Gaelic language.
In Irish literature Yeats resembles a tidal wave. And the tide was not only poetical. In 1904 Yeats set up the National Theatre of Ireland – The Abbey Theatre with Lady Gregory and he worked unceasingly as playwright and director in its cause. In his Nobel speech to the Swedish Academy he chose as his subject ‘The Irish Dramatic Movement ‘ I would not be here were I not the symbol of that movement…the nationalism we called up was both romantic and poetical.’ Well, up to a point. Yeats had a genius – a generous genius for discovering genius in others and amongst those he discovered were two of Ireland’s greatest, Synge and O’ Casey .Their plays were poetical certainly – romantic? not necessarily. The Abbey audience, probably the most hyper sensitive in history, rioted – enraged by the portrait of themselves in Synge’s ThePlayboy of the Western World and O’ Casey’s The Plough and the Stars. Yeats harangued them from the stage – ‘you have disgraced yourselves again’ – and he persevered. This strength of character and courage in the face of prejudice which was noted by Eliot is fundamental to his astonishing achievements. He once tried to get a ‘bill of divorcement’ through the Irish Senate. He failed. That he tried at all is remarkable. Finally he refused to allow himself to be destroyed by the agony of his unreciprocated, life-long obsession with Maud Gonne, an obsession that would have felled lesser men.
She exploded into his life in 1889 – just after the publication of The Wanderings of Osian. She was young, twenty-two, tall with flaming red hair but it was her passion that ‘began all the trouble of my life’. She took possession of his soul and when the soul is lost, all is lost. He had found the love of his life, she, an ardent republican, had perhaps found a poet for the cause. She was a magnificent creature – brave but dangerous. ‘She lived in storm and strife,/ Her soul had such desire/ For what proud death may bring/ That it could not endure /The common good of life’. And therein lies the pity. Her fanaticism swept away much that was good in her life. His enduring love, expressed in poems of genius, gave us the haunting poetry of the exultant yet broken heart – A Woman Homer Sung, No Second Troy, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, The Folly of Being Comforted and many, many more. She married the revolutionary Sean Mac Bride. The confirmation of their marriage was, Yeats said, ‘like lightning through me’. Yeats, in his fifties, finally married Georgie Hyde-Lees with whom he had two children.
Easter 1916, his greatest political poem, of which he wrote many (Parnell’s Funeral, September 1913, The Ghost of Roger Casement) was inspired by the tragic military failure of the rebellion led by Patrick Pearse who, with other leaders of the rebellion including Sean Mac Bride, was executed. The iconic line ‘A terrible beauty is born’ contains both a warning and a blessing. The rhythms and repetitions in this poem seem to keep pace with the destiny of the men: ‘Hearts to one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem/ Enchanted to a stone/ To trouble the living stream’…Too long a sacrifice /Can make a stone of the heart/O when may it suffice?’ Yeats, uniquely amongst poets, wrote some of his greatest poetry in his sixties and seventies. Eliot wrote of this late work: ‘Maturing as a poet means maturing as a whole man… out of his intense experience he now expressed universal truths. An artist by serving his art with his entire integrity, is at the same time rendering the greatest service he can to his country and to the whole world.’ The late poems include the The Municipal Gallery Revisited, The Statues and The Circus Animals Desertion – a poem in which the thread is pulled taut between life and art ‘Maybe at last being but a broken man/ I must be satisfied with my heart’ and continues, ‘Now that my ladder’s gone/ I must lie down where all ladders start/ In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’ Where else? Reference: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/poetryperformance/yeats/josephinehart/aboutyeats.html
IMF Concludes Mission to Burma
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation concluded a visit to Naypyidaw on Wednesday but has not yet determined whether the Burmese government will accept currency conditions regarding changing its monetary exchange system.
Ms Meral Karasulu, deputy division chief of the IMF Asian Pacific Department, led the mission team which was comprised of representatives of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. They met the Burmese minister for finance, officials from the Central Bank of Burma, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and private banks during a lengthy visit which began on Oct. 19.
The mission came at the request of the Central Bank of Burma to discuss plans to unify the country’s multiple exchange rates as well as lifting restrictions on international payments and transfers. The hope was that Burma would accept the obligations of Article VIII of the IMF’s Articles of Agreement which deals with international payments and currency exchange rates.
According to a press statement issued by the IMF on Tuesday, the mission gave an initial diagnostic assessment of the legal framework and actual market practices governing the exchange rate system of Burma. This dealt, in particular, with the country’s existing exchange restrictions and multiple currency practices.
The IMF team will continue its work from its Tokyo headquarters in cooperation with the Burmese authorities as they formulate their policies towards accepting the obligations of Article VIII. The mission expects to visit Burma for a follow-up early in 2012, the statement said.
According to the official line of the Burmese government, part of its economic reform agenda involves seeking the technical assistance of the IMF regarding the country’s economic progress, foreign exchange rate, economic and monetary stability plus legal reforms.
The United States, a key player in the IMF, maintains sanctions against Burma that prohibit US support for lending or technical assistance by international financial institutions in Burma.
In 2001, IMF officials repeatedly failed to convince the Burmese government to undertake limited, incremental reform measures that would not require a large financial investment, according to a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.
“The IMF’s suggestions for incremental economic reform fall on deaf ears here… The official line of the Burmese government has long been that no economic reforms will be possible without a large structural adjustment loan,” the cable said.
But now the US has apparently thrown its support behind the IMF giving technical assistance to the Burmese government in response to its recent moves towards political and economic liberalization.
Simultaneously, it has also increased its diplomatic exchanges with the Burmese government with US special envoy to Burma Derek Mitchell arriving in Naypyidaw on Wednesday for his third visit to the country. He will hold talks with the Burmese officials regarding further reforms.
Reference: The Irrawaddy
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
Introduction Woman as Other
The Second Sex
FOR a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the problem. After all, is there a problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women, really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its adherents who will whisper in your ear: ‘Even in Russia women still are women’; and other erudite persons – sometimes the very same – say with a sigh: ‘Woman is losing her way, woman is lost.’ One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be. ‘What has become of women?’ was asked recently in an ephemeral magazine.
But first we must ask: what is a woman? ‘Tota mulier in utero’, says one, ‘woman is a womb’. But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incarnate this essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and dazzling terms that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the seers, and indeed in the times of St Thomas it was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy
But conceptualism has lost ground. The biological and social sciences no longer admit the existence of unchangeably fixed entities that determine given characteristics, such as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro. Science regards any characteristic as a reaction dependent in part upon a situation. If today femininity no longer exists, then it never existed. But does the word woman, then, have no specific content? This is stoutly affirmed by those who hold to the philosophy of the enlightenment, of rationalism, of nominalism; women, to them, are merely the human beings arbitrarily designated by the word woman. Many American women particularly are prepared to think that there is no longer any place for woman as such; if a backward individual still takes herself for a woman, her friends advise her to be psychoanalysed and thus get rid of this obsession. In regard to a work, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, which in other respects has its irritating features, Dorothy Parker has written: ‘I cannot be just to books which treat of woman as woman … My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, should be regarded as human beings.’ But nominalism is a rather inadequate doctrine, and the antifeminists have had no trouble in showing that women simply are not men. Surely woman is, like man, a human being; but such a declaration is abstract. The fact is that every concrete human being is always a singular, separate individual. To decline to accept such notions as the eternal feminine, the black soul, the Jewish character, is not to deny that Jews, Negroes, women exist today – this denial does not represent a liberation for those concerned, but rather a flight from reality. Some years ago a well-known woman writer refused to permit her portrait to appear in a series of photographs especially devoted to women writers; she wished to be counted among the men. But in order to gain this privilege she made use of her husband’s influence! Women who assert that they are men lay claim none the less to masculine consideration and respect. I recall also a young Trotskyite standing on a platform at a boisterous meeting and getting ready to use her fists, in spite of her evident fragility. She was denying her feminine weakness; but it was for love of a militant male whose equal she wished to be. The attitude of defiance of many American women proves that they are haunted by a sense of their femininity. In truth, to go for a walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that they do most obviously exist.
If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question “what is a woman”?
To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam.
Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman, the relative being …’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel: ‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself … Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’
The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality – that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts. It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumézil on the East Indies and Rome. The feminine element was at first no more involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus, Sun-Moon, and Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and unlucky auspices, right and left, God and Lucifer. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought.
Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are ‘strangers’ and suspect; to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’; Jews are ‘different’ for the anti-Semite, Negroes are ‘inferior’ for American racists, aborigines are ‘natives’ for colonists, proletarians are the ‘lower class’ for the privileged.
Lévi-Strauss, at the end of a profound work on the various forms of primitive societies, reaches the following conclusion: ‘Passage from the state of Nature to the state of Culture is marked by man’s ability to view biological relations as a series of contrasts; duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether under definite or vague forms, constitute not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental and immediately given data of social reality.’ These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object.
But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim. The native travelling abroad is shocked to find himself in turn regarded as a ‘stranger’ by the natives of neighbouring countries. As a matter of fact, wars, festivals, trading, treaties, and contests among tribes, nations, and classes tend to deprive the concept Other of its absolute sense and to make manifest its relativity; willy-nilly, individuals and groups are forced to realize the reciprocity of their relations. How is it, then, that this reciprocity has not been recognised between the sexes, that one of the contrasting terms is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative and defining the latter as pure otherness? Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? No subject will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other who, in defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as such by the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view. Whence comes this submission in the case of woman?
There are, to be sure, other cases in which a certain category has been able to dominate another completely for a time. Very often this privilege depends upon inequality of numbers – the majority imposes its rule upon the minority or persecutes it. But women are not a minority, like the American Negroes or the Jews; there are as many women as men on earth. Again, the two groups concerned have often been originally independent; they may have been formerly unaware of each other’s existence, or perhaps they recognised each other’s autonomy. But a historical event has resulted in the subjugation of the weaker by the stronger. The scattering of the Jews, the introduction of slavery into America, the conquests of imperialism are examples in point. In these cases the oppressed retained at least the memory of former days; they possessed in common a past, a tradition, sometimes a religion or a culture.
The parallel drawn by Bebel between women and the proletariat is valid in that neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective unit of mankind. And instead of a single historical event it is in both cases a historical development that explains their status as a class and accounts for the membership of particular individuals in that class. But proletarians have not always existed, whereas there have always been women. They are women in virtue of their anatomy and physiology. Throughout history they have always been subordinated to men, and hence their dependency is not the result of a historical event or a social change – it was not something that occurred. The reason why otherness in this case seems to be an absolute is in part that it lacks the contingent or incidental nature of historical facts. A condition brought about at a certain time can be abolished at some other time, as the Negroes of Haiti and others have proved: but it might seem that natural condition is beyond the possibility of change. In truth, however, the nature of things is no more immutably given, once for all, than is historical reality. If woman seems to be the inessential which never becomes the essential, it is because she herself fails to bring about this change. Proletarians say ‘We’; Negroes also. Regarding themselves as subjects, they transform the bourgeois, the whites, into ‘others’. But women do not say ‘We’, except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say ‘women’, and women use the same word in referring to themselves. They do not authentically assume a subjective attitude. The proletarians have accomplished the revolution in Russia, the Negroes in Haiti, the Indo-Chinese are battling for it in Indo-China; but the women’s effort has never been anything more than a symbolic agitation. They have gained only what men have been willing to grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received.
The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organising themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat. They are not even promiscuously herded together in the way that creates community feeling among the American Negroes, the ghetto Jews, the workers of Saint-Denis, or the factory hands of Renault. They live dispersed among the males, attached through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are to other women. If they belong to the bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with men of that class, not with proletarian women; if they are white, their allegiance is to white men, not to Negro women. The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro might dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black; but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.
One could suppose that this reciprocity might have facilitated the liberation of woman. When Hercules sat at the feet of Omphale and helped with her spinning, his desire for her held him captive; but why did she fail to gain a lasting power? To revenge herself on Jason, Medea killed their children; and this grim legend would seem to suggest that she might have obtained a formidable influence over him through his love for his offspring. In Lysistrata Aristophanes gaily depicts a band of women who joined forces to gain social ends through the sexual needs of their men; but this is only a play. In the legend of the Sabine women, the latter soon abandoned their plan of remaining sterile to punish their ravishers. In truth woman has not been socially emancipated through man’s need – sexual desire and the desire for offspring – which makes the male dependent for satisfaction upon the female.
Master and slave, also, are united by a reciprocal need, in this case economic, which does not liberate the slave. In the relation of master to slave the master does not make a point of the need that he has for the other; he has in his grasp the power of satisfying this need through his own action; whereas the slave, in his dependent condition, his hope and fear, is quite conscious of the need he has for his master. Even if the need is at bottom equally urgent for both, it always works in favour of the oppressor and against the oppressed. That is why the liberation of the working class, for example, has been slow.
Now, woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere is her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her disadvantage. Even when her rights are legally recognised in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their full expression in the mores. In the economic sphere men and women can almost be said to make up two castes; other things being equal, the former hold the better jobs, get higher wages, and have more opportunity for success than their new competitors. In industry and politics men have a great many more positions and they monopolise the most important posts. In addition to all this, they enjoy a traditional prestige that the education of children tends in every way to support, for the present enshrines the past – and in the past all history has been made by men. At the present time, when women are beginning to take part in the affairs of the world, it is still a world that belongs to men – they have no doubt of it at all and women have scarcely any. To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal – this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste. Man-the-sovereign will provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake the moral justification of her existence; thus she can evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in which ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. Indeed, along with the ethical urge of each individual to affirm his subjective existence, there is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing. This is an inauspicious road, for he who takes it – passive, lost, ruined – becomes henceforth the creature of another’s will, frustrated in his transcendence and deprived of every value. But it is an easy road; on it one avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic existence. When man makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect to manifest deep-seated tendencies towards complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other.
But it will be asked at once: how did all this begin? It is easy to see that the duality of the sexes, like any duality, gives rise to conflict. And doubtless the winner will assume the status of absolute. But why should man have won from the start? It seems possible that women could have won the victory; or that the outcome of the conflict might never have been decided. How is it that this world has always belonged to the men and that things have begun to change only recently? Is this change a good thing? Will it bring about an equal sharing of the world between men and women?
These questions are not new, and they have often been answered. But the very fact that woman is the Other tends to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have ever been able to provide for it. These have all too evidently been dictated by men’s interest. A little-known feminist of the seventeenth century, Poulain de la Barre, put it this way: ‘All that has been written about women by men should be suspect, for the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit.’ Everywhere, at all times, the males have displayed their satisfaction in feeling that they are the lords of creation. ‘Blessed be God … that He did not make me a woman,’ say the Jews in their morning prayers, while their wives pray on a note of resignation: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who created me according to His will.’ The first among the blessings for which Plato thanked the gods was that he had been created free, not enslaved; the second, a man, not a woman. But the males could not enjoy this privilege fully unless they believed it to be founded on the absolute and the eternal; they sought to make the fact of their supremacy into a right. ‘Being men, those who have made and compiled the laws have favoured their own sex, and jurists have elevated these laws into principles’, to quote Poulain de la Barre once more.
Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth. The religions invented by men reflect this wish for domination. In the legends of Eve and Pandora men have taken up arms against women. They have made use of philosophy and theology, as the quotations from Aristotle and St Thomas have shown. Since ancient times satirists and moralists have delighted in showing up the weaknesses of women. We are familiar with the savage indictments hurled against women throughout French literature. Montherlant, for example, follows the tradition of Jean de Meung, though with less gusto. This hostility may at times be well founded, often it is gratuitous; but in truth it more or less successfully conceals a desire for self-justification. As Montaigne says, ‘It is easier to accuse one sex than to excuse the other’. Sometimes what is going on is clear enough. For instance, the Roman law limiting the rights of woman cited ‘the imbecility, the instability of the sex’ just when the weakening of family ties seemed to threaten the interests of male heirs. And in the effort to keep the married woman under guardianship, appeal was made in the sixteenth century to the authority of St Augustine, who declared that ‘woman is a creature neither decisive nor constant’, at a time when the single woman was thought capable of managing her property. Montaigne understood clearly how arbitrary and unjust was woman’s appointed lot: ‘Women are not in the wrong when they decline to accept the rules laid down for them, since the men make these rules without consulting them. No wonder intrigue and strife abound.’ But he did not go so far as to champion their cause.
It was only later, in the eighteenth century, that genuinely democratic men began to view the matter objectively. Diderot, among others, strove to show that woman is, like man, a human being. Later John Stuart Mill came fervently to her defence. But these philosophers displayed unusual impartiality. In the nineteenth century the feminist quarrel became again a quarrel of partisans. One of the consequences of the industrial revolution was the entrance of women into productive labour, and it was just here that the claims of the feminists emerged from the realm of theory and acquired an economic basis, while their opponents became the more aggressive. Although landed property lost power to some extent, the bourgeoisie clung to the old morality that found the guarantee of private property in the solidity of the family. Woman was ordered back into the home the more harshly as her emancipation became a real menace. Even within the working class the men endeavoured to restrain woman’s liberation, because they began to see the women as dangerous competitors – the more so because they were accustomed to work for lower wages.
In proving woman’s inferiority, the anti-feminists then began to draw not only upon religion, philosophy, and theology, as before, but also upon science – biology, experimental psychology, etc. At most they were willing to grant ‘equality in difference’ to the other sex. That profitable formula is most significant; it is precisely like the ‘equal but separate’ formula of the Jim Crow laws aimed at the North American Negroes. As is well known, this so-called equalitarian segregation has resulted only in the most extreme discrimination. The similarity just noted is in no way due to chance, for whether it is a race, a caste, a class, or a sex that is reduced to a position of inferiority, the methods of justification are the same. ‘The eternal feminine’ corresponds to ‘the black soul’ and to ‘the Jewish character’. True, the Jewish problem is on the whole very different from the other two – to the anti-Semite the Jew is not so much an inferior as he is an enemy for whom there is to be granted no place on earth, for whom annihilation is the fate desired. But there are deep similarities between the situation of woman and that of the Negro. Both are being emancipated today from a like paternalism, and the former master class wishes to ‘keep them in their place’ – that is, the place chosen for them. In both cases the former masters lavish more or less sincere eulogies, either on the virtues of ‘the good Negro’ with his dormant, childish, merry soul – the submissive Negro – or on the merits of the woman who is ‘truly feminine’ – that is, frivolous, infantile, irresponsible the submissive woman. In both cases the dominant class bases its argument on a state of affairs that it has itself created. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, in substance, ‘The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.’ This vicious circle is met with in all analogous circumstances; when an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of ‘to have become’. Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?
Many men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle. The conservative bourgeoisie still see in the emancipation of women a menace to their morality and their interests. Some men dread feminine competition. Recently a male student wrote in the Hebdo-Latin: ‘Every woman student who goes into medicine or law robs us of a job.’ He never questioned his rights in this world. And economic interests are not the only ones concerned. One of the benefits that oppression confers upon the oppressors is that the most humble among them is made to feel superior; thus, a ‘poor white’ in the South can console himself with the thought that he is not a ‘dirty nigger’ – and the more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride.
Similarly, the most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women. It was much easier for M. de Montherlant to think himself a hero when he faced women (and women chosen for his purpose) than when he was obliged to act the man among men – something many women have done better than he, for that matter. And in September 1948, in one of his articles in the Figaro littéraire, Claude Mauriac – whose great originality is admired by all – could write regarding woman: ‘We listen on a tone [sic!] of polite indifference … to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.’ Evidently the speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no one knows of his having any. It may be that she reflects ideas originating with men, but then, even among men there are those who have been known to appropriate ideas not their own; and one can well ask whether Claude Mauriac might not find more interesting a conversation reflecting Descartes, Marx, or Gide rather than himself. What is really remarkable is that by using the questionable we he identifies himself with St Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzsche, and from the lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon the bevy of women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality. In truth, I know of more than one woman who would refuse to suffer with patience Mauriac’s ‘tone of polite indifference’.
I have lingered on this example because the masculine attitude is here displayed with disarming ingenuousness. But men profit in many more subtle ways from the otherness, the alterity of woman. Here is a miraculous balm for those afflicted with an inferiority complex, and indeed no one is more arrogant towards women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. Those who are not fear-ridden in the presence of their fellow men are much more disposed to recognise a fellow creature in woman; but even to these the myth of Woman, the Other, is precious for many reasons. They cannot be blamed for not cheerfully relinquishing all the benefits they derive from the myth, for they realize what they would lose in relinquishing woman as they fancy her to be, while they fail to realize what they have to gain from the woman of tomorrow. Refusal to pose oneself as the Subject, unique and absolute, requires great self-denial. Furthermore, the vast majority of men make no such claim explicitly. They do not postulate woman as inferior, for today they are too thoroughly imbued with the ideal of democracy not to recognise all human beings as equals.
In the bosom of the family, woman seems in the eyes of childhood and youth to be clothed in the same social dignity as the adult males. Later on, the young man, desiring and loving, experiences the resistance, the independence of the woman desired and loved; in marriage, he respects woman as wife and mother, and in the concrete events of conjugal life she stands there before him as a free being. He can therefore feel that social subordination as between the sexes no longer exists and that on the whole, in spite of differences, woman is an equal. As, however, he observes some points of inferiority – the most important being unfitness for the professions – he attributes these to natural causes. When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman, his theme is the principle of abstract equality, and he does not base his attitude upon such inequality as may exist. But when he is in conflict with her, the situation is reversed: his theme will be the existing inequality, and he will even take it as justification for denying abstract equality.
So it is that many men will affirm as if in good faith that women are the equals of man and that they have nothing to clamour for, while at the same time they will say that women can never be the equals of man and that their demands are in vain. It is, in point of fact, a difficult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature. The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman’s concrete situation. And there is no reason to put much trust in the men when they rush to the defence of privileges whose full extent they can hardly measure. We shall not, then, permit ourselves to be intimidated by the number and violence of the attacks launched against women, nor to be entrapped by the self-seeking eulogies bestowed on the ‘true woman’, nor to profit by the enthusiasm for woman’s destiny manifested by men who would not for the world have any part of it.
We should consider the arguments of the feminists with no less suspicion, however, for very often their controversial aim deprives them of all real value. If the ‘woman question’ seems trivial, it is because masculine arrogance has made of it a ‘quarrel’; and when quarrelling one no longer reasons well. People have tirelessly sought to prove that woman is superior, inferior, or equal to man. Some say that, having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being: others say on the contrary that Adam was only a rough draft and that God succeeded in producing the human being in perfection when He created Eve. Woman’s brain is smaller; yes, but it is relatively larger. Christ was made a man; yes, but perhaps for his greater humility. Each argument at once suggests its opposite, and both are often fallacious. If we are to gain understanding, we must get out of these ruts; we must discard the vague notions of superiority, inferiority, equality which have hitherto corrupted every discussion of the subject and start afresh.
Very well, but just how shall we pose the question? And, to begin with, who are we to propound it at all? Man is at once judge and party to the case; but so is woman. What we need is an angel – neither man nor woman – but where shall we find one? Still, the angel would be poorly qualified to speak, for an angel is ignorant of all the basic facts involved in the problem. With a hermaphrodite we should be no better off, for here the situation is most peculiar; the hermaphrodite is not really the combination of a whole man and a whole woman, but consists of parts of each and thus is neither. It looks to me as if there are, after all, certain women who are best qualified to elucidate the situation of woman. Let us not be misled by the sophism that because Epimenides was a Cretan he was necessarily a liar; it is not a mysterious essence that compels men and women to act in good or in bad faith, it is their situation that inclines them more or less towards the search for truth. Many of today’s women, fortunate in the restoration of all the privileges pertaining to the estate of the human being, can afford the luxury of impartiality – we even recognise its necessity. We are no longer like our partisan elders; by and large we have won the game. In recent debates on the status of women the United Nations has persistently maintained that the equality of the sexes is now becoming a reality, and already some of us have never had to sense in our femininity an inconvenience or an obstacle. Many problems appear to us to be more pressing than those which concern us in particular, and this detachment even allows us to hope that our attitude will be objective. Still, we know the feminine world more intimately than do the men because we have our roots in it, we grasp more immediately than do men what it means to a human being to be feminine; and we are more concerned with such knowledge. I have said that there are more pressing problems, but this does not prevent us from seeing some importance in asking how the fact of being women will affect our lives. What opportunities precisely have been given us and what withheld? What fate awaits our younger sisters, and what directions should they take? It is significant that books by women on women are in general animated in our day less by a wish to demand our rights than by an effort towards clarity and understanding. As we emerge from an era of excessive controversy, this book is offered as one attempt among others to confirm that statement.
But it is doubtless impossible to approach any human problem with a mind free from bias. The way in which questions are put, the points of view assumed, presuppose a relativity of interest; all characteristics imply values, and every objective description, so called, implies an ethical background. Rather than attempt to conceal principles more or less definitely implied, it is better to state them openly, at the beginning. This will make it unnecessary to specify on every page in just what sense one uses such words as superior, inferior, better, worse, progress, reaction, and the like. If we survey some of the works on woman, we note that one of the points of view most frequently adopted is that of the public good, the general interest; and one always means by this the benefit of society as one wishes it to be maintained or established. For our part, we hold that the only public good is that which assures the private good of the citizens; we shall pass judgement on institutions according to their effectiveness in giving concrete opportunities to individuals. But we do not confuse the idea of private interest with that of happiness, although that is another common point of view. Are not women of the harem more happy than women voters? Is not the housekeeper happier than the working-woman? It is not too clear just what the word happy really means and still less what true values it may mask. There is no possibility of measuring the happiness of others, and it is always easy to describe as happy the situation in which one wishes to place them.
In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’ – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.
Now, what peculiarly signalises the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilise her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be overshadowed and for ever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego) – who always regards the self as the essential and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. How can a human being in woman’s situation attain fulfilment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a state of dependency? What circumstances limit woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome? These are the fundamental questions on which I would fain throw some light. This means that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.
Quite evidently this problem would be without significance if we were to believe that woman’s destiny is inevitably determined by physiological, psychological, or economic forces. Hence I shall discuss first of all the light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the ‘truly feminine’ has been fashioned – why woman has been defined as the Other – and what have been the consequences from man’s point of view. Then from woman’s point of view I shall describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to envisage the difficulties in their way as, endeavouring to make their escape from the sphere hitherto assigned them, they aspire to full membership in the human race.
Gao Xingjian 1940-
Playwright, critic, and novelist Gao was a prominent leader of the avant-garde movement in fiction and drama that emerged in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976. In 2000 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature from the Swedish Academy, the first time the prize had been awarded for a body of writing in the Chinese language. Gao, a self-exiled dissident writer, emigrated from China to France in 1987 in order to escape government persecution for his controversial plays, prose, and essays. His novel La Montagne de l’âme (1995; translated in Chinese as Lingshan, translated in English as Soul Mountain) is considered by many critics to be Gao’s masterpiece, employing an experimental narrative voice to relate the story of a spiritual journey through remote China. His works typically address themes of the individual versus collective will and the search for self-identity. Despite his continual focus on topics and issues that are distinctive to Chinese culture, all of Gao’s writings have been banned in China since 1989.
Biographical Information
Gao Xingjian (pronounced gow shing-jen) was born on January 4, 1940, in Ganzhou, China. During Gao’s childhood, Ganzhou—also known as Republican China—was invaded by Japanese forces. In 1949, due to the revolution led by Mao Zedong, the nation became the People’s Republic of China. Gao grew up in a liberal family environment—his father was a banker and his mother was an amateur actress—and he had access to a sizable family library of Chinese literature as well as many volumes on Western Literature and art. He attended university at Beijing Foreign Languages Institute from 1957 to 1962, where he studied French language and literature. After graduating, Gao began working as a translator and editor of the French edition of China Reconstructs, a monthly magazine produced in all the major languages of the world to tout the successes of socialist reconstruction in China. During this period, Gao began secretly writing plays, stories, and essays, which he had to hide from the authorities due to Mao Zedong’s edict that all literature and arts should solely be used to serve the masses. Gao’s wife eventually denounced him to government officials. As a result, he was sent to rural China for cultural “re-education,” where he worked for six years as a farm laborer and teacher. Although he continued to write during his “re-education,” Gao either burned or buried all of his writings, including unpublished novels, plays, and essays, for fear of being further labelled as a subversive. Gao returned to Beijing in 1975 and began working for the Chinese Writers Association. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, Gao’s writing began to appear regularly in Chinese publications and in 1981 he was assigned to work as a writer for the Beijing People’s Art Theater. His first play, Juedui xinhao (Absolute Signal), was produced in 1982 and became a popular success. That same year, Gao was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but two weeks later learned that he had been misdiagnosed and did not have cancer. His next play, Chezhan (1983; Bus Stop), was declared subversive by the Chinese government, and Gao decided to leave Beijing in order to escape a possible prison sentence. He spent the next five months on a fifteen thousand kilometer trek through rural China, an experience which later became the basis for his novel Soul Mountain. When the political climate in China changed in 1984, Gao returned to Beijing. His next plays received negative reactions from the Chinese government, causing Gao to emigrate to France in 1987 during a trip to Germany on an artistic fellowship. After the massacre during the student protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, Gao denounced the actions of the Chinese authorities to the media and applied for political asylum in France. In 1992 Gao wrote and produced a play—Taowang (1992; Fleeing)—about the Tiananmen Square massacre, resulting in the Chinese government banning all of Gao’s works in China. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1998 and was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters from the French government in 1992.
Major Works
Gao’s first play, Absolute Signal, follows an attempted train robbery that is thwarted when one of the villains decides not to go through with the crime. The play uses a variety of flashbacks and different perspectives to create an unique narrative voice. In Bus Stop, the thoughts and behaviors of seven characters—representing a cross-section of Chinese society—are rendered as they wait and watch buses pass without stopping. Western critics found the play reminiscent of the Theater of the Absurd movement and drew comparisons to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Chinese authorities, however, condemned the play, interpreting it as an analogy for ineffective communist government. Yeren (1985; Wildman) concerns an ecologist and a newspaper reporter who travel into the wilderness of modern China in search of a mythical “wildman,” who is said to be part human, part monkey. The play, defying conventional dramatic techniques, unfolds through a series of episodic scenes, interspersing traditional Chinese song, dance, and music with dialogue between the unnamed characters. In Bi’an (1986; The Other Shore)—the title refers to a term for Buddhist enlightenment—three characters, designated as The Crowd, Man, and Woman, engage in a symbolic struggle over the conflict between the individual and collective will. The Other Shore was the last play that Gao wrote in China before emigrating to France in 1987. His plays written in France include Fleeing,Dialogue-interloquer (1992; Dialogue and Rebuttal), Le Somnambule (1994; Nocturnal Wanderer), and Zhoumo sichongzou (1995; Weekend Quartet). Fleeing, set during the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, takes place in an abandoned warehouse where two men and a young woman have taken refuge from the military tanks sent in to stop the demonstration. Dialogue and Rebuttal follows two strangers who have spent the night together, examining their inability to communicate and their individual relationships with language. Nocturnal Wanderer is a dream play where a character named Sleepwalker battles to escape his nightmare. The structure of Weekend Quartet is based on the composition of a musical quartet and examines the relationships between four different characters. Gao has also received considerable critical attention for his two novels, Soul Mountain and Le Livre d’un homme seul (2000; One Man’s Bible). Soul Mountain—a Buddhist term for heaven—is based on Gao’s experience of being misdiagnosed with terminal cancer and his fifteen thousand kilometer, five-month long journey to the eastern coast of China. The novel employs an experimental narrative style, which includes alternating narrative points of view, as well as a bifurcation of the main character into both male and female parts. Soul Mountain is divided into eighty-one short, episodic chapters, with each chapter alternating between first- and second-person narration. The plot follows an individual’s search for meaning by way of a spiritual journey. Through his/her encounters with the people and cultures of remote China, the main character explores the tensions between individual and collective identity. One Man’s Bible is a historical novel, set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As in Soul Mountain, the narrative voice includes second- and third-person narration, but One Man’s Bible purposely excludes the first-person “I” in order to symbolize the suppression of individual identity by Chinese government forces.
FARMERS DIG IN AS RACE FOR LAND HEATS UP – by Ravi Nessman
ROZAJALALPUR, India — The farmers of Rozajalalpur knew what was coming.
They saw others closer to India’s expanding capital city pushed off their land to make way for malls, apartments and offices. They saw billboards rise along nearby potholed roads and tiny sales offices sprout in the grassy medians to hawk homes in Leisure Park, Golf Homes and Dream Valley.
Then, in March, they saw the innocuous-looking announcement in the newspaper. In type so small it was nearly unreadable, the state government declared it was seizing their farms under an 1894 national law enacted by British colonists to acquire land for roads and railways. Their land was being taken for the “public purpose” of “planned development.”
India’s transformation from a largely agrarian nation into a global economic power hinges on a steady supply of land for new factories, call centers, power plants and homes. As cities like New Delhi spill over their seams with ever more people, the government is increasingly seizing the farms around them for private development.
The farmers east of the capital are fighting back ferociously, taking to the streets and to the courts – with some success. And the government is scrambling to appease them and prevent them from threatening India’s development dreams.
“We cannot live without land,” said 23-year-old Vivek Nagar of Rozajalalpur, a ramshackle village of muddy roads and 10,000 people about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Delhi.
The land protests erupted in violence in May, killing four people, including two police officers, in the nearby village of Battha Parsaul. Similar protests have hit at least 17 of India’s 28 states over the past three years, according to The Times of India newspaper.
In the spring, protesters fought to stall plans to take their land for a nuclear plant in Jaitapur, in southern India; in August three farmers were killed by police along a highway near Mumbai as they protested a water project they feared would lead to land confiscations.
Though Nagar and his neighbors were offered a small fortune by their standards for their land, it was far below market value. The money couldn’t compensate for the loss of the relatively secure, though tiny, source of income and food from their farms.
Many feared they would end up like Subhash Nagar, a 35-year-old one-time farmer who lived off his small plot in a nearby village until the government took it in 2009 for 1.5 million rupees ($30,500) and the promise of a job in the industrial area they said they would build.
He spent the money on his sister’s wedding and a new house. But the “industrial area” turned out to be a residential complex, and he was left scrounging to feed his wife and two young children off loans from relatives and the 3,000 rupees ($60) he makes a month at a tea stall, he said.
So thousands of area farmers took to the streets over the summer to fight the seizures that would turn their villages into the new development of Noida Extension. Rahul Gandhi, the all-but-anointed next leader of the ruling Congress Party, rode out on the back of a motorcycle and joined the protest as a way to embarass the opposition-led government in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The farmers turned to the courts as well, in a case seen as one of the most formidable challenges to the government land acquisition program. They won a partial victory Oct. 21, when the High Court ruled that residents of three villages should get their land back, and those from 61 others, including Rozajalalpur, should get some more compensation. The farmers said the extra money was negligible and plan to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The farmers say the Uttar Pradesh government barred them from selling directly to the builders on the pretense it would spur an uncontrollable building frenzy. Instead, it paid them 850 rupees a square meter ($1.60 a square foot) for their land and then sold it to builders for as much as 15 times more. Officials involved in the deals also pocketed money on the side, the farmers said, charging that the corruption spurs officials to take more and more land.
“Bribery is happening on a large scale,” said Rupesh Verma, a lawyer for the farmers whose own farm was officially confiscated in 2007, though his family has refused to leave it. “All the players, the government, the politician, the bureaucrat, the builders are all getting some benefit. Only the farmers have been deprived.”
State officials say they are using the profits from the land sale to install roads, sewer and water lines and electricity hookups, justifying the higher price. Five officials from the embattled Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority, which is in charge of the land seizures and development in the area, did not answer or return dozens of phone calls from The Associated Press.
The farmers point to the nearby state of Haryana, where farmers made fortunes selling directly to builders, as proof their land is worth more than they are getting.
Their fight has inspired others. Those who lost their land 35 years ago, when the satellite city of Noida was first developed, are demanding extra compensation. Even those whose land in New Delhi was seized by the British a century ago to build the Parliament, the president’s house and the Supreme Court are suing.
Hoping to head off further conflict, the Congress Party rushed a quickly-drawn bill to Parliament to replace the 117-year-old land law with one that would make it far more difficult to seize land. Under the proposal, farmers would be paid four times the market rate for acquired land, and be given an annuity and a portion of the newly developed land.
The bill is an effort to end India’s long history of land disputes, which have displaced an estimated 50 to 60 million people since independence in 1947, many for public works such as dams. The seizures – and the confrontations – have grown more widespread with the economic liberalization that unleashed private development over the past two decades, said Harsh Mander, a member of the government’s National Advisory Council, which has proposed urgent reforms.
“When government starts acquiring land for private companies, using this colonial law, it’s something even the British never did. Then people got more and more angry,” he said.
Disputes over land seizures forced the relocation of a planned auto factory from West Bengal to the more business-friendly state of Gujarat in 2008. Land protests have also held up South Korean steel giant Posco’s plans to build a $12 billion plant in the eastern state of Orissa, as well as Reliance Power’s efforts to build a 7,500 megawatt power plant outside Delhi.
Indian industry says the current system has needlessly politicized land acquisitions and increased anger at business.
“As far as possible, the private sector should be allowed to directly purchase the land from the owners,” said Chetan Bijesure, an official at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
The new protests are leaving would-be homeowners like Ravi Garg out in the cold.
The 31-year-old software engineer was lured to the Panscheel Greens 1 residential complex by the promise of a swimming pool, gym and cafe. For 2.4 million rupees ($49,000) he could get a three-bedroom apartment in the Noida Extension development that would cost him 7 million ($142,000) if it were in Noida itself.
He paid a 1 million rupee ($20,000) down payment and then saw his dreams crumble. Construction has stopped.
“Everything was purely approved by all the government agencies,” he said. “Suddenly when construction reached the fourth or fifth floor, we were told that the land does not belong to the government. It belongs to the farmers.”
He doesn’t blame the farmers, and they also sympathize with the homebuyers, whom they see as comrades fighting for a place to call home.
But the farmers bristle at the golf courses and the Formula One racetrack – which hosted India’s first F1 race last month – as a sign the government is more interested in entertaining the super-rich than helping those on the edge.
“We are a poor country. We need some necessities first. After this, all these things can be done,” said Verma, the farmers’ lawyer.
The farmers realize their way of life is ending. Dalchand Sharma’s ancestor was a wealthy man with 50 acres in Rozajalapur in the 1850s. Over the years, the farm has been divided between so many heirs that the 62-year-old Sharma struggles to survive on just three acres.
His two sons, who would split that small plot, have chosen a different path. One is studying for his MBA and the other to become an engineer.
Sharma wants significantly more compensation so he can buy a cheaper plot of land further from New Delhi, as well as pass some money to the next generation.
“If the land is taken away, and my children get enough money to be comfortable and have houses, than it will be all right,” he said. “If not, then I’m happy the way things are.” AP
Excerpt from “Remembrance of Things Past”
by Marcel Proust
I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, all from my cup of tea.
Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat
The Spirit of the Laws
Montesquieu’s aim in The Spirit of the Laws is to explain human laws and social institutions. This might seem like an impossible project: unlike physical laws, which are, according to Montesquieu, instituted and sustained by God, positive laws and social institutions are created by fallible human beings who are “subject … to ignorance and error, [and] hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions” (SL 1.1). One might therefore expect our laws and institutions to be no more comprehensible than any other catalog of human follies, an expectation which the extraordinary diversity of laws adopted by different societies would seem to confirm.
Nonetheless, Montesquieu believes that this apparent chaos is much more comprehensible than one might think. On his view, the key to understanding different laws and social systems is to recognize that they should be adapted to a variety of different factors, and cannot be properly understood unless one considers them in this light. Specifically, laws should be adapted “to the people for whom they are framed…, to the nature and principle of each government, … to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen or shepherds: they should have relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear; to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs. In fine, they have relations to each other, as also to their origin, to the intent of the legislator, and to the order of things on which they are established; in all of which different lights they ought to be considered” (SL 1.3). When we consider legal and social systems in relation to these various factors, Montesquieu believes, we will find that many laws and institutions that had seemed puzzling or even perverse are in fact quite comprehensible.
Understanding why we have the laws we do is important in itself. However, it also serves practical purposes. Most importantly, it will discourage misguided attempts at reform. Montesquieu is not a utopian, either by temperament or conviction. He believes that to live under a stable, non-despotic government that leaves its law-abiding citizens more or less free to live their lives is a great good, and that no such government should be lightly tampered with. If we understand our system of government, and the ways in which it is adapted to the conditions of our country and its people, we will see that many of its apparently irrational features actually make sense, and that to ‘reform’ these features would actually weaken it. Thus, for instance, one might think that a monarchical government would be strengthened by weakening the nobility, thereby giving more power to the monarch. On Montesquieu’s view, this is false: to weaken those groups or institutions which check a monarch’s power is to risk transforming monarchy into despotism, a form of government that is both abhorrent and unstable.
Understanding our laws will also help us to see which aspects of them are genuinely in need of reform, and how these reforms might be accomplished. For instance, Montesquieu believes that the laws of many countries can be made be more liberal and more humane, and that they can often be applied less arbitrarily, with less scope for the unpredictable and oppressive use of state power. Likewise, religious persecution and slavery can be abolished, and commerce can be encouraged. These reforms would generally strengthen monarchical governments, since they enhance the freedom and dignity of citizens. If lawmakers understand the relations between laws on the one hand and conditions of their countries and the principles of their governments on the other, they will be in a better position to carry out such reforms without undermining the governments they seek to improve.
4.1 Forms of Government
Montesquieu holds that there are three types of governments: republican governments, which can take either democratic or aristocratic forms; monarchies; and despotisms. Unlike, for instance, Aristotle, Montesquieu does not distinguish forms of government on the basis of the virtue of the sovereign. The distinction between monarchy and despotism, for instance, depends not on the virtue of the monarch, but on whether or not he governs “by fixed and established laws” (SL 2.1). Each form of government has a principle, a set of “human passions which set it in motion” (SL 3.1); and each can be corrupted if its principle is undermined or destroyed.
In a democracy, the people are sovereign. They may govern through ministers, or be advised by a senate, but they must have the power of choosing their ministers and senators for themselves. The principle of democracy is political virtue, by which Montesquieu means “the love of the laws and of our country” (SL 4.5), including its democratic constitution. The form of a democratic government makes the laws governing suffrage and voting fundamental. The need to protect its principle, however, imposes far more extensive requirements. On Montesquieu’s view, the virtue required by a functioning democracy is not natural. It requires “a constant preference of public to private interest” (SL 4.5); it “limits ambition to the sole desire, to the sole happiness, of doing greater services to our country than the rest of our fellow citizens” (SL 5.3); and it “is a self-renunciation, which is ever arduous and painful” (SL 4.5). Montesquieu compares it to monks’ love for their order: “their rule debars them from all those things by which the ordinary passions are fed; there remains therefore only this passion for the very rule that torments them. … the more it curbs their inclinations, the more force it gives to the only passion left them” (SL 5.2). To produce this unnatural self-renunciation, “the whole power of education is required” (SL 4.5). A democracy must educate its citizens to identify their interests with the interests of their country, and should have censors to preserve its mores. It should seek to establish frugality by law, so as to prevent its citizens from being tempted to advance their own private interests at the expense of the public good; for the same reason, the laws by which property is transferred should aim to preserve an equal distribution of property among citizens. Its territory should be small, so that it is easy for citizens to identify with it, and more difficult for extensive private interests to emerge.
Democracies can be corrupted in two ways: by what Montesquieu calls “the spirit of inequality” and “the spirit of extreme equality” (SL 8.2). The spirit of inequality arises when citizens no longer identify their interests with the interests of their country, and therefore seek both to advance their own private interests at the expense of their fellow citizens, and to acquire political power over them. The spirit of extreme equality arises when the people are no longer content to be equal as citizens, but want to be equal in every respect. In a functioning democracy, the people choose magistrates to exercise executive power, and they respect and obey the magistrates they have chosen. If those magistrates forfeit their respect, they replace them. When the spirit of extreme equality takes root, however, the citizens neither respect nor obey any magistrate. They “want to manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the judges” (SL 8.2). Eventually the government will cease to function, the last remnants of virtue will disappear, and democracy will be replaced by despotism.
In an aristocracy, one part of the people governs the rest. The principle of an aristocratic government is moderation, the virtue which leads those who govern in an aristocracy to restrain themselves both from oppressing the people and from trying to acquire excessive power over one another. In an aristocracy, the laws should be designed to instill and protect this spirit of moderation. To do so, they must do three things. First, the laws must prevent the nobility from abusing the people. The power of the nobility makes such abuse a standing temptation in an aristocracy; to avoid it, the laws should deny the nobility some powers, like the power to tax, which would make this temptation all but irresistible, and should try to foster responsible and moderate administration. Second, the laws should disguise as much as possible the difference between the nobility and the people, so that the people feel their lack of power as little as possible. Thus the nobility should have modest and simple manners, since if they do not attempt to distinguish themselves from the people “the people are apt to forget their subjection and weakness” (SL 5.8). Finally, the laws should try to ensure equality among the nobles themselves, and among noble families. When they fail to do so, the nobility will lose its spirit of moderation, and the government will be corrupted.
In a monarchy, one person governs “by fixed and established laws” (SL 2.1). According to Montesquieu, these laws “necessarily suppose the intermediate channels through which (the monarch’s) power flows: for if there be only the momentary and capricious will of a single person to govern the state, nothing can be fixed, and, of course, there is no fundamental law” (SL 2.4). These ‘intermediate channels’ are such subordinate institutions as the nobility and an independent judiciary; and the laws of a monarchy should therefore be designed to preserve their power. The principle of monarchical government is honor. Unlike the virtue required by republican governments, the desire to win honor and distinction comes naturally to us. For this reason education has a less difficult task in a monarchy than in a republic: it need only heighten our ambitions and our sense of our own worth, provide us with an ideal of honor worth aspiring to, and cultivate in us the politeness needed to live with others whose sense of their worth matches our own. The chief task of the laws in a monarchy is to protect the subordinate institutions that distinguish monarchy from despotism. To this end, they should make it easy to preserve large estates undivided, protect the rights and privileges of the nobility, and promote the rule of law. They should also encourage the proliferation of distinctions and of rewards for honorable conduct, including luxuries.
A monarchy is corrupted when the monarch either destroys the subordinate institutions that constrain his will, or decides to rule arbitrarily, without regard to the basic laws of his country, or debases the honors at which his citizens might aim, so that “men are capable of being loaded at the very same time with infamy and with dignities” (SL 8.7). The first two forms of corruption destroy the checks on the sovereign’s will that separate monarchy from despotism; the third severs the connection between honorable conduct and its proper rewards. In a functioning monarchy, personal ambition and a sense of honor work together. This is monarchy’s great strength and the source of its extraordinary stability: whether its citizens act from genuine virtue, a sense of their own worth, a desire to serve their king, or personal ambition, they will be led to act in ways that serve their country. A monarch who rules arbitrarily, or who rewards servility and ignoble conduct instead of genuine honor, severs this connection and corrupts his government.
In despotic states “a single person directs everything by his own will and caprice” (SL 2.1). Without laws to check him, and with no need to attend to anyone who does not agree with him, a despot can do whatever he likes, however ill-advised or reprehensible. His subjects are no better than slaves, and he can dispose of them as he sees fit. The principle of despotism is fear. This fear is easily maintained, since the situation of a despot’s subjects is genuinely terrifying. Education is unnecessary in a despotism; if it exists at all, it should be designed to debase the mind and break the spirit. Such ideas as honor and virtue should not occur to a despot’s subjects, since “persons capable of setting a value on themselves would be likely to create disturbances. Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition” (SL 3.9). Their “portion here, like that of beasts, is instinct, compliance, and punishment” (SL 3.10), and any higher aspirations should be brutally discouraged.
Montesquieu writes that “the principle of despotic government is subject to a continual corruption, because it is even in its nature corrupt” (SL 8.10). This is true in several senses. First, despotic governments undermine themselves. Because property is not secure in a despotic state, commerce will not flourish, and the state will be poor. The people must be kept in a state of fear by the threat of punishment; however, over time the punishments needed to keep them in line will tend to become more and more severe, until further threats lose their force. Most importantly, however, the despot’s character is likely to prevent him from ruling effectively. Since a despot’s every whim is granted, he “has no occasion to deliberate, to doubt, to reason; he has only to will” (SL 4.3). For this reason he is never forced to develop anything like intelligence, character, or resolution. Instead, he is “naturally lazy, voluptuous, and ignorant” (SL 2.5), and has no interest in actually governing his people. He will therefore choose a vizier to govern for him, and retire to his seraglio to pursue pleasure. In his absence, however, intrigues against him will multiply, especially since his rule is necessarily odious to his subjects, and since they have so little to lose if their plots against him fail. He cannot rely on his army to protect him, since the more power they have, the greater the likelihood that his generals will themselves try to seize power. For this reason the ruler in a despotic state has no more security than his people.
Second, monarchical and republican governments involve specific governmental structures, and require that their citizens have specific sorts of motivation. When these structures crumble, or these motivations fail, monarchical and republican governments are corrupted, and the result of their corruption is that they fall into despotism. But when a particular despotic government falls, it is not generally replaced by a monarchy or a republic. The creation of a stable monarchy or republic is extremely difficult: “a masterpiece of legislation, rarely produced by hazard, and seldom attained by prudence” (SL 5.14). It is particularly difficult when those who would have both to frame the laws of such a government and to live by them have previously been brutalized and degraded by despotism. Producing a despotic government, by contrast, is relatively straightforward. A despotism requires no powers to be carefully balanced against one another, no institutions to be created and maintained in existence, no complicated motivations to be fostered, and no restraints on power to be kept in place. One need only terrify one’s fellow citizens enough to allow one to impose one’s will on them; and this, Montesquieu claims, “is what every capacity may reach” (SL 5.14). For these reasons despotism necessarily stands in a different relation to corruption than other forms of government: while they are liable to corruption, despotism is its embodiment.
4.2 Liberty
Montesquieu is among the greatest philosophers of liberalism, but his is what Shklar has called “a liberalism of fear” (Shklar, Montesquieu, p. 89). According to Montesquieu, political liberty is “a tranquillity of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety” (SL 11.6). Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want: if we have the freedom to harm others, for instance, others will also have the freedom to harm us, and we will have no confidence in our own safety. Liberty involves living under laws that protect us from harm while leaving us free to do as much as possible, and that enable us to feel the greatest possible confidence that if we obey those laws, the power of the state will not be directed against us.
If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since “constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power” (SL 11.4). This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government. If different persons or bodies exercise these powers, then each can check the others if they try to abuse their powers. But if one person or body holds several or all of these powers, then nothing prevents that person or body from acting tyrannically; and the people will have no confidence in their own security.
Certain arrangements make it easier for the three powers to check one another. Montesquieu argues that the legislative power alone should have the power to tax, since it can then deprive the executive of funding if the latter attempts to impose its will arbitrarily. Likewise, the executive power should have the right to veto acts of the legislature, and the legislature should be composed of two houses, each of which can prevent acts of the other from becoming law. The judiciary should be independent of both the legislature and the executive, and should restrict itself to applying the laws to particular cases in a fixed and consistent manner, so that “the judicial power, so terrible to mankind, … becomes, as it were, invisible”, and people “fear the office, but not the magistrate” (SL 11.6).
Liberty also requires that the laws concern only threats to public order and security, since such laws will protect us from harm while leaving us free to do as many other things as possible. Thus, for instance, the laws should not concern offenses against God, since He does not require their protection. They should not prohibit what they do not need to prohibit: “all punishment which is not derived from necessity is tyrannical. The law is not a mere act of power; things in their own nature indifferent are not within its province” (SL 19.14). The laws should be constructed to make it as easy as possible for citizens to protect themselves from punishment by not committing crimes. They should not be vague, since if they were, we might never be sure whether or not some particular action was a crime. Nor should they prohibit things we might do inadvertently, like bumping into a statue of the emperor, or involuntarily, like doubting the wisdom of one of his decrees; if such actions were crimes, no amount of effort to abide by the laws of our country would justify confidence that we would succeed, and therefore we could never feel safe from criminal prosecution. Finally, the laws should make it as easy as possible for an innocent person to prove his or her innocence. They should concern outward conduct, not (for instance) our thoughts and dreams, since while we can try to prove that we did not perform some action, we cannot prove that we never had some thought. The laws should not criminalize conduct that is inherently hard to prove, like witchcraft; and lawmakers should be cautious when dealing with crimes like sodomy, which are typically not carried out in the presence of several witnesses, lest they “open a very wide door to calumny” (SL 12.6).
Montesquieu’s emphasis on the connection between liberty and the details of the criminal law were unusual among his contemporaries, and inspired such later legal reformers as Cesare Beccaria.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
& A Happy, healthy, auspicious New Year 2012 to you, family and friends
fr us at Garunar L’ Universite Orientale Royale community
…well please drive carefully, drink wisely and be safe (a personal advice fr the Chancellor) there are so many accidents I see. Cheers..
NEWS:
On January 9, 2012 AD we are indeed proud to plan the academic action plan to establish the Childrens’ University Programme – Southeast ASIA where most of young, bright minds in rural Asia, Americas and EU will have access to multilateral International Development, community engineering and Education studies, friendship and research.
The Director of the programme will be Mr. Palat M. Yommaha.
Opinion
After Egypt’s Revolution, Christians Are Living in Fear …
Khaled Elfiqi/European Pressphoto Agency
Coptic Christians, carrying a symbolic coffin with photos of people killed in clashes, marched from the Coptic Cathedral in the Abbasiya section of Cairo earlier this month.
THE images streaming from Cairo’s streets last month were not as horrifying as those of the capture and brutal death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but they were savage all the same. They were a sobering reminder that popular movements in some parts of the world, however euphorically they begin, can take disquieting and ugly turns.
When liberal Muslims joined Coptic Christians as they marched through Cairo’s Maspero area on Oct. 9 to protest the burning of a Coptic church, bands of conservative Muslim hooligans wielding sticks and swords began attacking the protesters. Egyptian security forces who had apparently intervened to break up the violence deliberately rammed their armed vehicles into the Coptic crowd and fired live ammunition indiscriminately.
Egyptian military authorities soon shut down live news coverage of the event, and evidence of chaos was quickly cleared from the scene. But the massacre, in which at least 24 people were killed and more than 300 were wounded, was the worst instance of sectarian violence in Egypt in 60 years.
Confusion and conflicting narratives abound. Some claim to have overheard an announcer on television encourage “honorable Egyptians” to come to the rescue of soldiers under attack by a mob of Copts. Others heard a Muslim shouting that he had killed a Christian.
Unable to explain exactly why events turned violent, Egypt’s interim prime minister, Essam Sharaf, claimed that the wholesale slaughter of civilians was not the product of sectarian violence but proof that there were “hidden hands” involved.
I grew up in an Egypt that was inventing hidden hands wherever you looked. Because of my family’s increasingly precarious status as Jews living in Nasser’s Egypt, my parents forbade me to flash my flashlight several times at night or to write invisible messages with lemon ink in middle school. These were a spymaster’s tricks, and Jews were forever regarded as spies after the 1954 “Lavon Affair,” in which Israeli intelligence recruited Egyptian Jews to bomb targets in Egypt.
Sadly, the phrase “hidden hands” remains a part of Egypt’s political rhetoric more than 50 years later — an invitation for every Egyptian to write in the name of his or her favorite bugaboo. Rather than see things for what they are, Egyptians, from their leaders on down, have always preferred the blame game — and with good reason. Blaming some insidious clandestine villain for anything invariably works in a country where hearsay passes for truth and paranoia for knowledge.
Sometimes those hidden hands are called Langley, or the West, or, all else failing, of course, the Mossad. Sometimes “hidden hands” stands for any number of foreign or local conspiracies carried out by corrupt or disgruntled apparatchiks of one stripe or another who are forever eager to tarnish and discredit the public trust.
The problem with Egypt is that there is no public trust. There is no trust, period. False rumor, which is the opiate of the Egyptian masses and the bread and butter of political discourse in the Arab world, trumps clarity, reason and the will to tolerate a different opinion, let alone a different religion or the spirit of open discourse.
“Hidden hands” stands for Satan. And with Satan you don’t use judgment; you use cunning and paranoia. Cunning, after all, is poor man’s fare, a way of cobbling together a credible enough narrative that is at once easy to digest, to swear by, and pass around. Bugaboos keep you focused. And nothing in the Middle East can keep you as focused (or as unfocused) as the archvillain of them all: Israel.
Say “Israel” and you’ve galvanized everyone. Say Israel and you have a movement, a cause, a purpose. Say “Israel” and all of Islam huddles. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and now Turkey.
What is good about the episode in Maspero is that, in the exhilarating and unusual spirit of the events of last spring in Tahrir Square, Muslims joined the Coptic demonstrators who were eager to exercise the right to build churches — a right that has always been grudgingly granted to Egypt’s Copts.
What is terrible about the episode, however, is the inability of the government to take the blame for the slaughter of the Copts. Similarly, in September, it failed to intervene in good time when a large mob attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo, broke down its walls and nearly slaughtered those inside.
The friendly army that Copts embraced during the Arab spring has turned its guns on those who embraced it. Your pal today, your killer tomorrow.
There are no rules and there is no trust. The poor man on the street, if he is to think for himself — which is a tall order in a country that has no history of free speech — must either wear warped lenses to see through wholesale agitprop or surrender to blind fanaticism.
COPTS represent approximately 10 percent of Egypt’s population and are the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians. Yet, sensing danger while everyone else in Egypt and in the West was busy celebrating the fall of Mr. Mubarak during the much-heralded Arab Spring, 93,000 Copts have already fled Egypt since March. In light of the events in Maspero, it is thought that another 150,000 Copts may leave their ancestral homeland by the end of 2011.
When Mr. Mubarak was in power, the Copts were frequently the victims of violent attacks and official discrimination — the New Year’s bombing of a Coptic Church in Alexandria that left 21 dead is the most recent instance. Now, with Mr. Mubarak gone, Copts fear that an elected Muslim majority is likely to prove far less tolerant than a military dictatorship.
Conditions were by no means good for the Copts when Mr. Mubarak was at the helm. The most risible instance occurred in 2009 when, in an absurd effort to prevent the spread of swine flu, the government decided to slaughter all pigs in Egypt.
But since neither contact with pigs nor eating pork spreads swine flu, why kill the poor pigs? The answer is very simple. Slaughtering the pigs, as it turns out, was probably meant to inconvenience the Copts who farmed them and ate them. This constituted another of those petty measures intended to harm the Copts financially.
Today, Egypt is doing the same with Israel. Under the pretext of preserving its national agricultural patrimony, it has forbidden the sale of palm fronds to Israel. Palm fronds are used ceremonially by Jews during the holiday of Sukkot, and since Israel doesn’t grow enough palm trees, it imports the fronds from Egypt. Whom did the ban hurt? The Egyptians who grow palm trees. Whom did the slaughter of pigs hurt? None other than the Cairenes themselves, because pigs, which eat tons of organic waste, used to play an important role in clearing trash from the streets of Cairo.
What doesn’t occur to most Egyptians is that the Copts represent a significant business community in Egypt and that their flight may further damage an economy saddled with a ballooning deficit.
But this is nothing new for Egypt. The Egyptians have yet to learn the very hard lesson of the post-1956 departure of its nearly 100,000 Jews, who, at the time, constituted one of the wealthiest Jewish communities in the Mediterranean region.
The Egyptian economy never recovered from this loss. While blaming Zionism and the creation of Israel or turning to Islamic leadership may take many people’s minds off the very real financial debacle confronting Egypt and help assuage feelings of powerlessness, the hard lesson has not been learned yet.
The Arab Spring was a luminous instance of democratic euphoria in a country that had no history of democracy or euphoria. What happened to the Copts this fall cast a dark cloud, which the interim government, whatever its true convictions, would do well to dispel.
Egypt should not lose its Copts. For if that is what autumn brings, then, to paraphrase Shelley, winter may not be far behind.
André Aciman is a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the author of “Out of Egypt” and “Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere.”
Polluting Burma
Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding with Italian-Thai Development , ITD do Dawei deal
The plan is to build a coal-fired power plant in Dawei, Burma. As the project company holds stakes in coal mines in Indonesia and Australia, it is expected that it will import coal and generate power likely for Burma, with possibility of selling back to Thailand.
Burma already has abundant gas which is suitable for clean energy. (But are there welfare, pension, central provident funds for citizens ?)
It is very disturbing to know that Burma’ll have to import coal (a dirty energy source) while selling gas (a clean energy source). On the other hand we remember there were protests in Thailand against coal-fired plant in Mae Moh and against another project in the upper South. (most of the mines in Burma are now owned by whom – of course one wonders?)
In the present case, that company is transferring pollution from Thailand to Burma. I think this project should be scrapped right away.
written by – A CONCERNED BURMESE
Violence grows as Tibetans get angrier
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press BEIJING January 28, 2012 (AP)
A young man posts his photo with a leaflet demanding freedom for Tibet and telling Chinese police, come and get me. Protesters rise up to defend him, and demonstrations break out in two other Tibetan areas of western China to support the same cause. Each time, police respond with bullets. The three clashes, all in the past week, killed several Tibetans and injured dozens. They mark an escalation of a protest movement that for months expressed itself mainly through scattered individual self-immolations. It’s the result of growing desperation among Tibetans and a harsh crackdown by security forces that scholars and pro-Tibet activists contend only breeds more rage and despair. That leaves authorities with the stark choice of either cracking down even harder or meeting Tibetan demands for greater freedom and a return of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama — something Beijing has shown zero willingness to do. AP FILE – In this file photo taken Wednesday,… View Full Caption FILE – In this file photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, Tibetan Buddhist monks hold pictures of Tibetans they claim were allegedly shot by Chinese security forces earlier this week, during a candlelight vigil in Dharamsala, India. Three deadly clashes with Chinese security forces in January mark an escalation of a Tibetan protest movement that had expressed itself through scattered individual self-immolations, reflecting both the growing desperation of Tibetans and the harsh response by police. (AP Photo/Angus McDonald, File) Close”By not responding constructively when it was faced with peaceful one-person protests, the (Communist) party has created the conditions for violent, large-scale protests,” said Robbie Barnett, head of modern Tibetan studies at New York’s Columbia University. This is the region’s most violent period since 2008, when deadly rioting in Tibet’s capital Lhasa spread to Tibetan areas in adjoining provinces. China responded by flooding the area with troops and closing Tibetan regions entirely to foreigners for about a year. Special permission is still required for non-Chinese visitors to Tibet, and the Himalayan region remains closed off entirely for the weeks surrounding the March 14 anniversary of the riots that left 22 people dead. Video smuggled out by activists shows paramilitary troops equipped with assault rifles and armored cars making pre-dawn arrests. Huge convoys of heavily armored troops are seen driving along mountain roads and monks accused of sedition being frog-marched to waiting trucks. For the past year, self-immolations have become a striking form of protest in the region. At least 16 monks, nuns and former clergy set themselves on fire after chanting for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. China, fiercely critical of the Dalai Lama, says Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, but many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time. Anger over cultural and religious restrictions is deepened by a sense that Tibetans have been marginalized economically by an influx of migrants from elsewhere in China. In a change from the individual protests, several thousand Tibetans marched to government offices Monday in Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province. Police opened fire into the crowd, killing up to three people, witnesses and activist groups said. On Tuesday, security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in another area of Ganzi, killing two Tibetans and wounding several more, according to the group Free Tibet. On Thursday in southwestern Sichuan province’s Aba prefecture, a youth named Tarpa posted a leaflet saying that self-immolations wouldn’t stop until Tibet is free, the London-based International Campaign for Tibet said. He wrote his name on the leaflet and included a photo of himself, saying that Chinese authorities could come and arrest him if they wished, group spokeswoman Kate Saunders said in an email. Security forces did so about two hours later. Area residents blocked their way, shouting slogans and warning of bigger protests if Tarpa wasn’t released, Saunders said. Police then fired into the crowd, killing a a 20-year-old friend of Tarpa’s, a student named Urgen, and wounding several others. The incident, as with most reported clashes in Tibetan areas, could not be independently verified and exact numbers of casualties were unclear because of the heavy security presence and lack of access. The topic is so sensitive that even government-backed scholars claim ignorance of it and refuse to comment. The government, however, acknowledged Tuesday’s unrest, saying that a “mob” charged a police station and injured 14 officers, forcing police to open fire on them. The official Xinhua News Agency said police killed one rioter and injured another. “The Chinese government will, as always, fight all crimes and be resolute in maintaining social order,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in comments on the incident. In a commentary Sunday, the nationalist tabloid Global Times repeated accusations that the protests were inspired by Tibetan exile groups and their demands were out of step with the desire for economic development. Yet, it also conceded that the Dalai Lama retained considerable religious influence over Tibetans, warning this created a dangerous trend of “melding the political and relgious.” The harsh response points to a deep anxiety about the self-immolations, said Youdon Aukatsang, a New Delhi-based member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile. “They’re worried that there is an underground movement in Tibet that is coming to the surface,” she said. Tibetan desperation has been fed both by the harsh crackdown — security agents reportedly outnumber monks in some monasteries — along with a deep fear that the Dalai Lama, probably the most potent symbol of Tibet’s separate identity, will never return. The 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate handed his political powers to an elected assembly last year. That was intended to ensure the Tibetan cause would live on after him, but was met with considerable anxiety among many Tibetans who saw it as a sign he was giving up his role as leader of their struggle. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at London’s University of Westminster, said resistance to Chinese rule is likely to grow more fierce. “Protests will get more radicalized since the Tibetans in the region see no concession, no offer of compromise, no flexibility coming from the government,” he said.
Proche- Orient-
Bachar Al-Assad, intime
| 18.02.12 | 14h41 • Mis à jour le 18.02.12 | 16h21
Le président syrien Bachar Al-Assad, en mars 2009.REUTERS/KHALED AL-HARIRI
C’est par effraction que je suis entré dans la tête du président syrien. C’est une forteresse inaccessible. Avant d’arriver à s’en approcher, il faut passer pas moins de sept barrages. Haute sécurité. Peur et méfiance. Comme son père, Hafez, il se tient à distance. On raconte qu’un jour Hafez Al-Assad a fait fusiller les sept soldats qui devaient filtrer le passage des personnes qui avaient rendez-vous avec lui. Hafez aimait jouer aux échecs avec un ami d’enfance. Chaque après-midi, l’ami se présentait et se faisait fouiller sept fois avant d’arriver à la salle de jeu. Un jour, à force de le voir, les soldats le laissèrent passer sans faire leur travail.
Lorsque Hafez le sut, ordre fut donné d’exécuter les malheureux gardes qui avaient manqué à leur devoir. Le petit Bachar connaît cet épisode, un parmi tant d’autres, aussi sanglants les uns que les autres. Lui aussi est injoignable. Il y a de quoi. Quand on tue, on risque d’être tué. Alors on prend les précautions nécessaires et même plus.
Sa tête n’est pas très grande. Elle est occupée par du foin, des épingles et des lames de rasoir. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Son cerveau est calme. Pas de stress, pas de nervosité. Je ne sais pas d’où il tient cette tranquillité. Question d’hérédité, ou bien a-t-il suivi des cours du soir pour apprendre à tuer sans que cela le dérange, sans qu’il soit le moins du monde inquiété par le malheur qu’il sème. Je me suis fait tout petit et j’ai tendu l’oreille. Car le petit pense et n’hésite pas à avoir des idées audacieuses :
J’ai tout appris de feu mon père, un grand homme d’Etat, un homme sensible, cultivé et grand stratège. Je me souviens qu’Henry Kissinger l’appréciait beaucoup. Il m’avait dit que lui aussi aimait bien le secrétaire d’Etat américain dont il admirait l’intelligence et le réalisme politique. Ils s’entendaient bien tous les deux. Mon père me rappelait comment cet homme a fait éliminer physiquement Salvador Allende et l’a remplacé par Pinochet.
Ces derniers temps, j’entre en communication avec mon père. Il est génial. C’est lui qui me dicte ce que je dois faire. Il m’encourage et m’indique des pistes à suivre. Il m’a dit dernièrement, au cas où les choses viendraient à empirer, de retourner au Liban, car ni lui ni moi n’avions admis la manière dont notre armée a été expulsée de ce pays en 2005. Même la mort d’Hariri et de quelques autres ingrats n’a pu effacer la honte que ces Libanais nous ont infligée.
Pour le moment, ça va. Je tiens. Pas de panique. D’abord, je ne suis ni Saddam ni Kadhafi. Vous ne me verrez pas ridiculisé par des agents américains en train de chercher des poux dans ma tête ou bien égorgé par des fanatiques. Ces deux-là se sont fait avoir parce que leur niveau d’intelligence n’était pas des meilleurs. Je suis de la famille Al-Assad, une famille et un clan unis et solidaires. Une grande famille, forte et puissante, qui a des traditions. Je ne fais pas n’importe quoi. Je résiste contre un complot international. J’ai des preuves. Aucune envie de voir mon pays devenir une république islamique dirigée par des analphabètes ou bien un bastion de cette gauche stupide juste bonne à parader dans les salons européens.
Mon père m’a appris que, en politique, il faut avoir un coeur de bronze. Le mien, je l’ai habitué à ce qu’il ne se brise jamais. Pas de sentiments, pas de faiblesse. Car je joue ma tête et la vie de toute ma famille. Les voyous qui mettent la Syrie à feu et à sang n’ont que ce qu’ils méritent. On parle de “printemps arabe” ! C’est quoi cette histoire ? Où voit-on un printemps ? Ce n’est pas parce que des agitateurs inconscients occupent des places publiques que les saisons ont changé de rythme et de sens. Chez moi, ce qu’ils appellent “le printemps” ne passera pas.
J’ai donné l’ordre de suspendre cette saison jusqu’à la victoire. Pourquoi le printemps serait synonyme de ma disparition ? Non seulement je ne vais pas mourir, mais je tuerai tout le monde avant. Il est dit dans l’islam que s’il faut sacrifier les deux tiers d’un peuple pour n’en garder qu’un tiers bon, il ne faut pas hésiter. J’applique cette loi vieille comme les Arabes. Je rappelle que la Syrie est un pays laïque, comme la France qui, tout à coup me trahit et me fait la morale. Et le pauvre Obama qui me condamne et parle d’atrocités ! De quoi se mêle-t-il ? Il n’a pas vu ce que son armée a fait en Irak et en Afghanistan ?
Que me reproche-t-on ? De donner l’ordre à l’armée de tirer sur les manifestants ? Si je ne fais pas ça, je perds ma place, je ne me ferai plus respecter. Regardez comment mon ami Moubarak s’est retrouvé du jour au lendemain éjecté de son palais. Il a manqué de détermination et de volonté. L’armée l’a trahi. Le pauvre, quelle déchéance, malade, déprimé, on le traîne sur une civière pour être jugé ! Les peuples sont ingrats. Ils oublient vite ce que les présidents font pour eux. Mon armée est composée en majorité d’hommes fidèles. Ceux qui ont déserté l’ont payé très cher. Je n’ai pas d’états d’âme. Je me défends, je dirai même, c’est de la légitime défense.
J’ai pris la précaution de mettre à l’abri Asma, ma femme, et mes trois enfants, Hafez, Zeyn et Karim. C’est normal, je réagis en bon mari et en bon père de famille. Je vois comment des pères irresponsables poussent leurs enfants à manifester tout en sachant pertinemment qu’ils peuvent tomber sous des balles perdues. On m’a dit que des enfants sont morts. Je n’arrive pas à le croire, et je rends leurs parents responsables de ce malheur, car il n’y a pas pire malheur que de perdre un de ses enfants ; je me souviens de la douleur de mon père le jour où mon frère aîné, Bassel, est mort dans un accident de voiture. Il a pleuré. Oui, j’ai vu mon père pleurer face à l’injustice du destin qui lui a ravi son fils bien-aimé.
Mon père, cet homme exceptionnel qui a fait de la Syrie un grand pays et qui a rendu la vie dure au voisin israélien, ce président a pleuré parce qu’il ne pouvait même pas se venger. Bassel mort, tué par la route. Il n’allait tout de même pas bombarder la route qui fut fatale au fils qu’il préparait pour lui succéder. Il n’a pas supporté d’être contrarié. Moi non plus. Je ne supporterai jamais d’être critiqué ou combattu.
Les Nations unies ont essayé de me salir et me demandent de me retirer. C’est de l’ingérence dans les affaires strictement internes de la Syrie. Que cette assemblée de fantoches me laisse en paix. Partir ? Pour aller où ? Elles me prennent pour un Ben Ali ? Je ne vais tout de même pas monter dans un avion et mendier l’asile politique dans le monde !
Heureusement que la Russie de mon ami Poutine et la Chine ont opposé leur veto. Mon ami Ahmadinejad aussi est avec moi ; il m’appelle souvent et me dit de ne pas céder. Il y a quand même une justice. Les insurgés sont des terroristes, des agents payés par l’Europe et même par certains pays arabes qui ont des comptes à régler avec moi. Vous n’avez qu’à suivre les émissions d’Al-Jazira pour comprendre que le complot existe.
On me parle de tortures ! C’est tout à fait normal de torturer pour éviter des massacres, pour que des innocents ne tombent pas sous les balles des mauvais Syriens.
Je tiens le pays ; je tiens tête à ceux qui veulent instaurer un autre régime ; on devrait me remercier et m’aider à protéger la Syrie du danger islamiste. Je sais ce que les islamistes feront avec ma tribu des alaouites ainsi qu’avec les minorités chrétienne et arménienne. Le Vatican devrait venir à mon secours au lieu de me condamner. Heureusement ce ne sont que des mots. Autre chose que ce que font actuellement les Européens en gelant mes avoirs chez eux et en essayant d’asphyxier le peuple en empêchant les échanges commerciaux. C’est mesquin et malhonnête. On m’en veut parce que la Syrie a toujours tenu tête à l’ennemi sioniste. Elle ne s’est jamais courbée face à Israël.
Mon père m’a dit au lendemain du massacre d’Hama, j’avais 17 ans : tu vois, mon fils, si je n’avais pas réagi avec cette fermeté, ce soir, nous ne serions plus là. Il a eu raison. Moi aussi, si je ne bombarde pas Homs, je sais où je dormirai ce soir : à la morgue ! Alors, il faut arrêter de dire n’importe quoi. 20 000 morts à Hama (à l’époque, personne n’avait réagi) ; à peine 8 000 entre Draa, Homs, Damas et Hama. Et tout ce tintamarre !
Vous savez pourquoi Asma, ma chère femme, m’a épousé ? Pour les valeurs que j’incarne. Elle l’a déclaré dans Paris Match du 10 décembre 2010. Ces valeurs se lisent sur mon visage. J’en suis fier.
Vous savez pourquoi j’ai fait ophtalmologie ? Parce que je suis allergique à la vue du sang.
En quittant cette tête, je me suis pris les pieds dans des fils électriques. Bachar est branché sur la centrale de la torture. C’est lui qui, pour passer le temps, appuie sur la pédale qui envoie des décharges dans les parties génitales des suppliciés. Il paraît que ça l’amuse et renforce sa détermination à débarrasser la Syrie des deux tiers jugés mauvais.
Ecrivain et poète francophone né à Fès (Maroc) en 1944, a enseigné la philosophie et étudié la psychiatrie sociale avant de devenir romancier. Il est membre de l’académie Goncourt depuis 2008. Il a reçu le prix Goncourt pour “La Nuit sacrée” (Points Seuil, 1987). Auteur de nombreux ouvrages, ses derniers livres parus sont : “L’Etincelle : révoltes dans les pays arabes”, “Par le feu”, “Que la blessure se ferme” (Gallimard) – Tahar Ben Jelloun
What a country produces determines its capital needs and how much of its savings it exports
AT first, it seems difficult to grasp: global capital is flowing from poor to rich countries. Emerging market countries run current account surpluses, while advanced economies have deficits.
One would expect fast-growing, capital-scarce (and young) developing countries to be importing capital from the rest of world to finance consumption and investment. So, why are they sending capital to richer countries, instead?
China is a case in point. With its current account surplus averaging 5.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product from 2000 to 2008, China has become one of the world’s largest lenders. Despite its rapid growth and promising investment opportunities, the country has persistently been sending a significant portion of its savings overseas.
And China is not alone. Other emerging markets — including Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Middle Eastern oil exporters — have all increased their current account surpluses significantly since the early 1990s.
Many observers believe that these global imbalances reflect developing economies’ financial integration, coupled with underdevelopment of domestic financial markets. According to this view, these countries’ demand for assets cannot be met — in terms of both quantity and quality – at home, so they deploy part of their savings to countries like the United States, which can offer a more diverse array of quality assets.
While plausible, this argument suggests that, as financial markets improve over time in developing countries, the global imbalances are bound to shrink. But such a reversal is nowhere in sight. Why?
A crucial dimension of globalisation has been trade liberalisation. For China, foreign trade as a percentage of GDP soared from 25 per cent in 1989 to 66 per cent in 2006, largely owing to its admission to the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
Most of what China and other developing countries produce and export are labour-intensive goods such as textiles and apparel. This has allowed advanced economies, in turn, to produce and export more capital-intensive, higher-value-added products. Globalisation of trade enabled countries to tap the efficiency gains that specialisation in their sectors of comparative advantage has brought about.
With a slight mental stretch, one can imagine that what a country produces and trades may affect its savings and investment decisions.
An economy in which the main productive activity is berry-picking, for example, has little need for investment and capital accumulation. Its labourers earn wages, consume and save part of that income. Since the production process requires little capital, there is no demand for domestic investment — and thus no savings vehicles. Instead, the only way to save is by purchasing capital abroad — in economies with capital-intensive production and demand for investment. This economy will always export its savings.
That may be an extreme example, but it illustrates a more general point about how merchandise trade can influence financial flows.
Countries that produce and export more labour-intensive goods — perhaps because of increased trade openness or faster labour-force and productivity growth, all of which are true of China — may experience a rise in savings, but a less-than-equivalent increase in demand for capital.
Rich countries, by contrast, are able to export more capital-intensive goods, and thus have a greater need for investment. So they may be importing more capital — resulting in a greater current-account deficit — simply because they are producing more capital-intensive goods.
With developing countries — in particular, China, India and the ex-Soviet bloc — bringing almost 1.5 billion workers into the world economy since the early 1990s, it is not difficult to understand the potential impact of this effect.
After all, much of this labour force was absorbed by labour-intensive industries that eventually churned out products exported to the rest of the world. Indeed, that massive addition of labour helped to drive down the relative price of labour-intensive goods, which fell by roughly 15 per cent between 1989 and 2008.
As developing countries increased their labour-intensive production and exports, their current account surpluses rose — by almost 3.6 percentage points, on average, between 1989 and 1993, and 2002 and 2006. China’s current account surplus increased by almost 11 percentage points over the same period, India’s by 2.5 percentage points, and Russia’s by 7 percentage points. These countries, as well as other large surplus economies, such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Iran, all experienced a simultaneous increase in the labour content of exports.
This pattern contrasts with that of the United States and many other advanced countries, which have experienced a deterioration of their current account balances as their production and exports have become more capital-intensive.
Many might doubt the view that China is exporting more labour-intensive goods, rather than upgrading its exports on the capital- and skill-intensity ladder. But trade data suggest the opposite, perhaps because China’s accession to the WTO led to tariff reductions that released more labour-intensive production.
In fact, trade data may underestimate the true extent of China’s labour intensity and overstate the capital and skill intensity of China’s exports.
China has witnessed rapid growth in the processing trade: assembling intermediate inputs — imported from countries like the US and Japan — that have high capital and skill content. So, while the exports of these final goods may count towards China’s own capital and skill content, the country’s real role was only in the labour-intensive process of assembly.
A country’s production structure may very well determine how much capital it supplies and how much it needs. So, the fact that capital may flow towards rich countries that produce and export more capital-intensive goods should not be so puzzling, after all.
18 November was a big day for Burma watchers, at least for those in favour of detente with the regime. On that day, President Barack Obama, apparently deciding to give the Burmese government the benefit of the doubt with regard to its ‘reforms’ process, called democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from Air Force One as he was on his way to Bali, Indonesia, to attend the annual ASEAN Summit. They talked for 20 minutes, with Suu Kyi reportedly inquiring about the president’s entire family, even his dog, Bo. Soon after, President Obama announced that he would send his secretary of state, Hilary Clinton to Burma on 1 December, to test whether the validity of the new reforms put in place by the government. It is yet unclear whether Clinton will be able to see the political prisoners still in jail, especially the 2007 ‘Saffron Revolution’ leader U Gambira and Min Ko Naing, the political activist made famous during the 1988 uprisings.
Since November 2009, the United States has been pursuing a twin-pronged approach with respect to Burma, on the one hand keeping sanctions in place and on the other trying a more direct approach of face-to-face talks with Suu Kyi, encouraging the government to talk meaningfully with her and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. After a ‘pilgrimage’ that Suu Kyi and her son made to the ancient city of Bagan in central Burma this spring, things moved quickly, with the Nobel laureate attending a workshop on economics in Naypyidaw, the new capital city. As Himal goes to press, she has talked to the government’s official liaison on four occasions.
It was also on 18 November, a Friday, that ASEAN announced that it would accept Burma as chair of the regional bloc starting in 2014, a key victory for the regime. The same day, Suu Kyi announced that the NLD would re-register, reversing the official ban on the party put in place in the run-up to the November 2010 election; Suu Kyi herself would also be standing for by-elections slated for December. The news did not stop there: Three days later, the following Monday, representatives of five armed ethnic groups met in Naypyidaw with the minister of railways, Aung Min, acting as President Thein Sein’s representative. At that meeting, two groups, the Karen National Union and the Shan State Army, agreed to informal ceasefires.
This flurry of activity capped months of changes in Burma – changes that remain highly debated. Commentators, representatives of the US State Department and even The Irrawaddy magazine, based in Thailand, have been seeing signs of true reform in Burma. These observers have particularly latched onto such recent events as the suspension of construction on the Chinese-backed Myitsone dam, in northern Burma, ostensibly ‘in response to the people’s wishes’, according to President (and former General) Thein Sein; Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to Naypyidaw; the release of 208 political prisoners; and the appearance of portraits of Aung San – national hero, father of the nation and of Suu Kyi – on the wall of an official meeting room in Naypyidaw. Yet in order to properly address the true reach of these changes, we need to go back farther than the past few months: We need to examine what has really changed, in contrast to what we would like to see in Burma as advocates of democracy and an open market economy.
Open season
During the Japanese Occupation and World War II, Aung San was the commander of the Burmese army’s predecessor, the Burma Defence Army, later called the Burma Independence Army. At that time, Ne Win was a junior officer under Aung San. Those who started the Burma Independence Army have since come to be known as the Thirty Comrades, those who went to Hainan Island for Japanese military training. After the war, these figures became living legends, partly due to the grandstanding of Ne Win himself. On their return from Hainan, the Comrades filled a silver bowl with their own blood and drank it symbolically, swearing an oath of allegiance to one another and to Burmese independence.
After the coup of 1962, Ne Win, then the head of government, tried to gain legitimacy by presenting himself as the true heir to Aung San. He appointed a scholar named Ko Ko Maung (U Chit Hlaing) to write a tract called A Burmese Way to Socialism, an obscure philosophical statement that combined socialism with Buddhist terminology. Ne Win asked Maung Maung, another scholar friendly with him, to return from Yale and frame a new constitution, and to write a biography of Aung San. (Eventually the junta’s public embrace of Aung San reversed course dramatically; images of the general were banned from 1988 to 2011, as his daughter, Suu Kyi,emerged as her father’s true heir.) Ne Win also put Ba Nyein, a Soviet-influenced economist, in charge of a swift mass nationalisation process and the setting up of a planned economy. This top-down approach, with no input whatsoever from the people or their elected representatives, is typical of the military government’s constitution-writing process. The most recent Constitution, passed in 2010, was created through a similar process, and is widely seen as a document meant only to provide cover for the military.
Major government acts of the past half-century have been built around consolidating military rule. Ne Win was the primary architect of the top-down command economy and the totalitarian system that exists in Burma to this day. His Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) ruled from 1962 to 1988, during which time the government carried out three major demonetisations. The first of these, which declared 50 and 100 kyat notes to be no longer legal tender, wiped out many of the old rich families – who might have opposed his rule. On 7 July 1962, Ne Win’s soldiers shot students at Rangoon University and dynamited its Students’ Union building. Another clampdown took place in 1974, after the students hijacked the remains of the late UN Secretary-General U Thant, taking them to the grassy space where the Students’ Union had stood. Ne Win is said to have harboured personal resentment towards U Thant, who had been close to Prime Minister U Nu before becoming UN secretary-general.
When Thant’s daughter brought his remains back from New York, only two cars came out to meet the cortege – a far cry from the grandiose official welcome one might expect. The students, meanwhile, were evidently hoping to make the world ‘stand up and take notice’, according to a conversation I overheard at the time. The carnival-like atmosphere on campus, with fleeting moments of freedom of expression and impromptu soapbox speeches, continued till the final clampdown about two weeks later. Eventually, however, the sounds of the students giving speeches died down. At the end, they sang the old national anthem of 1948, ‘Kaba ma kyei’ (The world is not crushed), which faded into an eerie silence. From a mile and a half away, thuds could be heard over the public-address system, as the students were beaten.
After the mass country-wide demonstrations of 1988 and the clampdown that began on 18 September of that year (and is arguably still continuing), an important new decision was taken. Ne Win had officially retired by that time, yet he and Saw Maung, then the head of the new State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC, the official name of the regime at the time), decided to open up Burma for foreign investment, declaring an ‘open economy’. In fact, this was open only to the junta leaders and their families, who combined with crony capitalists to form holding companies. From this period onwards, the total size of the Burmese economy became far larger than it had ever been in the previous quarter-century, thus vastly expanding opportunities for skimming or outright theft.
In 1990, Suu Kyi’s party won a national election, despite its leader being under house arrest. In the run-up to the polls, SLORC officials had reportedly carried out a survey asking the public their voting preferences; many respondents lied, leading the government to become overconfident and call an election that it ultimately lost badly. However, the military government refused to transfer power. Many elected MPs, fearing arrest or violence, fled, mostly to the Burma-Thai border; there, they formed an exile government called the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.
Shields and bargaining chips
In 2008-09, I helped a group of Burma experts to formulate a plan for democracy and development for the exile government. This encompassed issues such as a progressive, democratic constitution, the economy, the agricultural sector, electoral laws and international monitors, the displaced persons issue, money and banking, and other critical concerns.
Man and his shield: Cartoonist Harn Lay, 2010 Photo: Platon/Human Rights Watch
Today, a year into the new Parliament’s tenure, offers a potent moment to compare the ideals suggested by the expert committee with what has actually happened on the ground. The experts, which included a civil-military-relations specialist, suggested that the army return to its barracks and re-organise as a professional force; and that the curriculum used for its officer-training programme be changed to reflect the values of an army devoted to protecting the people and democracy and subject to control by a true civilian government. This plan was drafted before 2010, as the exile government’s input and response to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, the name of the regime since 1997).
Since the new Parliament was constituted in January 2011, it has been largely unable to discuss the many critical issues facing the country. What role, for instance, will Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD play in this new government? How will the new members of Parliament represent the true wishes of their constituents? How will the widespread corruption be handled? When will the bombardment of the Kachin be stopped? When will real privatisation – not just moving money into the pockets of military-aligned oligarchs – finally take place? When will all of the remaining political prisoners be released? What will be done to truly safeguard people’s rights? How will we deal with the estimated million internally displaced persons, or the additional million refugees forced to live in other countries? What about the refugees who have lived in Thai camps their entire lives? Or the thousands of farmers who have lost their lands to the crony capitalists – what kind of land reforms will be put in place to allow them to get their properties back? What kind of truth-and-reconciliation process will there be to allow the country’s nearly 50 million people to move on with their traumatised lives? How will Burma’s ravaged environment be healed? And how will the generals’ disciplineflourishing democracy’ become a real, functional democracy?
Instead of discussing these massively important issues, today the showpiece Parliament in Naypyidaw is discussing such relatively mundane subjects as Rangoon’s water supply. (Indeed, even a motion to strengthen regulation to ensure that water supply lost by a large margin.) Meanwhile, the ‘reforms’ that have been enacted thus far barely scratch the surface of the deep structural changes required. For instance, the recent changes have made no mention whatsoever of overhauling Burma’s archaic banking system, despite previous warnings such as the 2003 run on the bank, as panicked people rushed en masse to withdraw their deposits.
Let us take a brief look at some of the outstanding issues not being dealt with by the new government:
Exchange rates desperately need to be unified, with licenses given to money changers. Some money changers have been regularised, but there remain strict limits on how much money each citizen is allowed to change. Two exchange rates continue to exist, with a vast difference between the official and black-market rates (around seven kyat to the dollar versus 1000-1200 kyat to the dollar, respectively); this offers well-connected individuals an opportunity to reap vast profits from the price gap. Since the early 1980s, the black-market exchange rate has gone from 20 kyat to the dollar to the current rates, an almost 60-fold increase – a situation of hyperinflation that explains why Burmese are walking around with wads of money just to buy daily food. Senior generals are all said to have vast foreign-exchange reserves, held in euros since the sanctions, kept in Singapore, Dubai and China.
What about the internally displaced and orphans within Burma, or the migrant labourers now forced to work in Thailand, India, in the West and in Asia? President Thein Sein has invited exiles to return, but so far few have done so. Most exiles do not trust the military, having left due to some kind of political or personal harassment. By now, middle-class exiles have established lives overseas; most others continue to be scared off due to the ongoing lack of jobs within Burma and government control. However, some prominent exiles, such as Zaw Oo of the Vahu Development Institute and Harn Yawngwe of the Euro-Burma Office, have gone back recently, though not to relocate. Zaw Oo did so to be part of the recent Naypyidaw economics workshop, while Harn Yawngwe went on a ‘private visit’, his first in a half-century. Harn Yawngwe – rumoured to have been trying to work out a peace accord between the central government and the various ethnic groups – expressed his surprise that Rangoon and the Shan states appeared to be more open than he had anticipated, though he was followed during his trip by the Special Branch. Harn Yawngwe may be cautiously optimistic; but what works out with the forces on the ground, which have much more at stake, remains doubtful.
While one of the most highly touted moves of recent months came with the release of 208 political prisoners, more than 1800 such prisoners remain behind bars. This was a release, then, of just 10 percent of the total – and, in fact, some suggest that the number of political prisoners, sometimes including whole families, could be far higher. The International Committee of the Red Cross made its last Burmese prison visit in 2005, and was only recently allowed in again to ‘inspect sites for tube wells and toilets in Moulmein prison’ – one of about 40 pris- ons and 90 labour camps inside Burma.
There is a vast, ongoing gap in recent estimates of the number of political prisoners. Suu Kyi and the NLD say there are 691 remaining in prison, but she admits they could only record those they could reach. According to Harn Yawngwe, in an interview with The Irrawaddy after his recent Burma visit, the Association for Assistance of Political Prisoners (Burma) now estimates the number to be 1300. However, in recent interviews with the Voice of America, the Burmese information minister, Kyaw Hsan, in effect denied there were political prisoners at all. ‘Today people who are serving prison terms in our jails are people who broke the existing laws of the country,’ he said. He failed to explain why some of these prisoners have received sentences of a minimum of 30 years and as long as 64 years and how laws such as the Electronics Act were decided on in the first place.
One of those released in the government’s first prisoner amnesty was the well-known comedian Zarganar, said to have been arrested for giving alms to monks during the popular uprising in 2007 and helping the victims of Cyclone Nargis is 2008. Su Su Nway, a labour activist, has also been released. But many other activists – Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Mi Mi and U Gambira – as well as some high-profile bloggers remain behind bars, and the government of Thein Sein has had nothing to say of when, or whether, it plans to release them. Several observers suggest that the political prisoners are seen as important bargaining chips for the regime.
Perhaps most notably, President Thein Sein’s administration has yet to publicly discuss the ethnic issue. There have been armed insurrections (mainly the Karen) since 1947 and only brief periods of ceasefire deals, often violated by the junta. Before the 2010 election, Naypyidaw tried to get armed groups such as the Kachin, the Shan and the Wa to lay down their arms and be absorbed into a Border Guard Force; but after the ethnic groups refused, some have suggested that civil war has become inevitable (see accompanying article by Maung Zarni).
Currently, the state army is bombarding the Kachin. The military has been accused of using chemical weapons as well as rape as a weapon of war, and many suggest that the hardliners in the government, led by the retired General Than Shwe, could be pulling strings in the background. In a poignant visual summary of some reactions to government moves, Harn Lay, the Irrawaddy cartoonist, has published a drawing of President Thein Sein using Suu Kyi as a shield.
What’s real?
The fact of the matter is that Burma does not have a civilian government just because the generals now wear civilian clothes. Ne Win did something similar in 1988, literally changing his clothes to show that he had ‘retired’ and also changing his formal prefix from General to U, meaning uncle. This was immediately before the mass demonstrations erupted. It can be argued that many of the Burmese generals learned how to play the great game from Ne Win; at that time, the day the 1988 clampdown began, a BBC reporter said, ‘The new generals are just like Ne Win, only more so.’
Likewise, Naypyidaw is not a real capital city just because government departments and bureaucrats were forced to move there – it is a Potemkin capital that does not even function as a real city, let alone as a capital city. The hluttaw or Parliament is today little more than an expensive scenic backdrop for photo-ops and publicrelations announcements to ‘prove’ that Burma is reforming. There is no real debate inside the building.
After her first visit to Naypyidaw, Aung San Suu Kyi said that there existed the potential for change, but that change itself had not yet arrived. As such, freedom lovers and democracy advocates need to continue their activism, while also waiting to see how the government responds to the need for an open society. What would be a meaningful indicator of true change on the ground? Let me suggest one – a truth-and-reconciliation process.
On this, I would like to quote from a published letter by David Williams, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at Indiana University. He was writing in response to claims by David Steinberg, a Burma specialist, that a United Nations commission of inquiry into war crimes in Burma would ‘only salve Western consciences and do the Burmese people no good’. Williams subsequently wrote:
A commission of inquiry would hinder relations with the ‘new’ governmentonly if that government is controlled by those accused. Mr. Steinberg is really saying that we should not offend the authors of the atrocities because then they won’t talk to us. But they won’t talk to us now; the United States decided to support the inquiry only after the junta refused repeatedly to meet with senior diplomats to talk about reform.
A commission of inquiry would help the people of Burma in several ways. First, it would cost the junta hard-liners some political support at home and abroad, making a transition to democracy more possible. Second, an inquiry into the conduct of higher-ranking officers would make lower-ranking officers think twice before committing atrocities themselves. Third, an inquiry might be the first step in bringing justice to the victims of the junta’s atrocities – victims who, sadly, make no appearance in Mr. Steinberg’s analysis. ~ Kyi May Kaung is an artist, poet and literary activist with a doctorate in political economy from the University of Pennsylvania. The views presented are her own.
Our condolences and love to mourn the passing away of a Pop Diva:
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American recording artist, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time.[1]Her awards include two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards in her lifetime. Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide.[2][3] Houston began singing with her New Jersey church’s junior gospel choir at age 11.[4] After she began performing alongside her mother in night clubs in the New York City area, she was discovered by Arista Records label head Clive Davis. Houston released seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many people take multivitamins in the hopes of thwarting disease, but a new study finds that older women who use multivitamins may be more likely than non-users to develop breast cancer.
The study, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, points only to an association between multivitamin use and breast cancer. It does not prove that the supplements directly contribute to the disease.
However, the researchers say, it’s biologically plausible that multivitamins could have such an effect, and the potential link “merits further investigation.”
The findings come from a decade-long study of more than 35,000 Swedish women who were between the ages of 49 and 83 and cancer-free at the outset. Over an average of 10 years, 974 women were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Researchers found that women who reported multivitamin use at the study’s start were 19 percent more likely than non-users to develop breast cancer. That was with factors like age, family history of breast cancer, weight, fruit and vegetable intake, and exercise, smoking and drinking habits taken into account.
Still, the large majority of multivitamin users did not develop breast cancer during the study period. Of 9,017 users, 293 were diagnosed with the disease, as were 681 women among the 26,000-plus who did not use multivitamins.
And while the study points to a generally higher risk of breast cancer among multivitamin users as a whole, the risks to any individual woman would likely be small.
“If the association is causal, using multivitamins would have a modest effect on breast cancer risk for any one woman,” lead researcher Dr. Susanna C. Larsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Reuters Health in an email.
But given the widespread use of multivitamins, any potential risks are of “great public health importance,” the researchers say.
In the U.S., for example, it’s estimated that half of adults routinely use a dietary supplement, often a multivitamin. And studies show that one of the primary motivations is the belief that supplements will protect them from chronic diseases.
But a recent study of more than 160,000 older U.S. women found that over eight years, those who took multivitamins were no less likely than non-users to die of heart disease or cancer, with all cancers lumped together in a group.
The current study included more than 35,000 women who were surveyed about their multivitamin use, as well as a number of other health and lifestyle factors. It’s possible, according to Larsson, that factors the study did not measure could explain the association between multivitamins and breast cancer.
On the other hand, there are biologically plausible reasons that multivitamins themselves could be to blame, the researcher said. A recent study found that among premenopausal women, multivitamin users tended to have greater breast density than non-users — meaning the breasts have relatively less fat and more glandular and connective tissue. Greater breast density is linked to a relatively higher risk of breast cancer.
It’s not clear from that study, however, whether multivitamins themselves somehow boost breast density.
Another possibility, according to Larsson’s team, could be the B vitamin folic acid, which animal research has linked to breast cancer. Human studies, however, have come to various conclusions; while one found a higher risk of breast cancer among women who took folic acid supplements, others have linked the vitamin to either no effect on breast cancer risk, or a decreased risk.
Since multivitamins are, by definition, a mix of vitamins and minerals, it is difficult to pinpoint which nutrient, of combination of nutrients, may be particularly tied to breast cancer risk, the researchers point out.
Until more is known, a woman’s best bet is to get her vitamins and minerals from a well-balanced diet rather than pills, Larsson advised.
“If you eat a healthy and varied diet,” she said, “there is no need to use multivitamins.”
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online March 24, 2010.
Two new studies add to the growing body of evidence that taking extra doses of vitamins can do more harm than good.
A study of vitamin E and selenium use among 35,000 men found that the vitamin users had a slightly higher risk of developing prostate cancer, according to a report published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. A separate study of 38,000 women in Iowa found a higher risk of dying during a 19-year period among older women who used multivitamins and other supplements compared with women who did not, according to a new report in The Archives of Internal Medicine.
The findings are the latest in a series of disappointing research results showing that high doses of vitamins are not helpful in warding off disease.
“You go back 15 or 20 years, and there were thoughts that antioxidants of all sorts might be useful,” said Dr. Eric Klein, a Cleveland Clinic physician and national study coordinator for the prostate cancer and vitamin E study. “There really is not any compelling evidence that taking these dietary supplements above and beyond a normal dietary intake is helpful in any way, and this is evidence that it could be harmful.”
The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, known as the Select trial, was studying whether selenium and vitamin E, either alone or in combination, could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer. It was stopped early in 2008 after a review of the data showed no benefit, although there was a suggestion of increased risk of prostate cancer and diabetes that wasn’t statistically significant. The latest data, based on longer-term follow-up of the men in the trial, found that users of vitamin E had a 17 percent higher risk of prostate cancer compared with men who didn’t take the vitamin, a level that was statistically significant. There was no increased risk of diabetes.
The dose being studied in the Select trial was 200 micrograms of selenium and 400 international units of vitamin E. By comparison, most multivitamins contain about 50 micrograms of selenium and 30 to 200 international units of vitamin E.
Among the women in the Iowa study, about 63 percent used supplements at the start of the study, but that number had grown to 85 percent by 2004. Use of multivitamins, vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper were all associated with increased risk of death. The findings translate to a 2.4 percent increase in absolute risk for multivitamin users, a 4 percent increase associated with vitamin B6, a 5.9 percent increase for folic acid, and increases of 3 to 4 percent in risk for those taking supplements of iron, folic acid, magnesium and zinc.
“Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements,” the authors wrote.
Everyone needs vitamins, which are essential nutrients that the body can’t produce on its own. But in the past few years, several high-quality studies have failed to show that high doses of vitamins, at least in pill form, help prevent chronic disease or prolong life.
A January 2009 editorial in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute noted that most studies of vitamins had shown no cancer benefits, but some had shown unexpected harms. Two studies of beta carotene found higher lung cancer rates, and another study suggested a higher risk of precancerous polyps among users of folic acid compared with those in a placebo group.
In 2007, The Journal of the American Medical Association reviewed mortality rates in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements. In 47 trials involving 181,000 participants, the rate of dying was 5 percent higher among the antioxidant users. The main culprits were vitamin A, beta carotene and vitamin E; vitamin C and selenium seemed to have no meaningful effect.
It’s not just about Big Data. For the big players in enterprise technology algorithms, it’s about finding big patterns beyond the data itself.
The explosion of online life and cheap computer hardware have made it possible to store immense amounts of unstructured information, like e-mails or Internet clickstreams, then search the stored information to find some trend that can be exploited. The real trick is to do this cost-effectively. Companies doing this at a large scale look for similarities between one field and another, hoping for a common means of analysis.
When it comes to algorithms, “if I can do a power grid, I can do water supply,” said Steve Mills, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for software and systems. Even traffic, which like water and electricity has value when it flows effectively, can reuse some of the same algorithms. Mr. Mills, speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, called it “leveraging the cost structure of new mathematics.”
That kind of cross-pollination is reminiscent of the way Wall Street, starting in the 1990s, hired astrophysicists and theoretical mathematicians to design arcane financial products. Now the cost of computing has come down so much that it is useful to bring such talent to other industries. I.B.M., Mr. Mills said, is now the largest employer of Ph.D. mathematicians in the world, bringing their talents to things like oil exploration and medicine. “On the side we’re doing astrophysics, genomics, proteomics,” he said.
In the last five years, I.B.M. has spent some $14 billion purchasing analytics companies, in the service of its Big Data initiative. “We look for adjacencies” between one business and another, said Mr. Mills. “If we can’t get an adjacency, we’ll never get a return.”
The trend of looking for commonalities and overlapping interests is emerging in many parts of both academia and business. At the ultrasmall nanoscale examination of a cell, researchers say, the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics begin to collapse in on each other. In a broader search for patterns, students of the statistical computing language known as R have used methods of counting algae blooms to prove patterns of genocide against native peoples in Central America. Online marketers look at your behavior in a number of contexts to sell you something you may not even know you wanted.
While it is attractive to contemplate the way everything may become connected to everything else, it presents a number of large challenges. The lab research model has been important for over a century in both scientific advancement and product development; soon it may also have to accommodate a search for truth based only on pattern-spotting. Nearer term, companies will have to make tough choices about where to invest and which signals to watch. Trying to do everything will still amount to doing nothing.
Africa : Order has returned to Nigeria after the fuel protests, but deep anger remains - published in the Guardian
After the January unrest caused by fuel subsidy cuts and rising petrol prices, Nigerians are demanding fundamental change
A gasoline vendor in Kano. Nigeria’s government is under pressure to deliver on development and governance after January’s fuel protests. Photograph: Reuters
One month after Nigerians ended their protests against a 120% rise in the price of petrol, a measure of calm has returned. But interviews with ordinary people in the commercial capital, Lagos, suggest there is now enormous pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to deliver measurable progress on development and good governance.
The protests were sparked when Nigeria – a member of the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (Opec) and Africa‘s largest exporter of oil – heeded advice from the International Monetary Fund to end fuel subsidies. The sudden move, on 1 January, raised petrol pump prices from 65 naira to 141 (40 cents to 90) a litre. The government said scrapping the subsidy would save $8bn a year, much of which was falling into the hands of corrupt middlemen.
Trade unions said the sudden hike was too much for Nigerians to bear and declared a national strike. After an overwhelming show of popular anger, the government backed down, offering a compromise price of 97 naira a litre.
The fuel subsidy crisis came as Nigeria’s government battled an intensifying campaign of bombings in the north, spearheaded by Boko Haram, a sect that wants sharia law implemented across Nigeria. The two factors have combined to make Jonathan appear weak in the face of danger and clumsy in policy implementation.
Victoria Adekoya, 38, nurse
Nigeria is a major oil producer and the petrol subsidy is the only benefit we get for being Nigerians.
We, the masses, do not have trust in our politicians any more. When they said they were removing the petrol subsidy, it did not feel like that to us. It just felt like they were doubling the fuel price. As soon as petrol went up, the price of beans doubled. Rice, yams and meat have all become more expensive.
When the government announced we would pay 141 naira, we felt we would be subsidising more corruption by our politicians. Corruption is all they are good at. The 97 naira compromise just feels like we will be subsidising corruption slightly less.
The strike ended because we needed to get back to work, to eat. It did not end because we were happy with the 97 naira price.
Saheed Bayo, 38, unemployed community volunteer, Ajegunle slum
In my slum, no one has a vehicle. There is not even a road. But we felt the impact of the price increase immediately. The price of sachets of water doubled from 5 to 10 naira overnight.
Nigeria is like Tunisia and Egypt. Our politicians do not have a sense of serving the population. They want to make money. They hang on to power by doing favours for people who will support them, even if the benefits granted to some are harmful to others. This divides us. In this sense, the Nigerian people are not like the Tunisians or the Egyptians. It is too easy to break our spirit because there will always be someone who is receiving favours and who will tell us to stop complaining.
Moses Ohiomokhare, 50, curator, Quintessence art gallery
The fuel price increase opened the eyes of people in the east of the country. They were paying 80 naira a litre already. When they were asked to go on strike for a lower price, they could not see why they should sacrifice their earnings so that people in Lagos and Abuja could pay less than they were spending already. This is Nigeria all over: every issue very quickly boils down to regionalism and calls for a break-up of the country, and frightening memories of the [1967-70] civil war.
We need state finances to be spent on development, but our first request is not even for that. If the government sent a signal of rigour – fewer ministries, fewer advisers and secretaries, a leaner and more efficient police – Nigerians would respond with enthusiasm. Instead, we are fed drop-in-the-ocean pledges, like the promise to spend 25% less on state banquets. We also hear our politicians calling for higher salaries and comparing their pay packets with those of US senators. How dare they?
Ayo Obebe, 27, unemployed political sciences graduate
I voted for Goodluck Jonathan, but I am fed up. Given the amount of money going into the Treasury from oil, I don’t see his administration delivering. He is not moving fast enough. Just lately he has shown himself to be more decisive … it was good that he sacked the police chief to send the message that the bombings in the north of the country have to stop. But his administration needs to deliver on infrastructure development and employment so that people’s lives start improving.
Until people see the government delivering, they will question the government’s sincerity. The protests stopped because people needed to get back to work. During the strike, the black market price of fuel rose to 250 naira. Prices were going crazy.
Prince Oluwasola Olajubu, 45, self-employed printer, Ikorodu
The government says the fuel price will come down again when we have our own working refineries. As it is, we just have one refinery that is limping along. It is shameful that a country like Nigeria does not have enough refineries to cover its needs.
If, indeed, the government delivers on its promise – to use the money it saves on fuel subsidies to build infrastructure – then I believe scrapping them was a good idea. But the policy was not properly explained. A couple of years ago they removed the subsidy on diesel and kerosene and we never saw that money being spent on infrastructure. Why would it be different this time?
Poor people spend a high proportion of their income on food and transport, and that share has just increased. So people are impatient for their lives to improve, and the government needs to demonstrate that it has heard the message that was sent during the strike.
If it is true, as the government says, that fuel subsidies have been falling into the wrong hands, then it is right that they should be abolished. But that does not explain why the price of petrol at the pumps had to increase.
The government outlined the measure poorly. Last year, in April, I went to a town hall meeting at which the plan was explained. But most people had no idea or no understanding of the measure when it was implemented. The government should have given notice. The director-general of national orientation [Idi Farouk] was sacked because he did not explain the subsidy removal to the people. That was the right move. We need the government to be much closer to the people so that if painful policies are needed, we all understand.
European Union politics and Governance: German MPs back human rights activist as candidate to be next president
Both left and right rally behind Joachim Gauck, 72, who grew up in East Germany and does not belong to any political party
Germany’s next president looks set to be former East German human rights activist Joachim Gauck. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters
Germany‘s government and the two major opposition parties have said they will jointly nominate Joachim Gauck, a human rights activist originally from East Germany, to be the country’s next president.
Angela Merkel said her coalition government, and the centre-left opposition had rallied behind Gauck, 72, who was initially proposed by the opposition Social Democrats and Greens.
He is not a member of a political party.
“What moves me the most, is that a man who was still born during the gloomy, dark war, who grew up and lived 50 years in a dictatorship … is now called to become the head of state,” Gauck said.
“This is of course a very special day in my life.”
Christian Wulff, 52, resigned as president on Friday after two months of allegations about receiving loans on favourable terms and hotel stays from friends when he was state governor of Lower Saxony.
He was Merkel’s candidate when elected less than two years ago, triumphing over Gauck in a messy election.
When Wulff resigned, Merkel immediately said she would work with the Social Democrats and Greens to find a consensus candidate to succeed him.
Merkel, who also grew up in East Germany, said her and Gauck’s life stories strongly connected them. “We have both spent a part of our life in the GDR and our dream of freedom became true in 1989.”
The chancellor said that clergymen such as Gauck – a former Lutheran priest – were at the forefront of the protests that eventually brought down the regime.
Claudia Roth, the Greens’ leader, said “Gauck will restore the respect for the office, will restore dignity,” to the presidency, which had become tainted by Wulff’s actions.
While his name widely circulated as the opposition’s favourite, it wasn’t clear until Sunday whether the governing coalition would rally behind Gauck. At a press conference, Gauck said he was still stunned by the nomination, but “very late tonight, I will also be happy.”
FINANCE, CITIZENS’ WELFARE, NEW POLITICS :
European debt crisis: better Merkozy than Bismarck and Daladier
National politics will play a key role for the German chancellor and French president in the runup to the EU winter summit but at least the nickname’s united
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
We used to joke about the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Not any more. As the EU’s vital winter summit looms on Thursday the weekend airwaves in France and beyond have been full of alarming chauvinistic language in which Angela Merkel is suddenly the bellicose and expansionist Prussian, Otto von Bismarck, and Nicolas Sarkozy is Edouard Daladier, the French Neville Chamberlain, who appeased Hitler.
Not that we are a great deal better on this side of the Channel. The tabloids always detect a “German plot” to take over the City of London’s financial dominance – not that Frankfurt actually could for a host of reasons. In the appeasing camp (as that paper was in the 1930s) one Times columnist seeks to reassure his readers that all Berlin’s austerity package seeks to do for the eurozone is what Margaret Thatcher did for Britain in the 1980s: to create a liberalised, entrepreneurial economy in which people pay their own way.
I suppose that implies that Mrs Thatcher’s medicine was a success, whereas it was only a success for some people and a serious failure for others – those who lost their jobs, their businesses, their pensions, sometimes as a direct consequence of her policies. It also implies that the Germans want to create an open market-orientated “Anglo-Saxon” economy, when they don’t.
That’s why they scuppered efforts to create a free market in EU services – such as financial services, at which the UK is good, as distinct from mere goods, like cars, at which German engineers are better – despite being committed to it under the 1986 Single European Act. With their history Germans value stability over capitalism’s urge to “creative destruction”.
I don’t blame them. But that’s why so many of the big German firms that worked for You-Know-Who in 1933-45 are still thriving concerns. Can you imagine being allowed to buy a German utility company as they buy ours? That’s why Frankfurt won’t become the City – for better and worse.
Steady on there. I’m aware I’m starting to sound like the people I’m complaining about, hurling abuse at the neighbours when what they all really need to do at the Brussels summit is work together for the common good. That’s not easy at the best of times, which these are not and, as Larry Elliott sets out very nicely in today’s paper, no one quite knows what to do.
Across the west most policymakers would say “get real” to the remedies offered by both great mid-century economists, Friedrich Hayek, the apostle of classical remedies (bankruptcy and creative destruction) and of his friend and rival (“the only truly great man I ever knew”, said Hayek), John Maynard Keynes, who would have slashed interest rates – as policymakers have – but also pumped up public sector debt and borrowing – the Ed Balls remedy – to inject demand into a flat economy.
That’s what Labour did before losing office. The coalition’s austerity package, even the Keynesian Vince Cable was on board, fearful of a Greek-style collapse, choked off incipient recovery and accompanying growth. Which is why George Osborne had to admit last week that he’ll be borrowing a lot more than he’s planned to borrow – to pay the bills for continuing gloom, here and beyond Calais.
The German austerity model – “Cut your spending. Raise and collect your taxes. Privatise assets to balance the books” – will impoverish Germany‘s neighbours and end up impoverishing Germany too. Who is going to buy its exports if its key export markets are in penury? And who foolishly loaned all that money to Greeks and Italians with which to buy those German cars? Why German (and French banks) who now want their money back from borrowers who can’t pay.
If we weren’t on our best behaviour I might call it “loan-sharking” – at the point where the loan company starts making threatening noises to the mug who took out the loan. Will the French buckle and accept the German plan for balanced budgets across the 17-nation eurozone, enforced by automatic sanctions and a centrally administered compliance regime?
Or does Sarkozy’s more expansionary vision – more power to the European Central Bank to buy up debt and a eurobond to sustain mutual solidarity but retain the Gaullist “Europe des patries” model – stand a prayer? Not really. The eurozone exists to hide German strength and French weakness – that old brute, Bismarck, would have spotted that immediately – and Sarko will have to surrender on the best terms he can manage.
How will Mario Draghi, the Italian central banker now running the ECB, play his hand? He’s a technocrat and will therefore favour austerity just as his counterpart, Mario Monti, now PM in Rome, is imposing more of it on Italy and Enda Kenny, also speaking last night, is being forced to do in Dublin.
The issues to be resolved between here and Friday are highly technical and it is clear that the heavyweight policymakers and analysts do not agree on what should best be done. A big enough bailout to get Europe moving again is full of risk – not least that indisciplined countries will become indisciplined again – but the austerity model is beyond risk: it is certain to impoverish most of us, though not the central bankers.
Politics will play a crucial role, national politics, but an uncertain one. Merkel is secure at home but cautious. She has not been frank with German voters about their own country’s failures and indulged the misplaced sense of superiority that the creditor always enjoys for a while.
Sarkozy is fighting for re-election this spring and sees what has happened to neighbouring governments – including Britain – when voters have cast a verdict on their post-recession performance.
And Tory MPs are busy hustling for David Cameron to use this great crisis to repatriate social policies from Europe in return for helping Merkozy (it’s this week’s new joke) put the fire out in their blazing (copyright W Hague) building. Brilliant! As if EU social policies will count for much if this gets seriously worse – as it may be about to do.
May we not live in even more interesting times. And, as nicknames go, I prefer Merkozy to Bismarck and Daladier. At least the name’s united. published in the Guardian
Comment nous arrive l’information ? Prendre la mesure des liens faibles . //www.lemonde.fr
Liens faibles, liens forts. Cette semaine le dossier d’InternetActu vous propose de revenir sur ce que sont les liens faibles, ce concept forgé par le sociologue américain Mark Granovetter permettant de distinguer nos relations selon selon leur proximité, mais aussi selon leur diversité et la richesse de ce qu’elles nous apportent. A l’heure des réseaux sociaux numériques, la compréhension de la structuration et du rôle de nos relations est devenu d’autant plus importante qu’elles forgent de plus en plus toutes nos actions en ligne. Quelle est la force des liens faibles, quelles sont leurs limites ? C’est le dossier d’InternetActu.
La lecture de la semaine, il s’agit – ça faisait longtemps -, de l’éditorial de Clive Thompson dans le magazine américain Wired. Il lance quelques pistes de réflexion pas inintéressantes au sujet une question souvent posée sur les réseaux : comment nous arrive l’information ? Le titre de son papier Buddy System, “le système pote”.
“Un des grands dangers d’Internet, commence Thompson, est ce phénomène très commenté qu’on appelle l’effet “chambre d’écho”. Les gens, s’inquiète-t-on, sont trop souvent en contact avec de gens qui leur ressemblent (phénomène qu’on appelle l’homophilie) et ne rencontrent donc que des informations et des opinions qui renforcent leur avis préalables. Et ça, sans aucun doute, c’est mauvais pour la société, n’est-ce pas ? Si nous voulons être des citoyens responsables – ou des travailleurs créatifs, ou même des interlocuteurs intéressants – nous nous devons d’être régulièrement exposés à des faits nouveaux et des opinions diverses.
Et si, demande Thompson, l’homophilie ne diminuait pas toujours la diversité de notre régime informatif ? Et si l’homophilie pouvait même améliorer cette diversité ? Cette hypothèse surprenante provient d’une étude récente dirigée par des économistes de l’information Sinan Aral et Marshall Van Alstyne. Dans un papier qui sera publié cet été, ils notent que notre perception négative de l’homophilie repose en partie sur les études comme celle, fameuse, que mena Mark Granovetter en 1973 sur les “liens faibles” (.pdf). Granovetter avait demandé à des centaines de gens comment ils avaient trouvé leur dernier emploi et avait découvert que c’était grâce à une tierce personne, une personne qui la plupart du temps était un contact “faible”, quelqu’un d’éloigné. Cela, concluait Granovetter, montre que les liens faibles sont les plus à même de nous apporter des informations nouvelles et des opportunités. Vos amis les plus proches vous ressemblent trop, dit la théorie, vous avez donc de grandes chances de savoir déjà ce qu’ils disent. Quelqu’un avec peu d’amis proches, mais un grand cercle de relations occasionnelles a plus de chances de réussir. Mais Aral et Van Alstyne pensent que ce raisonnement – qui a dominé pendant des décennies – a un grand défaut : il ne tient pas compte de la fréquence à laquelle on parle aux gens.
Leur argument est le suivant, explique Thompson : bien sûr, les liens faibles sont en meilleure position pour nous apporter des informations nouvelles. Mais ils ne le font pas souvent, parce qu’on n’interagit pas avec eux très fréquemment. Une personne relevant du lien faible aura, mettons, cinq fois plus de chance qu’un ami proche de vous surprendre dans une conversation. Mais si vous parlez 10 fois plus souvent avec cet ami proche, les chances qu’il devienne une source valable d’information dépassent soudainement celles du lien faible. En d’autres mots, reprend Thompson, “la bande passante importe”. De plus, vos amis les plus proches ont un avantage du point de vue du capital social : ils savent ce qui a le plus de chance d’être nouveau pour vous et comment formuler les choses pour que vous les écoutiez.
Pour évaluer l’avantage relatif des liens forts, Aral et Van Alstyne ont analysé pendant 10 mois les emails d’une société de recrutement de cadres. Les recruteurs, ont-ils reconnu, prospèrent s’ils sont alimentés par un flux régulier de nouveaux dirigeants, un flux provenant à la fois de collègues à l’intérieur de l’entreprise, et de contacts extérieurs. Les chercheurs ont appliqué au texte de chaque mail un niveau de nouveauté, niveau évalué en fonction de paramètres dont je vous passe les détails. Et de manière très certaine, ils ont découvert que les recruteurs qui étaient reliés à un réseau resserré de contacts relevant de l’homophilie recevaient plus d’informations nouvelles par unité de temps. Soit, comme Van Asltyne le dit lui-même : “Avoir un petit nombre de relations très fréquentes peut être bon pour vous”. Pour autant, il ne s’agit pas de dire que les relations très fréquentes sont forcément supérieures, ajoute Van Alstyne. Il y a des situations dans lesquelles les liens faibles sont plus utiles (pour suivre les relations internationales par exemple). Pour être un citoyen vraiment bien informé, la meilleure méthode est sans doute de cultiver des amitiés très proches provenant de différents milieux – vous bénéficierez alors à la fois de la diversité et du surprenant pouvoir des liens forts.
De toute façon, conclut Thompson, peut-être ne devriez pas vous inquiéter d’avoir autant d’amis qui vous ressemblent. “Ils peuvent encore vous surprendre”.
Voilà pour ce papier ce Clive Thompson qui encore fois nous rassure quant à l’endogamie de notre vie sociale, à la fois en ligne et hors ligne (je rappelle que la chercheuse Stefana Boradbent avait montré que même si nous avions beaucoup d’amis sur les réseaux, nous interagissions la plus grande partie du temps avec les 5 mêmes – dans Place de la Toile et sur InternetActu).
Xavier de la Porte
Xavier de la Porte, producteur de l’émission Place de la Toile sur France Culture, réalise chaque semaine une intéressante lecture d’un article de l’actualité dans le cadre de son émission.
Un mort et 23 blessés dans l’accident d’un car de Britanniques dans la Marne
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Le car, qui transportait 47 Britanniques, a eu un accident à Fagnières, près de Chalons-en-Champagne, le 19 février.AFP/FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI
Un homme est mort et 23 autres ont été blessés, dont six grièvement, dans l’accident d’un car transportant un groupe scolaire britannique qui regagnait Birmingham après un séjour au ski en Italie, dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche sur l’autoroute A26 près de Châlons-en-Champagne.
Le pronostic vital d’une adolescente de 13 ans, hospitalisée à Reims, était engagé, selon la préfecture. La personne décédée dans l’accident est un homme d’une soixantaine d’années, qui faisait partie de l’encadrement.
Légèrement blessé, le chauffeur du car a été placé en garde à vue pour homicide involontaire et blessures involontaires en fin de matinée après sa sortie de l’hôpital, selon une source judiciaire.
Vingt-cinq passagers sont indemnes mais choqués et ont fait l’objet d’une prise en charge psychologique, selon la même source. Ils ont été regroupés dans une salle à Fagnières, commune proche des lieux de l’accident. Les passagers indemnes et ceux pouvant quitter l’hôpital rapidement devaient être rapatriés dans la journée.
UNE ENQUÊTE OUVERTE EN GRANDE-BRETAGNE
Le car, qui circulait dans le sens Troyes-Calais, effectuait le trajet entre la vallée d’Aoste (Italie) et Birmingham (Grande-Bretagne), selon la préfecture. Selon les premiers témoignages recueillis dans le cadre de l’enquête, le car s’est déporté progressivement vers la droite, sans que le conducteur ne rectifie la trajectoire, avant de se coucher dans un fossé, peu avant 3 heures du matin.
Les données du chronotachygraphe, appareil qui enregistre la vitesse et les temps de conduite, doivent être examinés afin de déterminer si ces derniers ont été respectés. Selon le ministère des affaires étrangères britannique , qui a ouvert une enquête, des responsables consulaires se sont rendus sur place auprès des victimes.
La préfecture a déclenché le plan rouge permettant une mobilisation massive et urgente des secours, avec 100 pompiers, 20 gendarmes et quatre équipes du SAMU.
Outre les deux chauffeurs, 29 adolescents et 18 adultes se trouvaient à bord du car de la compagnie Solus Travel, basée à Tamworth, près de Birmingham. L’ambassadeur britannique en France, Sir Peter Ricketts et le numéro deux de la représentation diplomatique, le ministre plénipotentiaire Ajay Scharma, se sont rendus sur place en milieu de journée, selon l’ambassade.
WE CAN HELP BURMA by Brian Palmer
The word “issue” — the Darfur issue, the Iraq issue, the homelessness issue — is kind of irksome, but it hints at a vital fact: As Americans of a certain economic status and social class, our “issues” are other people’s lives. As a journalist and as an American, I struggle to use my privilege, accorded me by birth and by experience, to unearth information and eyewitness testimony about such issues. But lately, with the Iraq occupation, Darfur, and the festering aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this doesn’t feel like nearly enough.
For a few months in 2002, Burma was my issue, my story. The country was in the news because the military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, had decided to release from prison several hundred members of the National League for Democracy, the party of Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and usually imprisoned opposition figure. A United Nations special envoy, Razali Ismail, was due to visit Rangoon and have talks with the junta’s leaders, Senior General Than Shwe, General Maung Aye, and General Khin Nyunt.
I traveled to Burma, ostensibly as a tourist, but actually as a freelance reporter, since the regime doesn’t willingly host visits from journalists or others prone to scrutinizing its subjugation of its people. I knew that speaking directly to people — interviewing — might land them in jail. So I didn’t do much of that. Instead, I observed. I also showed up dutifully at the headquarters of the NLD several days in a row, hoping for an audience with Aung Sang Suu Kyi. Each day I would arrive, make my request, and wait.
One day, while I waited to speak to an NLD official, there was a free, weekly health screening going on for indigent mothers and children. The tiny headquarters was full of women and infants.
I mentioned to a young man who sat next to me, a new NLD member, that I was surprised how little surveillance there was of the headquarters — and of me. I had visited nearly a half a dozen times and never drawn any special scrutiny by police or other agents of the state. He smiled at me, then gestured with his head, almost imperceptibly, toward two casually dressed men lounging across the street and sipping tea. “Military intelligence,” he said.
Eventually, I was granted an interview with U Lwin, a party spokesman. He was circumspect. He told me that many NLD members had been released, but others had been quietly jailed, too. Suu Kyi was being permitted to make low-key — and heavily monitored — visits to NLD offices in other parts of the country, but she wasn’t allowed to speak with the press. So when The Lady, as Suu Kyi’s supporters call her, made an appearance at the office and I asked her for permission to photograph her, she declined my request, gently.
“If we make one mistake, this will finish us,” U Lwin told me. Indeed.
U Lwin and The Lady were right to be cautious. Nothing changed in 2002. UN envoy’s Ismail’s meeting with junta leaders lasted 15 minutes, “hardly long enough to sit down and pick up a cup of tea,” Josef Silverstein, a scholar on Burma, told me.
“Per capita income, reported months ago to be about $300, is in free fall,” I wrote in Newsweek International in November 2002. The UN had reported that Burma’s HIV rate was one of the world’s highest (1 in 50 adults infected). Human Rights Watch Report noted that an estimated 20% of active-duty soldiers in the army were under the age of 18. The price of rice had tripled outside Rangoon, according to the NLD.
The advocacy group Altsean was unequivocal about who was to blame for Burma’s abject condition: “The humanitarian situation is man-made; the junta is directly responsible on numerous levels for inadequate access to basic needs.” The junta’s response? Hire an American public relations firm, DCI Associates, to burnish its international image.
I published a story. Then, the US invaded Iraq. Burma receded for me. I stopped paying attention.
Last month, along with so many others around the world, I watched the Burmese stand up to the junta. They took to the streets and were crushed by the military, the Tatmadaw, and then intimidated into silence. For now. The world now wrings its hands. We apparently have little leverage over the already isolated and brutal SPDC. So Burma fades from front pages.
But our powerless is an illusion. Yes, there are petitions to sign. We can lobby Congress and protest at the UN. That’s not enough. I emailed a Burma activist and advocate for suggestions about concrete things to do.
She suggested donating to established organizations that provide aid and services to Burmese, inside and outside the country. She pointed me toward a number of groups working directly to alleviate the suffering of Burmese, particularly refugees. The Mae To Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand, provides medical care to refugees and migrant workers. You can donate at www.maetaoclinic.org/donate.html
Global Health Access also runs health programs that keep Burmese healthy and alive. See what they do at www.ghap.org.
All these groups accept — and need — volunteers, too.
You can also support Burmese women by shopping. WEAVE, Women’s Education for Advancement and Empowerment, was started in 1990 to provide sustainable work for Burmese refugee women, particularly those from ethnic groups that are discriminated against inside the country. Go to www.weave-women.org to see what they do — and to become a customer. WEAVE also runs an Early Childhood Development Program, a health education project, and other essential initiatives.
There are many advocacy, activist and media organizations focusing on Burma that one can visit online for information and suggestions for actions. The Women’s League of Burma is an umbrella group comprised of 12 leading organizations: www.womenofburma.org.
Altsean is a human rights group that monitors Burma, publishes periodic reports and briefings, and advocates for change. You can buy copies of their reports — and T-shirts — via Pay Pal, at www.altsean.org/Store/Store.php.
Altsean is also spearheading an effort to pressure the UN Security Council to take action on Burma, www.unscburma.org
Subscriptions to the Irrawaddy, the excellent, informative, and courageous news magazine about Burma written by exiles, can be ordered at www.irrawaddymedia.com/shop/.
Even if the Burma “issue” recedes from our popular news media, the nation’s people still need our support.
A royal Princess of old Burma, June Daw Yadana Nat Mei :
Studio June Bellamy IN ITALY
The Associazione Culturale Arte e Gastronomia Orientale Studio June Bellamy is situated in the artisan quarter of San Frediano, in Florence, Italy. Since its foundation, it has been home to food, history and traditions of both the Oriental and Italian culinary arts.
When Studio June Bellamy was first created in Florence, in 1983 it was done to provide a home to the art of International Cooking; its purpose was to provide a space where lovers of Oriental food and culture could meet and also attend cooking classes. Since that day, the history of spices, recipes for steamed buns and coconut rice appear alongside the history and uses of Italian cheeses, olive oil and pasta in the reference files of the Studio.
Learning and teaching are but two sides of the same coin, both giving pleasure, a sense of discovery and satisfaction. June has in fact, spent these many years discovering and collecting on that long trail of the evolution of these rich and fascinating traditions of both worlds.
At her Studio in the heart of Florence, courses or single lessons are built around individual or group requirements, and are held in both Italian and English.
Today Via Camaldoli has become the seat of the new Cultural Association which not only holds cooking classes, but is also an attractive and characteristic place for lectures, meetings and private gatherings.
Ethics, transparency, fairness and greed-related corruption of politicians to be considered in Privatisation of state-owned enterprises (which belong to the common citizens of Burma). Will Burma sell-off all its little-left wealth, enterprises and proud public institutions, and natural resources like Gas, LPG, sea food, oil, rice, crops, jade, agriculture land to greedy Asian superpowers and uncaring Asean states and beleaguered aggressive businessmen (so many of them) who will plunder the environment and natural raw materials for their own capitalist gains alas ? We are deeply concerned about this :
Sweeping privatisation in Burma continues
Feb 9, 2010 (DVB), Three major Rangoon shipping ports handling 90 percent of Burma’s imports and exports are to be privatised, the latest in a major overhaul of Burmese industry, the ruling junta has announced.
“Arrangements are under way to hand over ports under the Ministry of Transport, including three major ports in Yangon [Rangoon],” a senior official from the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce told Reuters. The ports are situated at Botataung, Bo Aung Kyaw and Sule.
A small sector of port operations in Burma is already run by private entities. The announcement follows a series of privatisations, including gas retailing, which was passed to junta-friendly hands.
The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development declined to elaborate on the reform when contacted by DVB, and said only that “this is a sensitive issue for Myanmar [Burma]“.
Speculation abounds that the move to privatise industry is related to this year’s controversial elections, rumoured to be in October.
Burmese political analyst Aung Thu Nyein said that the “firesale privatisations” were a way for the military government to “maintain economic control after the 2010 election…and gain some sought of supposed legitimacy.”
In the past economists have suggested that they would usually welcome privatisation in a one-party country like Burma. Aung Thu Nyein points out however that “Many of them [the companies taking control] are cronies of the military regime and many of them are blacklisted under US sanctions”.
“The privatisation should be transparent and at the same time it should be backed up by law and regulation,” he said. “There should be some sought of competition [over contracts].”
“Even in Russia the citizens got some sort of tokens,” he said. After the fall of communism, citizens were offered a proportional stake in state-owned enterprises as a means of fairly splitting up these entities.
The issue of concern for many in Burma however is the secrecy surrounding the privatisation, and questions over who will own and run the economy after the proposed elections.
Reporting by fabulous Joseph Allchin DVB Norway
HIV, TB Treatment Urgently Needed in Burma: MSF
By SAW YAN NAING/ THE IRRAWADDY Wednesday, February 22, 2012
US coordinator for policy on Burma, Derek Mitchell (blue shirt), meets with HIV positive patients during a visit to a private clinic on the outskirts of Rangoon on Sep.11 2011.
One of the world’s major humanitarian organizations, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), says there is a critical need for increased HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) treatment in Burma.
MSF, which is the largest provider of HIV/AIDS treatment in Burma, on Tuesday released a report titled, “Lives in the Balance,” highlighting the devastating effect that the cancellation of an entire round of funding from the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria will have on the country.
Peter Paul de Groote, the head of mission at MSF Burma, said in the report: “Yet again, donors have turned their backs on people living with HIV and TB in Myanmar. Everyday we at MSF are confronted with the tragic consequences of these decisions: desperately sick people and unnecessary deaths.”
The MSF report said that some 85,000 people in Burma are in urgent need of lifesaving anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and are unable to access it. Of an estimated 9,300 people newly infected over the past year with Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), to date just over 300 have been receiving treatment.
“Without increased availability of treatment, HIV and TB will continue to spread unchecked in many areas. The time to treat is now,” said Khin Nyein Chan, a Burmese doctor who works with the MSF.
“There is a real opportunity here; HIV prevalence rates in Myanmar are relatively low. It is lack of access to treatment that makes it one of the most serious epidemics in Asia,” said the doctor.
Between 15,000 and 20,000 people living with HIV/ AIDS die every year in Burma because of lack of access to ART, says the report.
TB prevalence in Burma is more than three times the global average. Burma is among the 27 countries with the highest MDR-TB rates in the world. MDR-TB has the same airborne transmission as non-resistant TB, but it is far more complex and lengthy to treat, said the report.
In September last year, MSF ended its medical activities in Thailand after 35 years in the country due to what it termed as interference by the Thai government, leaving thousands of undocumented Burmese migrant workers without access to free medical treatment.
According to Denis Penoy, the former head of MSF’s mission in Thailand, more than 55,000 people have been affected by the closure of MSF’s projects in Samut Sakhon Province near Bangkok, and Three Pagodas Pass on the Thai-Burmese border.
Burma, the least developed country in Southeast Asia, suffers from an underfunded state healthcare system and is one of the lowest recipients of Official Development Aid in the world, according to MSF.
But with political reform being reciprocated by greater engagement from the international community, there is a real opportunity to put access to treatment for people living with HIV and TB at the top of donor priority lists, said the report.
Mark Fischetti is a senior editor at Scientific American who covers energy, environment and sustainability issues. – - markfischetti
Contact Mark Fischetti via email.
Follow Mark Fischetti on Twitter as @markfischetti.
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It’s easy to find an online test that will purportedly tell you how happy you are. But how happy are the people of an entire nation? And which nation’s people are happiest?
That’s hard to measure. So for decades world organizations like the United Nations that concern themselves with improving people’s well-being have used a single proxy for happiness: gross domestic product, or GDP. The loose logic is that as people attain a higher standard of living, they will feel less burdened by basic survival and have greater means for everything from decent food to recreation.
But new research indicates that two other factors are even better predictors of a nation’s well-being: According to Roly Russell, an interdisciplinary scientist at the Sandhill Institute for Sustainability and Complexity in Grand Forks, British Columbia, a nation’s human capital (social structures) and natural capital (nature) are more influential in determining happiness than financial capital (income). Russell presented his data over the weekend at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver.
Russell studied numerous studies about happiness in many nations, assessing 248 variables that the various investigations had relied on. The variables ultimately fell into three broad groups of factors: financial and infrastructure (traits such as GDP and gross domestic savings); human and social (years of schooling, freedom of choice); and natural (health of land on which people live, access to nature). He then correlated those factors with the degree to which people said they were happy. Preliminary results indicated that financial factors reflected only about half the variability in happiness across countries, but human and natural capital each accounted for about two thirds of the difference.
Costa Rica had the highest score for life satisfaction among the 123 countries that were represented, even though its GDP is in the world’s lowest third. The single leading factor determining people’s happiness there was a strong social support network.
As countries try to set policies to improve well-being, Russell concluded, they have to get away from using just GDP as the de facto predictor. “We can expand our vision of ‘development’ as more than just improving GDP,” he noted. Although measuring factors such as human and natural capital can be difficult, he added, “What’s difficult to count may be the most important. The path to becoming a happy country might well involve greater focus on maintaining or promoting healthy natural and social systems, and less on simply producing more ‘stuff.’”
To hear Russell explain his conclusions and why Costa Ricans win the happiness stakes, listen to our exclusive podcast with him.
And yes, if you want to test your own happiness and compare it with results from the U.S. and other countries, you can take our quiz.
Photo of happy girl in Costa Rica courtesy of canonsnapper on Flickr
Festival Returns to Burma’s Shwedagon Pagoda
By JOCELYN GECKER / AP WRITER Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Local volunteers sweep up on the eve of the Shwedagon Pagoda Festival in Rangoon. (PHOTO: AP)
RANGOON—Thousands of people gathered at Burma’s most sacred Buddhist shrine on Wednesday to celebrate an annual festival banned for more than 20 years under the former military government.
The celebrations at the gold-plated, diamond-studded Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon mark the 2,600-year anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment. The fact that authorities are allowing it to be held at all this year is the latest sign of new freedoms trickling into this long-repressed country.
Shwedagon has been used before as a rallying point for anti-government protesters, and the former junta feared large groups gathering in the streets, even when they were not demonstrating.
“There is a hunger for the Shwedagon Pagoda festival. This was banned for 20 years and it’s starting again now,” said Khin Maung Aye, a Buddhist scholar and an organizer of the event. He expects a massive tide of pilgrims. “I have dreamed of this for many years, but I dared not think it would be so big.”
On Wednesday, gongs chimed as thousands of people dressed in ceremonial costumes walked barefoot in a procession through the temple’s marble walkways.
Perched on a hilltop, the Shwedagon Pagoda dominates the Rangoon skyline, and is especially prominent at night when floodlights make the golden temple glow brightly. According to legend, it was built more than 2,500 years ago and houses eight strands of the Buddha’s hair and other holy relics.
It was against the backdrop of Shwedagon’s towering golden spires that Aung San Suu Kyi electrified a crowd of half a million people in 1988 with a speech that launched her career as opposition leader and Burma’s icon of democracy.
After that, the ruling junta halted big pagoda festivals for what they called “security reasons,” said Khin Maung Aye. Among the regime’s many rules was a ban on gatherings of more than five people.
“My son is 22. He was born in 1989, and he has never witnessed the real Shwedagon Pagoda festival,” he said.
The festival on Wednesday at the sprawling temple compound opens with saffron-robed monks beginning a 15-day chant and a visit by government officials. Entertainment will include Burmese puppet shows and traditional dancers.
Smaller pagoda ceremonies that focused on religious rituals were allowed by the defunct military regime, but larger festivals, particularly at Shwedagon, were seen as holding potential for trouble in this devoutly Buddhist country, where religion and politics have often mixed.
Rangoon’s two most significant Buddhist shrines—Sule Pagoda and Shwedagon—were central gathering points for the monk-led pro-democracy uprising in 2007 that army quashed with deadly force.
For nearly half a century, the country was ruled by a reclusive, xenophobic military regime that cracked down on any perceived dissent. The junta ceded power last year to a nominally civilian government that has surprised critics with an unexpected wave of reforms—allowing Suu Kyi to run for parliament in April, freeing political prisoners and relaxing strict media censorship.
Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win contributed to this report.
You never know when you’re going to meet someone interesting. About 12 years ago in New York, I was introduced to Miranda and Orlando Rock, a charming British couple living in a loft in Tribeca. We hit it off and became fast friends, going to New Orleans together for Thanksgiving and road-tripping to Natchez, Mississippi. Miranda joined my fledgling design office, working part-time. It occurred to me as I watched her accessorize my clients’ apartments so beautifully—with the kind of style and instinct that are impossible to teach—that she seemed to know an awful lot about houses. I simply credited a proper English upbringing.
Photograph by Alexia S | Styling by Sara Ruffin CostelloTeatime with Orlando and Miranda Rock and their children, (from left) Matilda, Cosmo, Lila and Jemima.
After the family moved back to England, I was invited to visit them at Burghley House, family seat of Miranda’s relatives, the Marquesses of Exeter, in the Lincolnshire countryside. When I saw Burghley, which is almost urban in scale and has a history as fabled as any of the great English country estates, it all fell into place. Her breadth of knowledge and abilities, not to mention estimable personal charm, had been formed by the experience of growing up in England’s grandest and largest Elizabethan house.
Photograph by Alexia SThe west front of Burghley House, with the stunning Tijou Gates, was originally intended to be the main entrance.
Burghley House is overseen by a preservation trust and every so often a new custodian is appointed to live there and take on the mammoth duties of maintaining the buildings and land. The context is magnificent, but so are the responsibilities. Welcome home: You have just been made steward of one of the world’s most prominent and stunning monuments. There are many eyes on you and many needs to attend to, with both a staff and the public to keep happy. It’s sort of like being made captain of an ocean liner and then trying to enjoy your cruise with four children tugging at you in need of a normal life.
Miranda was elected by the trustees to replace her mother, Lady Victoria, as director in 2007. Her family left their house in London and proximity to friends (and Orlando to his work at Christie’s, where he is an expert in European furniture). With brio and resolve, they are making a success of circumstances that are very unusual and very privileged—but not without challenges, particularly for young parents.
“The Heaven Room is covered entirely in murals by Antonio Verrio, whose leching among the kitchen girls made his time at the house a trial for them”
The 115-room estate was the creation of William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth I’s Chief Minister, Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer (played by Richard Attenborough in the film “Elizabeth”); was home to Miranda’s track-star grandfather, the 6th Marquess of Exeter (played by Nigel Havers in “Chariots of Fire”—remember the hurdles with champagne glasses?); and an object of desire to oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who wanted to buy it but had to settle for the lesser charms of Sutton Place in Surrey (we are still waiting for this movie). Filmmaking is, in fact, a significant revenue source for the estate: Burghley was the house occupied by Nick Nolte in the 2000 film adaptation of Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl.”
Photograph by Alexia S | Styling by Sara Ruffin CostelloOrlando and Miranda hanging out in the Blue Drawing Room. Paintings by Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland, Sir Thomas Lawrence and Angelica Kauffmann line the walls. The Buhl cabinet was made in Antwerp in the late 17th century.
The history of Burghley, which was built between 1555 and 1587, is fascinating from both a social and art-historical perspective. Perhaps the most famous interiors are Hell Staircase and the Heaven Room to which it ascends. Both spaces are covered entirely in murals considered to be the greatest work of 17th-century Neapolitan master Antonio Verrio, whose leching among the kitchen girls made his time at the house a trial for them and everyone else.
The contents of the house include wonders large and small: the biggest solid silver wine cistern in Europe, weighing 253 pounds, and a smattering of jewel-like perfume bottles from India’s Mughal Empire. There is a fabulous marble mantel designed by Piranesi, and more than 400 paintings adorn the walls of the 35 state rooms.
Collecting among the British nobility between the 16th and the 20th centuries was rarely exceeded by anyone else in any period, but I am happy to report that the collecting continues today. The Rocks’ eldest child, Matilda, now 10, has a “museum” in a secret space overlooking the Aviary, between the second and third floors, stuffed full of precious specimens she has culled from all over the estate. If Matilda’s museum has a focus, it is on partially intact early Japanese audio technology, and her collection of 1980s Sony Walkmans, likely plundered from closets left untouched since the adolescence of Miranda’s brother, is one of the finest in private hands. Next to it you will find microscope slides, a fragment of a bird skull, a single Converse sneaker.
Photograph by Alexia S | Styling by Sara Ruffin CostelloTwo-year-old Lila
These are good kids who will gladly share with you the worlds they have carved out for themselves amidst five centuries of masterpieces with as much pride as the 5th Earl would show you his Vanderbank tapestries. But don’t expect this on the tour.
The structure itself dazzles as only Elizabethan architecture can, equal parts stately and bizarre. This is the house they all want to be, an opera in architecture. If you travel to England and can visit only one ancestral home, you would do well to make it Burghley. (Oh fine, go to Chatsworth too, but anybody could tell you to do that.)
Houses of this magnitude come with gardens, and in this department Burghley is no slouch (the estate encompasses more than 12,500 acres). In the 18th century, the 9th Earl retained Lancelot “Capability” Brown as landscape architect to redesign the Elizabethan formal gardens in a naturalistic style, and his work, for the most part, is what you see today. Burghley House was originally built with a footprint in the shape of an “E” to flatter you-know-who, but Brown tore down the northwest arm to allow more sunlight into the entrance court.
Photograph by Alexia S | Styling by Sara Ruffin CostelloMiranda and Orlando on the roof — the Elizabethans used the turrets as dining pavilions.
Maintaining Burghley for the enjoyment of the public is a full-time job. And no matter how this house is lived in, it is essentially like running a business. Efficiencies are hard-won against the age and scale of everything. The heat loss through the single-pane glass of hundreds of windows is staggering to contemplate. I have never seen such diligence about turning out lights in any household. Putting the house to bed every night, with security rituals, takes almost an hour. Wondering where your children are located between the bottom and the top of Burghley would give any parent moments of anxiety. But any house will have its problems, whether they be street noise in Tribeca or a surge in the deer population as the gardens have here.
Private life straddles the state rooms on the second floor. This is the main part of the house open to the public. The family kitchen and reception rooms are on the ground floor, while the bedrooms are tucked under nearly two acres of lead roof on the third. A lot of climbing up and down stairs is involved, but it’s well worth it for the view of the park from above.
One of the charming compensations of a life shared in this way is that you can mingle or even dine (at the Orangery tea room) with the crowds at any moment. Though it is a funny feeling to walk out of one room and into the next and be in public. It reminded me of the giddy sensation you get when you walk into a stadium from the corridor and see the oceans of people.
After taking her children to school in the village each morning, Miranda returns to oversee the operations of the estate from her ground-floor office overlooking the courtyard. From her desk she can hear footsteps and it is a welcome sound, for a house like this needs visitors to come to life. Burghley had nearly 100,000 of them last year. And let’s face it, the less alone one is in a place this size, the better. For the Rocks, normal people in an extraordinary situation, life at Burghley goes on as it always has, almost 500 years after Queen Elizabeth’s most trusted counselor devised a house the size of a small town to honor the Virgin Queen.
French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy On Style and Why People Hate Him
Ben HoffmannLE PENSEUR Bernard-Henri Lévy, photographed in the living room of his suite at New York’s Carlyle hotel.
BHL, as he is affectionately and not so affectionately called in France, is a philosopher, writer, publisher, filmmaker, provocateur and general lightning rod. It’s hard to imagine his equivalent in America, an intellectual with a movie star’s celebrity and cachet: We don’t grow them here. But in France, he is everywhere, adored, attacked, derided, applauded; so famous that his fame itself has become the subject of any discussion of him.
A splendid-looking man, he is known for his style: his white shirts, unbuttoned, a black jacket made by Charvet, sweeping leonine hair, dark eyes. He also exudes the brooding thinky je ne sais quoi of French philosophers from time immemorial. Suffice it to say that if you are looking for him in a hotel lobby you will not have trouble spotting him.
He has homes in Paris and Morocco, and is married to the actress Arielle Dombasle. His most recent book, “Public Enemies,” is a spirited exchange of letters between him and the equally infamous novelist Michel Houellebecq. Their debate covers subjects from Kant to drugs, Baudelaire to their fathers, along with speculation on why people hate them, and whether or not they care.
—Katie Roiphe
“I have worn the same white shirts, the same person has made my jackets, for thirty years. I get older, but I have the same size hair. I am a man of habits”
I am not writing to be loved. There is as much pleasure to being hated as being loved. I write in order to convince. In order to win. In order to change, even just a little, the world. I recently launched an appeal on Twitter supporting those attacking the official websites of the Tunisian regime. An intellectual calling for hacking doesn’t happen very frequently, and there is a stir. I am happy that it succeeded. I care about being heard.
In the war of ideas, you have to know where your enemies are, where your friends are. You have to know where you are weak and where you are strong. Sometimes a strong attack reveals a weak point. So I always read what is written about me. I take it into account in one way or another. But it does not affect me in a sentimental way.
In France nine or ten books have been written against me in the past four or five years. Nine or ten! The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan speaks about énamoré, which is being in love, seduced. But you can also say it like this: haineamorée, a hatred that is filled with love. Lacan writes it both ways; it is a mix of love and hate.
Why am I different from writers, like Houellebecq, who suffer from being hated? I am loved by those who are important to me. When you have that, you don’t need the other kind of love. Those who are affected are those who, as we say in French, fall from high places.
They believe that they are going to be loved and are disappointed when they are not. It’s Freud who says that what links humanity is not love, but hatred; the bond, the tough stuff is made of hate. I covered wars. I saw societies, whole worlds sometimes, being completely torn apart by hatred. I know how hatred works. I don’t believe in peace and love. The first relationship between men, before the law is given, is automatic murder: Cain and Abel. Why should it be different today, frankly?
Reuters/STR NewLévy in 1978 after a meeting with then-President Valery Giscard d’Estaing at Paris’ Palais de l’Elysee
I know a writer builds three things of unequal importance: He builds a persona, a life, a work. The three are linked, of course, and linked in conflict. For myself, I am not conscious of creating a persona. I think a little more about building a life, though it is not crucial. All my strength, all my energy, all my love is on the third table, which is the books.
I don’t care much about style or appearance. I have always dressed the same way. No eccentricity. No surprise. Somebody who cares about fashion changes; somebody who cares makes an event of his own style. I have worn the same white shirts, the same person has made my jackets, for 30 years. I get older, but I have the same size hair. I am a man of habits.
I care about physical things. When in New York, I live at the Carlyle hotel, which is not the worst place in the city. I know the difference between beautiful furniture and not. But I can do without. As long as I have my books, a few shirts, my paper to write on and my favorite pens, all is OK. I am a very adaptable person. When I do reporting in Darfur or shoot a movie or documentary on the war in Sarajevo, I can live for days and weeks in conditions where the problem of surroundings does not exist; I can live in very precarious conditions. I don’t feel especially uneasy.
Fashion is a language, and what is interesting about fashion today is that there is no longer fashion. That is, there is an appropriation of fashion by people in the street. There was a time when you saw a woman who was a high-fashion model, who was a caricature, a cartoon of real life. But now people are more free with their fashion. The most interesting people make their own fashion out of what designers offer them. Women on the street have become hackers of the fashion world. They break the code; they undo and redo. It is the democratization of fashion today that interests me.
Fashion communicates a relationship to the world, to one’s body. What is the reply to the old philosophical inquiry between soul and body: Are they at war? Are they in harmony? Are they friends or enemies? There are moments in life, in the day, where the two are at war, moments where they are in harmony, days when you feel at war with your body, and days your body is your friend. Fashion says that. Style says that.
If I were compelled to describe what my own style means, I would probably say: a sense of freedom. At the same time, a mixture of internal freedom and a freedom of movement. If my style says something it is that. But I am not sure.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”
It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.
None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.
But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.
When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.
Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.
In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.
As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.
Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late. Ref: Vanity Fair
Running Around in High Circles
Others might play hard to get; Marietta Tree, this biography shows, was genuinely unattainable.
NO REGRETS
The Life of Marietta Tree. By Caroline Seebohm.
Illustrated. 447 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $27.50.
arietta Tree’s high-WASP background had all the makings of the glamorous fantasy that Ralph Lauren has burnished to a high gloss: a New England pedigree that predates the Revolution (she was born Mary Endicott Peabody, the granddaughter of the founder of the Groton School), a prep-school adolescence, with summers in Northeast Harbor, Me., and the full complement of fizzy coming-out parties in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Transplanted to England in the early years of her second marriage, to Ronald Tree, she presided over Ditchley, the stately home he had refurbished with his former wife (who, as Nancy Lancaster, went on to great renown as a decorator). In Europe and America, Marietta traveled in what used to be called ”the highest circles.” Indeed, the surface of her life remained impeccable until her death, in 1991, at 74. But this book cannot sustain the fairy tale, if only because in the long run neither could she.
Caroline Seebohm (also the author of a biography of Conde Nast) depicts Tree as the high-minded product of her upbringing at the hands of a parsimonious mother (who once professed indignation at a guest’s request for two lumps of sugar) and a severe father, an Episcopal clergyman. The God of the Peabodys was, it seems, remote and joyless, punitive, without compassion — not unlike the Peabodys themselves. When, at the age of 30, Marietta decided to divorce Desmond FitzGerald, a lawyer in New York, to marry Ronald Tree, her mother rebuked her: ”You have let down your family and your society and your God.” It was the Peabody sense of duty — a Puritanical noblesse oblige — coupled with her considerable ambition that in time propelled Marietta into the realm of politics and public service.
Her political views were often at odds with her social circumstances. A fact checker at Life magazine and a shop steward for the union, she frequently dined out with Henry R. Luce, the magazine’s founder and editor in chief. Making the acquaintance of Winston Churchill and the Marquess of Salisbury, she took them to task over the state of affairs in postwar England. Isaiah Berlin characterized her as ”a progressive, liberal figure who was mixed up with a lot of naive left-wing sympathizers.” Her later friendship with the Kissingers and her attendance at parties for the Reagans were seen in some quarters as a betrayal of her Democratic principles.
It is tempting to think that, had Tree been born a mere 20 years later, she might have fulfilled her childhood ambition to be a senator. At 21, she announced to an audience of friends, ”I intend to get power through connection with a man.” As it happened, she became the lover of Adlai Stevenson, accompanying him on the campaign trail, consoling him in defeat. It was Stevenson who, in 1961, as the American Ambassador to the United Nations, recommended that she be appointed United States representative to the Human Rights Commission there.
Though Marietta, like Pamela Harriman, attained through men what women of her time were forbidden to attain for themselves, Seebohm makes no attempt to nominate her as a martyr for the feminist cause. In fact, Marietta repeatedly distanced herself from it. In 1967, she angered her fellow female delegates to the New York state constitutional convention, by refusing to sign three resolutions pertaining to women’s rights.
If Marietta was unconcerned with women’s lack of political and economic power, surely it was because she recognized in herself an alternative power, the power of attraction. Boy-crazy at an early age, she was by all accounts irresistible to the opposite sex. On visits to her grandparents at Groton, she commanded the hungry gaze of 180 boys at once. Seebohm paints a picture of her at 17, departing for a year at school in Florence, on a boat pulling away from a dock lined with ”stricken male admirers.” Men leave love notes in her handbag; they kiss her, though she knows their wives. After Ronald Tree began spending more of his time at their house in Barbados, Marietta was free to entertain the attentions of other men, among them Stevenson and, later, a British architect and urban planner by the name of Richard Llewelyn-Davies. In her 70′s she found love yet again, with a debonair widower — and Groton alumnus — by the name of Eben Pyne.
We can only begin to imagine the desire this long-legged blonde, 5 feet 10, with patrician features and a 39-inch bustline, must have inspired. And yet, for all that her relationships were intensely romantic, they seem to have been sexually tepid. Another woman in a position to know reported that for Adlai sex was ”not urgent.” Ronnie proved to be bisexual. Someone close to Llewelyn-Davies confided to Seebohm that sex was ”not Richard’s thing.” And Eben, by his own admission, was unaware that Marietta had had a mastectomy. Her own squeamishness when it came to sex is corroborated by a friend’s recollection that she walked out on movies the minute the action took a carnal turn.
The only instance of white-hot passion in her life appears to have been her affair with John Huston, the film director, in 1945, just before her husband, Desie, returned from the war. Spending the weekend at a friend’s house in the country, she and Huston made such vigorous love that the bed collapsed. With Desie back, John retreated to California — at Marietta’s request — where he waited for her to arrange a divorce. Meanwhile she and Desie went with some friends to Barbados, to stay with Nancy and Ronald Tree; it was there, with the memory of sexual ecstasy still fresh in her mind, that Marietta fell in love with her host and embarked on a romance more in keeping with her penchant for chastity.
A few weeks before Huston died, Marietta went to visit him in a hospital in Newport, where, Seebohm reports, his electrocardiogram ”started jumping with excitement as soon as she entered the room.” She was, his friends maintained, the only woman he ever really loved. She was also the woman who walked away. Where others played hard to get, Marietta was genuinely unattainable — needing men’s approval and all the while disdaining sex. ”She flirted with that cunning mixture of promise and denial that kept them permanently on edge,” Seebohm writes.
The contradictions in her character are staggering, and the author, to her credit, has let them stand. Marietta protests being called a socialite, but given the choice between a boring dinner party and an evening at home with a good book, she picks the dinner party. Her humanitarianism is offset to some degree by her refusal to give her daughter Frankie any dolls. Both of her daughters — Frances FitzGerald, now a distinguished journalist, and Penelope Tree, who rose to fame as a fashion model in the late 60′s — cooperated with Seebohm on this book, and it is largely thanks to their candor that this portrayal is so subtle and persuasive.
In the end, however, the reader comes away considerably less enchanted with Marietta than her countless friends and admirers (with the possible exception of her second husband, whose memoirs stop in 1945 and never mention her). She lacked a sense of humor, we are told. Nor, we gather, was she much of a wit. ”All women should go to Marietta Tree School,” proclaimed George W. Goodman, the economist. If only he had elaborated on the curriculum.
But Tree’s charms evaporate on the page through no fault of her own. When Seebohm refers to Huston as a ”stronghold of testosterone,” or to Saratoga and its environs as a ”culturally challenged region,” her ready embrace of the cliche nearest to hand does not inspire confidence in her ability to articulate what, for those who knew Marietta, evidently went without saying.
Threaded throughout her story is a litany of rules by which to live — many of them handed down from her parents: Be punctual; don’t be sarcastic or laugh too much; don’t be direct. And Marietta’s advice to a school friend: ”Always look as if you’re having a wonderful time!” Virtue consisted above all in keeping up appearances.
Dying of breast cancer, she told her friends she had the flu. In this era of 12-step talk shows and secrets for sale, her reticence is at first glance dignified and striking. But as the discrepancy between her performance and her experience becomes apparent, we see the sacrifice her dissembling required and the toll it took, as well. Her actions and reactions were dictated by an image of herself, and, even among those closest to her, she insisted on it — in the name of duty or honor, at the expense of the truth. Would that we could regard her stoicism as heroic. Holly Brubach is the style editor of The New York Times Magazine.
Révolution Française: Dominique de Villepin announces bid for 2012 French presidency
Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin on Sunday night announced that he will stand for the presidency in next year’s election.
Mr Villepin is best remembered on the international stage for his 2003 speech at the United Nations arguing against the US-led invasion of Iraq Photo: AFP
By Devorah Lauter in Paris
The conservative long-time rival of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has not yet formally announced his expected re-election bid, made the announcement during an interview on France’s TF1 television channel.
Mr Villepin said he planned to defend, “a certain vision of France,” that includes less dependence on market speculation.
“I worry, that I see France is being humiliated by the law of the markets, this law that imposes austerity,” he said, adding that he “wants to unite all the French, those on the left, the right, the centre.”
His announcement was a surprise blow to Mr Sarkozy, and his UMP Party, who had hoped Mr Villepin would rally behind them in what is already expected to be a tough race for the French president. Mr Sarkozy’s popularity ratings are low, despite having risen in recent weeks. A Journal du Dimanche poll last month showed 34 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the president.
Mr Villepin said he had no intention of an alliance with Sarkozy, his long time political opponent, explaining that the two had met recently in order to smooth over past differences, but not to forge political ties.
“I’ve put the grudges aside. What interests me are the interests of France,” said Mr Villepin.
French commentators were quick to express their “surprise” after hearing the announcement, because Villepin has been attributed with only 1 per cent or 2 per cent of voting intentions in the first round of elections scheduled for April, 2012. He has also lost several key members of his République Solidaire right-leaning party, to the Sarkozy camp.
“We had the impression Villepin was finished, in a way,” said Frédérique Delpech, political reporter for LCI French television.
Mr Villepin’s name has also been linked to a recent corruption scandal under investigation, involving the Relais & Chateaux hotel and restaurant group. Mr Villepin has denied any knowledge of the group’s alleged embezzlement of 1.6 million euros (£1.4 million) pocketed from sales of its guidebooks.
Jean-Pierre Grand, president of Mr Villepin’s République Solidaire party, said there was no reason to be surprised by the announcement. Speaking on French LCI television, he said, “I suggest you follow him on the streets, and see how the French talk to him, you’ll see. He’s not alone.”
FDI – MYANMAR
Srithai Superware Plc, the world’s leading melamine producer, is looking to Myanmar as a production base in the near future.
President Sanan Ungubolkul will visit the country soon to look for potential locations to set up a new factory.
Srithai has about 700 workers from Myanmar at its factory in Thailand and operates its SNatur direct-sales business in Myanmar, achieving a positive response. It plans to set up a branch office for direct sales in that country this year.
Mr Sanan said if the company does build a new plant in Myanmar, it will invest 50 million baht and use it as a production base for exports.
Srithai exports melamine products to over 100 countries.
“We can’t expand our production capacity in Thailand due to the labour shortage and higher wages. Myanmar and Vietnam are alternative bases,” said Mr Sanan.
The planned hike in the daily minimum wage means Srithai plans to raise its product prices in April.
The embargo on Iranian oil has driven up oil prices and thus costs, another factor in the company’s decision.
Apart from Myanmar, the company will spend almost 300 million baht to produce closure products at its factory in Vietnam.
Registered capital of Srithai Vietnam will go up to 335 million baht this year from 270 million.
The closure products will serve a giant soft drink firm in Vietnam as part of a three-year contract. The first delivery will start in August.
This will push sales in Vietnam this year to 540 million baht, up from 340 million last year, before rising to 600 million in 2013.
In Thailand, the firm is poised to spend one billion baht on investment this year.
Some 100 million baht will be used to expand its melamine business at its factory in Nakhon Ratchasima province, 600 million will be used for its plastic products and the remaining 300 million is for expanding its direct sales business and overseas investment.
For SNatur direct sales, it plans to expand to Cambodia and Indonesia before reaching 10 countries in a few years. Sales of SNatur are expected to reach 460 million baht this year, up from 353 million last year.
Srithai’s total sales this year are projected to reach 7.8 billon baht, up from 6.65 billion last year.
SITHAI shares closed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 8.70 baht, down 10 satang, in trade worth 1.23 million baht.
Historian Prof Charnvit Kasetsiri and his team will lead a trip to Myanmar from April 6-10.
The programme, “Myanmar & Ramanya Desa”, or Muang Mon Muang Man features a visit to remarkable temples and pagodas, including Shwemawdaw in Pegu, Shwedagon in Yangon, Shwezigon in Pagan and Maha Muni or Rakhine Pagoda in Mandalay.
Other sites to be covered in the programme are Gubyaukkyi Temple, which is well known for the reclining Buddha; Kuthodaw Pagoda, which houses tripitaka engraved on 279 slabs of marble; old markets, and other attractions.
The fee is 38,500 baht (twin sharing), with an additional 5,500 baht for a single room. Part of the proceeds will go to the Art and Culture Fund of Thammasat University’s Southeast Asian Studies Programme.
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Call 02-424-5768, 02-433-8713, 089-457-8657 or email: kitsunee_tai@yahoo.com for reservations.
Sea Tribunal Ruling: Bangladesh’s Gain, Burma’s Paying
By WILLIAM BOOT / THE IRRAWADDY magazine
Burma’s silence in response to a UN tribunal ruling on the decades-old sea territories dispute with Bangladesh perhaps underlines the fact that the country has lost out on what could be a rich vein of natural gas.
Exploration licenses awarded by the state Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in 2008 to companies from China and South Korea will now have to be abandoned because the beneath-the-sea territory they were licensed to exploit has been awarded to Bangladesh.
It means ConocoPhillips Inc of the United States and not Daewoo International Corporation of South Korea can now legally drill for gas off the south coast of St Martin’s Island, which is only 20 km or so from the mainland where the Naaf River flowing into the bay forms the land border between the two countries.
The island is about 70 km south of Cox’s Bazar.
Daewoo was at the center of a naval confrontation between the two countries in November 2008 which finally led to the dispute going before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany.
The South Koreans, under Burmese navy guard, went ahead with an expensive drilling operation in the area designated Block AD-7 by MOGE, but they were forced to withdraw after Bangladesh sent its navy to challenge the work.
The sovereignty of St. Martin’s, a coral island that is home to several dozen fishing families, has never been in doubt. It belongs to Bangladesh. But the two countries have long argued over ownership of the seas around it.
In its arbitration on March 14, the ITLOS extended Bangladesh’s sea territorial boundary south of the island in what it termed a delimiting judgment in line with standard offshore rights.
This and other adjustments mean that Bangladesh has acquired about 4,000 square kilometers more sea territory that it had before.
“The tribunal said it had reached a compromise but the fact is that Bangladesh gains access to potentially rich gas stock,” Bangkok energy industries consultant Collin Reynolds told The Irrawaddy on March 17.
“The Burmese energy authority [MOGE] had awarded exploration licenses to Daewoo and Kogas, another Korean operator, and other firms for zones now legally established as Bangladeshi territory. It extends the area which ConocoPhillips had been licensed by Bangladesh to explore.
“What this [tribunal] ruling does achieve, however, is stability through legal certainties which will benefit both countries because there will be no hesitation now by reputable big oil and gas companies to take on new exploration licenses. The territorial dispute had deterred a number of potential investors because of the uncertainty of ownership and legality.
“Burma can count itself lucky in so far as this ruling plus the political reforms at home will make the country much more attractive to investors keen to search for offshore oil and gas in the Bay.”
A pointer to that potential is the rich vein of gas already found and about to be tapped in Burma’s Shwe field, which is only a few kilometers south of the new international boundary. Several more blocks of the Shwe field inside Burmese territorial waters have still to be explored.
Just two blocks of the Shwe field, being developed by Daewoo and two Indian state-owned partners, GAIL Limited and onGC Videsh, have confirmed gas reserves of at least 200 billion cubic meters. Most of this gas is to be exported to China via a new pipeline being built in a controversial deal made in secret by the former military regime. Its value to Burma’s state coffers remains unknown.
Meanwhile, Singapore energy firm MPRL disclosed last week that it has begun drilling in the A-6 Block in Burmese waters of the Bay about 200 km south of the Shwe field. MPRL is a consortium of private investors, including the US firm Baker Hughes Solutions Inc, in partnership with MOGE.
ConocoPhillips is now expected to be awarded extra territory around St. Martin’s Island by Bangladesh’s state-owned oil firm PetroBangla as a result of the tribunal ruling, said the international energy magazine Platts. In addition, two or three new deep-water exploration sites could be offered in the April licensing round.
The Bangladeshi Energy Ministry has ruled that any gas or oil found by ConocoPhillips must not be exported, said Platts.
Bangladesh’s main energy source is gas but limited supplies have caused severe power shortages which have seriously damaged the country’s garment manufacturing industry.
Burma similarly suffers from an inadequate electricity supply, despite being rich in energy resources.
Burma’s Radio Myanmar said briefly last week that the Burmese government accepted the UN tribunal’s ruling but the authorities have otherwise remained silent—unlike Bangladesh, which has trumpeted what it sees as a triumph.
The tribunal ruling is binding and there is no opportunity for appeal.
“We see this [ruling] as cause for great satisfaction,” said German Foreign Minister of State Cornelia Pieper, whose country hosted the tribunal. “Disputes over maritime boundaries can cause perennial strain in relations between neighboring countries. The compromise found yesterday gives both countries legal certainty.”
The final settlement of the long-running maritime dispute comes as reports are emerging of a major relaxation of laws controlling foreign investment in Burma which, if correct, would make it much more attractive than at present for potential offshore oil and gas explorers.
New foreign investment regulations tipped to go before Parliament before the end of this month would permit 100 percent foreign ownership of a project, a five year tax-free period, and a promise of no nationalization, the New York Times and Reuters reported.
“The draft law goes some way to reassuring investors worried about a reversal of the reforms and the possible seizure of assets,” says the Oslo-based energy magazine Upstream. “Western companies shied away from the largest Burmese [oil and gas licensing] exploration round in years last November.”
What many observers are waiting to see, however, is whether Burma’s government will introduce rules ensuring that a large proportion, if not all, of new oil and gas discoveries remain inside the country rather than being sold abroad as at present.
Gas, Energy Engineering – for the future of Burm
Reference
Qatar to convert gas to liquid fuel
Doha – Qatar has made a fortune on liquefied natural gas exports along with heavyweights ExxonMobil, Shell and Total, but the emirate is now setting its sights on diversifying investments by converting gas fuels.
State-owned Qatar Petroleum and Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell aim to complete in 2012 the Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant at Ras Laffan Industrial City, north of the capital Doha.
The plant – the world’s largest facility of its kind which has taken up to 52 000 people to build – delivered its first cargo of synthetic fuels in June.
Pearl will help Qatar make use of its abundance of gas reserves to produce a resource more scarce in the Gulf state – oil.
The process is expensive and a high-CO2 emitter, however, as it consumes around 40% of the gas to achieve liquid form.
Gas reserves
But Shell has shown confidence in the method, which was developed in the US, and has not hesitated to invest billions of dollars in the project.
“Over the last five years, Shell has invested almost $20bn in Qatar,” said Shell chief executive Peter Voser.
“It is a reflection of this nation’s business climate that we feel confident to make such a large commitment,” he said in Doha at the World Petroleum Congress, a forum for energy ministers and oil company executives.
This year the event is being hosted for the first time in the region which sits on 50% of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves.
Paradoxically, it is being held in the tiny emirate of Qatar which is home to an estimated 750 000 inhabitants – most of them foreigners.
Qatar has grown rapidly over the past few years as dozens of skyscrapers have risen in the Gulf state thanks to its gas reserves – the third-largest in the world after Iran and Russia.
In the 1990s, Qatar opened the door to American energy giant ExxonMobil – which has the lion’s share among international companies.
French counterpart Total also operates in the country, in addition to Shell and ConocoPhillips.
Agreements
Qatar, a member of oil cartel Opec, in 2010 celebrated raising its production capacity for LNG to 77 million tons annually, boosting its position as the world’s largest producer.
The Gulf emirate is, however, looking to diversify its resources with the US turning to shale gas after it stopped importing LNG.
The US is also considering exporting the gas trapped in underground rocks. Australia is also taking similar steps to serve Asian markets.
State-owned Qatar Petroleum and Shell on Sunday signed an agreement to build a petrochemical complex in the Gulf state valued at $6.4bn.
The scope under consideration includes a world-scale steam cracker, with feedstock coming from natural gas projects in Qatar, in addition to a mono-ethylene glycol plant of up to 1.5 million tons per annum, 300 kilotons per annum of linear alpha olefins, and another olefin derivative, a joint statement said.
LNG revenues will pave the way for Qatar to become a major player in international financial, an aim proved by the Gulf state’s shares in European giants such as Barclays Bank, Germany’s Volkswagen, and Spain’s Iberdrola.
AFP
A foundation headed by Bill Clinton has negotiated a deal to make HIV/Aids treatment cheaper for children, the former US president has announced.Mr Clinton outlined the deal in a speech at a children’s hospital in the Indian capital, Delhi.
Under the deal, two Indian companies will supply 19 antiretroviral drugs and their cost will be reduced by 45%, a statement by the foundation says.
More than 40m people worldwide are infected with HIV/Aids, the UN says.
The cheap drugs, according to the statement, will be available in 62 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean.
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One of the drugs, made by leading Indian pharmaceutical companies, Cipla and Ranbaxy, is described as a “new child-friendly product” and will cost less than $60 per year per child.
The international drug-buying facility, Unitaid, set up by France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and the UK, is subsidising the programme by $35m, the Clinton Foundation says.
‘Left behind’
“Though the world has made progress in expanding HIV/Aids treatment to adults, children have been left behind. Only one in 10 children who needs treatment is getting it,” Mr Clinton said in his speech at the Delhi hospital.
He was there to launch the federal government’s national programme to treat children with HIV.
The programme aims to increase the number of children on treatment in India from less than 2,000 in September to 10,000 by the end of March by making paediatric care available at all centres treating adults, the statement by the foundation says.
More than five million Indians are infected with HIV and the UN says India now has more people with the virus than any other country in the world.
The Clinton Foundation, set up in 2002, aims to provide technical and financial help to poorer countries struggling to stop the spread of HIV/Aids.
36 Hours in Vientiane, Laos
David Hagerman for The New York Times
The Patuxai arch, where visitors climb five flights for a panoramic view of the city. »
By NAOMI LINDT
NESTLED in a curve of the Mekong River, Vientiane, Laos, is a place where monks in orange robes outnumber tourists, and French colonial roofs and gilded temples form the skyline. Along the dusty streets of the capital of Laos, you’re more likely to spot a polished Volkswagen bug puttering along than a traffic jam. And in the town center, butterflies and birds flutter among the frangipanis. But with the recent introduction of more international flights, several ambitious infrastructural and commercial projects, and an increasingly cosmopolitan restaurant and cafe scene, Vientiane is quickly changing. Now is the time to explore the city’s small-town charms before it joins the modern world.
Come dusk, you’ll find Vientiane’s residents flocking to the new Chao Anouvong Park, a 35-acre expanse of grass and concrete that lines the Mekong River. You can join those engaged in brisk walks and tai chi, or follow the mellower crowd: harem-pants-wearing, jewelry-laden backpackers mesmerized by the sunset and cheap cans of the delicious national brew, Beerlao, that are served at outdoor stalls. For a classier tipple, the Spirit House (09/093 Fa Ngum Road; 856-21-243-795; thespirithouselaos.com) mixes julep-strained gin martinis — stirred and made with a julep strainer — and pomelo Collinses (from 30,000 Lao kip, or $3.88 at 7,724 kip to the dollar) in a breezy Buddhism-inspired house with Mekong River views.
7:30 p.m.
2. FEEL-GOOD FOOD
Not only are the modern renditions of Laos cuisine at Makphet (Behind Wat Ong Teu; 856-21-260-587; friends-international.org) addictive, but proceeds at the vocational training restaurant, run by Friends-International, a nongovernmental organization, support programs for disadvantaged youth. In a cheerful brick-and-wood space with paintings by students hanging on the walls, tourists and development workers share dishes like Ancient Fish (75,000 kip), deep-fried local river fish topped with lemon grass, tamarind and shredded green mango; and a banana flower salad (50,000 kip) accompanied by garlicky grilled pork and sesame seeds. Don’t skip the sesame and peanut-encrusted dumplings with hibiscus syrup (35,000 kip) for dessert.
9:30 p.m.
3. TEN-PIN PARTY
Vientiane might appear to be snoozing after dinner, but things are in full swing at the Lao Bowling Center (Khounboulom Road; 856-21-218-661; 12,000 kip per game), which stays open till the wee hours on weekends. The lanes are warped, the balls dented and the pinsetters have a mind of their own, but the atmosphere can’t be beat. Enthusiastic locals applaud when any pins are knocked over, no matter if they tumble across the foul line during the approach. The young women in silk sinh, or wrapped sarongs, are particularly impressive while downing cans of Beerlao and outplaying their boyfriends.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4. STYLISH TRADITIONS
Spend the morning admiring Laos’s wealth of handmade products. An essential first stop is American Carol Cassidy’s Lao Textiles (84-86 Nokeokoummane Street; 856-21-212-123; laotextiles.com) which stocks gorgeous brocade and ikat pieces. Wander the grounds and watch the team of 50 weavers work their magic. T’Shop Laï Gallery (Vat Inpeng Street; 856-21-223-178; laococo.com/tshoplai.htm), a French-run, retro-apothecary-meets-home-décor shop, is a haven for local goods, with trays made of flecked, dark coconut palm wood and massage oils, soaps, and shampoos crafted from Kaffir lime and white tea. At fair-trade Camacrafts (Nokeokoummane Street, 856-21-241-217; camacrafts.org), you’ll find brightly embroidered travel wallets and batiked satchels and place mats made by the ethnic Hmong people.
12:30 p.m.
5. ZEN APPEAL
Vientiane’s culinary scene is surprisingly international, with options that include Italian, Indian, Tex-Mex and Korean. There are also several Japanese spots, the best of which is homey YuLaLa Cafe (Hengboun Street; 856-20-5510-4050), run by a young couple from Kyoto, Hisaya and Aya Okada, who play Bach and Bob Dylan while cooking Japanese-inspired healthy treats. Diners sit on floor cushions sampling dishes like pork cutlets topped with sautéed shiitake and enoki mushrooms (48,000 kip) and a minced white radish and green-onion-and-soy-marinated chicken salad (42,000 kip).
2 p.m.
6. A DIFFICULT LEGACY
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped over two million tons of ordnance over Laos, making it the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. About a third of the bombs failed to detonate and continue to add to the more than 50,000 casualties that have occurred in the last 50 years. Learn about efforts to provide victims with medical assistance at the new visitor center run by local Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise, or COPE, where documentaries, art installations and interactive exhibits tell the troubling story of unexploded ordnance in Laos (Khouvieng Road; 856-21-218-427; copelaos.org).
4 p.m.
7. COFFEE TALK
Take advantage of Vientiane’s many chilled-out cafes, which rely on the coffee beans grown in Laos’s highlands. Pair a fair-trade, organic blend with a decadent pastry at the expat- and art-filled Joma Bakery Café (Setthathirat Street; 856-21-254-333; joma.biz). At Le Banneton (Nokeokoummane Road; 856-21-217-321), lattes and cappuccinos brewed from organic robusta beans are served with croissants in a French colonial-themed setting, while Zen-like Little House (Manthatourat Road; 856-20-5540-6036) roasts its own beans and sells pretty textiles.
5:30 p.m.
8. ROUGH AND READY
Tucked away in a residential area behind the Hotel Beau Rivage Mekong, Papaya Spa (west of town, across from Wat Xieng Veh; 856-20-216-550; papayaspa.com) is the capital’s best spot for a rejuvenating rubdown, Lao-style. In treatment rooms scattered around a garden filled with birds of paradise, frangipani and papaya trees, masseuses deliver an intense blend of stretching and pressure point therapy (140,000 kip, one hour).
8 p.m.
9. FRENCH FANFARE
The French left more than a half-century ago, but their legacy remains in the city’s stellar cuisine. An intriguing newcomer is the casual chic bistro L’Adresse de Tinay (behind Wat Ong Teu; 856-20-5691-3434), run by a Lao-French couple Tinay and Delphine Inthavong, where the seasonal menu might include goat’s cheese rolls with sun-dried tomatoes and cherry confiture (71,000 kip) or Grandma Lydie’s Special, duck confit served over a white bean and sausage cassoulet (130,000 kip). In a cozy, candlelit dining room at Le Silapa (17 Sihom Road; 856-21-219-689) a French-Canadian chef creates decadent dishes like terrine of foie gras with Laphroaig-perfumed minced mushrooms (170,000 kip) and Australian lamb paired with goat’s cheese and rosemary (160,000 kip).
10 p.m.
10. CREATIVE DRINKING
At Jazzy Brick (Setthathirat Street; 856-20-771-1138), popular among the city’s elite, the bar has an Old World feel with Moulin Rouge posters, leather and rattan bar stools, jazz and big-band tunes playing in the background, and a selection of cocktails (from 40,000 kip) and French digestifs (from 65,000 kip). Loft Lounge Bar (26 Khounboulom Road; 856-21-242-991) and its cozy couches are the city’s best spot to share a bottle of French wine with a D.J. spinning ambient tunes.
Sunday
8:30 a.m.
11. CRUISE, CRUISE, CRUISE
Explore Vientiane’s quiet lanes by bicycle, which can be rented around town for about $5 a day. Start by heading southeast on Setthathirat Street, with its regal colonial villas, before turning left on Lanexang Avenue, which leads to Patuxai arch, Vientiane’s somewhat shoddy version of the Arc de Triomphe. Climb the five flights to the top floor for a panoramic view of the city. Continue about two miles northeast on 23 Singha Road to Pha That Luang, a giant stupa lined in gold. Walk around it three times to stay in Buddha’s good graces, before looping back to tranquil, crumbling 190-year-old Wat Sisaket (corner of Lanexang and Setthathirat), one of the few temples to survive the Siamese razing of the city in 1828.
11:30 a.m.
12. TROPICAL BRUNCH
On a quiet lane, Kung’s Café Lao (Phiawat Village, across from the Ministry of Health; 856-21-219-101) is an iconic Vientiane experience. It’s hard to know what to love most about the place — the potent Lao coffee, best enjoyed with condensed milk and ice (7,000 kip); the sticky rice pancakes topped with fresh mango (12,000 kip); the Muzak-, plant- and basket-filled courtyard; or the family who runs the place and its eloquent patriarch, 70-year-old J. B., and his fantastic tales about the changing face of Vientiane through the decades.
IF YOU GO
The colonial-chic Ansara Hotel (Quai Fa Ngum; 856-21-213-514/8; ansarahotel.com) has 14 rooms with rosewood floors, rattan furniture and private balconies facing a tropical garden. Doubles from $125.
Family-run Hôtel Khamvongsa (Khun Bu Lom Road; 856-21-223-257; hotelkhamvongsa.com), with 26 atmospheric rooms, is a Vientiane gem. The antiques-filled sunny breakfast area is a lovely spot to begin the day. Starting at $35, rooms, with four-poster beds, are a steal.
People, Politics, National Patriotism
First Lady Biography: Pat Nixon
THELMA CATHERINE “PAT” RYAN NIXON
Born:
Ely, Nevada
16 March, 1912
*Although she was born as Thelma Catherine Ryan Nixon, she assumed the name of “Patricia,” or “Pat” upon the death of her father; of Irish parentage, he had first called her “St. Patrick’s babe in the morn,” because she was born at night, just hours before St. Patrick’s Day
Father:
William Ryan, Sr., born 1866, Ridgefield, Connecticut, sailor, miner, truck farmer; died May 1930, Artesia, California
Mother:
Katherine “Kate” Halberstadt, born 1879, Essen County, near Frankfurt, Germany, Germany; married secondly to Will Ryan, 1909; died, 18 January, 1926, Artesia, California
Kate Halberstadt‘s first husband Matthew Bender Jr. was born in Chicago, Cook County IL in 1874 to parents Matthew Bender and Walgura Hoffman. He drowned in a flash flood in South Dakota. He is buried in the South Lead Cemetery in South Dakota. His son Matthew (mother was Kate) was raised by his Bender grandparents after that incident. Matthew and Walburga and family then moved to Los Angeles arou 1904-1905.
Ancestry:
Irish, German; Pat Nixon’s mother immigrated from the Ober Rosbach region of Germany; her father was Irish and his parents immigrated to the U.S. from County Mayo, Ireland, date unknown
Birth Order and Siblings:
One half-brother, one half-sister; [half-brother] Matthew Bender (1907 – ?); [half-sister] Neva Bender Ryan Renter (1909 – ?); William “Bill” Ryan, Jr. (1910-1997), Thomas Ryan (1911-1992)
Religious Affiliation:
Father was Roman Catholic, mother affiliated with Christian Scientist, husband was Quaker, the faith in which she married, but Pat Nixon was not formally affiliated with a sect
Education: Pioneer Boulevard Grammar School, 1918 – 1925, Artesia (now Cerritos), California, while in grammar school, Pat Ryan was an oration on the political merits of Progressive Party leader Robert LaFollette; Excelsior High School, 1925 – 1929,Norwalk, California, a member of the drama club, playing the leads in The Romantic Age and The Rise of Silas Lapham and the Filibuster Club debating team, also involved in student government, elected as secretary of the student body in her junior and senior years; Woodbury College, Orange County, California, summer 1929, Pat Ryan took a night course in shorthand; Fullerton Junior College, Fullerton, California, 1931 – 1932, performed in Broken Dishes as the lead; Columbia University New York, New York, summer 1933 – took a course in radiology; University of Southern California, 1934 -1937, education and student training classes, B.S. Merchandising, with a certificate to teach at the high school level which USC gave the equivalence of a Master’s degree.
With superior grades, Pat Ryan Nixon skipped the second grade; she graduated cum laude from University of Southern California *Pat Nixon was the first First Lady to earn a graduate degree
Occupation before Marriage:
Few, if any First Ladies worked as consistently before their marriage as did Pat Nixon. She was only one year old when her parents relocated to the dairy and farming community of Artesia, California (about 12 miles southwest of Los Angeles) and purchased a ten and a half acre “truck farm” where they grew produce that was then sold from the back of the Ryan family truck in larger nearby towns and cities. From an early age she joined the rest of her family in planting and harvesting peppers, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, corn, and barley. When her mother became debilitated with a liver ailment and cancer (1924-1925), Pat Ryan Nixon assumed the household chores of cooking, cleaning and laundering for her brothers and father, as well as the seasonal farm workers that were hired for the farm, in addition to her farming responsibilities. When her father began to fail because of his terminal tuberculosis (1929-1930), she continued with the household chores, farm chores and to meet his medical bills, also took a job at the farmers and dairymen Artesia First National Bank, rising early to clean the floors as a janitor, then returning after high school to work as a bookkeeper.
In 1932, Pat Ryan drove an elderly couple across the country, a return bus ticket to California being her recompense. At Seton Hospital for the Tubercular run by the Catholic Sisters of Charity, Pat Ryan worked in a capacity of jobs, including x-ray technician, pharmacy manager, typist, laboratory assistant, and lived with the nuns at the hospital (1932-1934).
Admitted to USC on a research scholarship that covered her $240 tuition and living expenses, Pat Ryan worked for a psychology professor, helping to grade student papers and doing research for a book on orientation he was writing. Requiring further income, she also worked as assistant in the office of the university’s vice president, cafeteria waitress, librarian, preparing graduate survey questionnaires, testing beauty products in salons, movie extra and assistant buyer at Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store. She worked an average of 40 hours a week, beyond her classes. (1934-1937)
Hired as a teacher at Whittier Union High School, she taught commercial classes in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, stenography and adult night classes in typing. She served as faculty advisor to the “Pep” Committee, which organized social outings for students, helped organize student rallies, attended all high school sports events and every PTA meeting, and served as director for school plays. She earned an annual salary of $1,800.00 and continued to work as a teacher a year after she married. (1937-1941)
Marriage:
21 June, 1940 at Mission Inn, Riverside, California to Richard Milhous Nixon (born 13 January 1913, Yorba Linda, California, lawyer, died 23 April, 1994, New York, New York); they had met while both were performing in a production of The Dark Tower staged by the Whittier Community Players, a local theater group; after a honeymoon to Laredo and Mexico City, Mexico, they settled in an apartment in Whittier.
Children: Two daughters; Patricia “Tricia” Nixon Cox (born 21 February 1946); Julie Nixon Eisenhower (born 25 July 1948)
*On 22 December 1968, Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower, the grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, under whom her father had served as Vice President from 1953 to 1961.
Occupation after Marriage: With World War II, Nixon worked as an attorney in the Office of Emergency Management in Washington, D.C. while Pat Nixon worked as clerk for the Red Cross. Nixon volunteered for and was commissioned as a naval lieutenant (junior grade) and received his first active duty assignment to Ottumwa, Iowa, while Pat Nixon worked in a bank there. When Nixon was assigned to duty in the South Pacific, she moved to San Francisco, California, where she worked as an economist for the Office of Price Administration.
In 1946 Nixon won a seat in the U.S. Congress; four years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate and two years after that, in 1952 he was elected Vice President of the United States under Dwight D. Eisenhower and both were re-elected in 1956. Although she later declared that politics was not a life she would have chosen for herself, Pat Nixon had already taken an interest in politics. Although she had voted for Independent and Democratic candidates, she had not committed to a political party until she declared herself a Republican, in line with Nixon’s affiliation. During his first campaign, she researched stacks of congressional records to familiarize herself with the record of his opponent, incumbent Jerry Voorhis; wrote and edited campaign literature, typed and printed, and then hand-distributed them. Throughout the nine national political campaigns of Nixon’s career, Pat Nixon played a vital, albeit subtle role. She often attended or reviewed the speeches of his opponents and took shorthand transcriptions of their exact words. She never held back her criticism of his speeches. She could appear tireless in daily rounds of public appearances whether they were outdoor rallies or fundraising dinners or teas with Republican women, focusing on one individual after another with an animation that humanized the candidate. She even began to give informal speeches. She did not like the world of politics, however, particularly the level of viciousness it tended to draw and the intrusion it caused in her family’s private life. On the other hand, she was steadfastly loyal to Nixon: when press reports of an alleged secret fund broke after his vice presidential nomination, it was Pat Nixon who advised him to ignore the advice to step aside and instead to fight the charges. He did so in a famous televised “Checkers Speech” (in reference to the name of the dog given as a gift to his daughters) with Pat Nixon on screen, and made reference to her fighting Irish spirit, her respectable “cloth” coat and the fact that she wasn’t on his Senate payroll as many other such spouses were.
As the wife of the Vice President for eight years, Pat Nixon assumed numerous roles, besides raising her two young daughters through adolescence. She often substituted at events for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. She accompanied her husband to 53 countries around the world, and while she couldn’t avoid formal events she minimized luncheons and teas during her daily public schedule to instead visit hospitals, schools, orphanages, senior citizen homes, and even a leper colony in Panama. She was so effective a goodwill ambassador that President Eisenhower always sent the Nixons as a team to foreign nations. Pat Nixon continued to work behind the scenes as well, drafting the Vice President’s public correspondence, organizing his schedule and editing his speeches. She also had strong political views; she personally mistrusted Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example, although she believed that his investigation into State Department employees who might be communist sympathizers was warranted. Although she viewed the vice presidency as a dead end political post, she also successfully urged Nixon to fight those Republicans who sought to remove him from the 1956 ticket. In an era of world travel and the increasing influence of television in the American culture, Pat Nixon helped to create the public role of “Second Lady” from being merely a Vice President’s wife.
After Nixon barely lost the 1960 election (see below) and ran unsuccessfully for the Governorship of California in 1962, against Pat Nixon’s personal wishes and political advice, the Nixons moved to New York City. There he practiced law, and Pat Nixon sometimes volunteered as an administrative assistant in his office.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Vice President Nixon’s 1960 race for the presidency drew upon Pat Nixon’s public recognition. An entire ad campaign was built around the slogan of “Pat For First Lady,” a message carried on buttons, bumper stickers and antenna, all marketed to the demographic of housewives – like Pat Nixon – who were heavily courted by the Republican Party during the 1950′s. She also publicly advocated that women should become more involved in the political process as volunteers for their parties. The press briefly attempted to create a “race” for First Lady between her and the Democratic candidate’s wife Jacqueline Kennedy based on their clothing costs and styles.
The razor-thin loss for her husband and the disputed win by Kennedy permanently dimmed Pat Nixon’s view of politics. Thus she was less eager when Nixon ran again in 1968. Her responses to the media were more rote and controlled as a means of protecting her privacy. Her role in the President’s re-election campaign was more enthused as she made thousands of appearances on her own by jet plane, often flying from one corner of the nation to the other in a day. She addressed controversial and substantive questions when the press posed them to her.
In 1972, Pat Nixon became the first Republican First Lady to address the national convention that was nominating her husband for the presidency. Her efforts in the 1972 campaign became something of a formula copied by future candidates’ spouses.
Pat Nixon did not alter either any elements of the 1969 or the 1973 Inaugurations of her husband. Reflecting the sense of liberation for women at the time, however, she broke what was at least a 108 year custom when she appeared at both swearing-in ceremonies without wearing a hat.
First Lady: 20 January 1969 – 9 August, 1974
If the public expects a First Lady to reflect the “average” American woman, Pat Nixon faced a challenge when she assumed the post in 1969 – a time when the role of women in American society was being dramatically redefined in both perception and reality. Pat Nixon became the first incumbent First Lady to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment. She was the first to disclose publicly her pro-choice view on abortion in reaction to questions on the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. Before she even began unrelentingly to lobby her husband to name a woman to the Supreme Court, she called for such an appointment publicly. She even became the first First Lady to appear publicly in pants and model them for a national magazine, reflecting the radical change in women’s attire that critics derided as masculine. Still, Pat Nixon valued her identity as a middle-class homemaker, supportive wife and devoted mother and was often depicted as the quintessential traditionalist in relief to the popular persona of the “liberated woman.”
Recalling her own first contact with the Franklin Roosevelts, Pat Nixon understood how the average citizen and “common man” appreciated a gesture of support for them or their local efforts. She made a conscious effort to emphasize the value of the individual American, an effort that the media often overlooked because of larger, national priorities or derided in an age when previously-held values were being questioned. Her most tangible and immediate response to the individual was through management of her own correspondence. She instructed her correspondence director to send her several hundred of the letters sent weekly by the public to the First Lady, and she spent up to five hours a day either dictating or hand-writing her responses. If a person wrote her requesting federal assistance of some kind, she not only directed the letter to the proper agency but responded through her own office staff, making it function much as a congressional office did in meeting the needs of its constituency.
On February 18, 1969, she announced that she would encourage a “national recruitment program” to enlist thousands of volunteers to carry out a wide variety of community services. Her initial domestic solo mission was to inspect ten “Vest Pockets of Volunteerism” programs that addressed pressing social problems that fell outside of purview of legislation. Touring what she called the “small, splendid efforts” in local towns and villages brought national press attention to the programs. Often the First Lady and her staff scanned newspapers for such efforts and sent unsolicited commendations letters, which were usually printed in local newspapers. She also honored such organizations that had formed to respond to a local problem with a White House reception. Pat Nixon became closely aligned with the partially-federally-funded National Center for Voluntary Action, attending their annual award ceremonies, conferring with its leaders at the Washington headquarters and joining a briefing on the center’s objectives. She advocated passage of the Domestic Services Volunteer Act of 1970, although she did not testify before Congress on its behalf.
Pat Nixon also used her role to make tangible the Administration’s domestic agenda by “going into the field” and inspecting public works projects that illustrated issues that the President was simultaneously addressing. When Nixon attended a Chicago environmental meeting, she spent the day visiting a land reclamation center, an example of thermal pollution, and several conservation projects in that city. While in Denver to meet with law enforcement officials, she was there to visit a rehabilitation center for juvenile delinquents. Pat Nixon also sponsored a program known as “Legacy of the Parks,” which turned federally developed, protected and maintained lands over for community recreation; she transferred some 50,000 acres of such federal lands over to state and local control. She had personally pushed to establish new recreational areas in or near big cities for those who could not afford to visit distant national parks.
In line with the Administration’s public health and education initiatives, Pat Nixon was a member of the President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, and honorary chair of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s “Right to Read” program. Finally, she also initiated efforts in her own community, of Washington, D.C. such as the “Evenings in the Park,” a series of local summer concerts for inner-city youths, hosting one program on the White House lawn, and attending another on the Washington Monument grounds, amid a large number of anti-war and “Black Power” protesters at a simultaneous rally there. Pat Nixon also visited several local day camps for underprivileged children that the private sector supported, and took groups of the children on afternoon voyages on the presidential yacht. For groups of local, disadvantaged children she hosted the first annual Halloween parties in the mansion.
She carried her theme of honoring the “common man” with several efforts to make the White House itself more accessible to those with special needs who had previously been ignored. In the spring and the autumn, Pat Nixon made the gardens and grounds of the Executive Mansion accessible to the public for the first time in nearly a century, hosting seasonal tours there. For the working-class families unable to tour the mansion during the daytime hours, she opened the White House at the holiday season for evening “Candlelight Tours” to see the annual decorations. For visually, hearing and physically impaired people, she created special tours that gave them full access to the rooms and the history of the White House, also making it handicapped-accessible. For those tourists and visitors who did not speak or write English, Pat Nixon had brochures written, published and made available in a variety of languages, explaining the history of each of the White House rooms which they could carry with them as they walked through. To relieve the burden of those summer visitors who often had to wait in line for hours to get into the White House, she had a recorded history of the mansion placed at intervals along the fence in boxes. For those shuffling through the long ground floor lobby, there were illustrated panels and display cases placed along and against the walls.
She made all the arrangements to have the White House lit by floodlights at night, as Washington’s other monuments were – so those driving by on Pennsylvania Avenue or flying into or out of the nearby National Airport could glimpse it clearly. She invited hundreds of average American families to nondenominational Sunday services in the East Room, mixing with Cabinet, Congressional and other Washington officials. As hostess, she instituted a “Evenings at the White House” series of performances by artists in varied American traditions–from opera to bluegrass to Broadway musical. For the White House itself, and thus for the American people, Pat Nixon also decided to accelerate the collection process of fine antiques as well as historically associative pieces, adding some 600 paintings and antiques to the White House Collection. It was the single greatest collecting during any Administration.
As recently discovered by the NFLL from a private collector, on 11 Oct 1971 Mrs. Nixon was the first incumbent First Lady to toss out a baseball for a major league team, being at game two of the 1971 World Series. She made the ceremonial ‘first pitch’ at Baltimore Memorial Stadium.
Pat Nixon held the record as the most world-traveled First Lady until Hillary Clinton and was given the unique diplomatic status of “Personal Representative of the President.” She made an important January 1972 trip on her own to Africa, visiting Liberia, Ghana and The Ivory Coast, not only touring those nations and meeting a cross-section of their societies as a goodwill ambassador, but also addressing their congresses and meeting with those nations’ leaders to discuss U.S. policy on Rhodesia and human rights issues in South Africa. In June 1970, Pat Nixon decided within a few short hours to fly to Peru and lead a major international humanitarian effort. She flew along with some ten tons of donated food, clothing and medical supplies gathered by volunteers and relief organizations that she had solicited for the Peruvian people, reeling from a devastating earthquake that took 80,000 lives and left another 80,000 homeless. The Peruvian Government gave Pat. Nixon the highest decoration their country can bestow, and the oldest decoration in the Americas – The Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun; she became the first North American woman to receive this award. One Lima newspaper declared that she had radically improved previously strained U.S.-Peruvian relations with the trip. In 1974 she made a triumphant visit to Venezuela to attend that nation’s new president’s inauguration; it was particularly gratifying in light of the fact that some twenty years earlier she and her husband, then Vice President, had been dangerously attacked by anti-American protestors in their car.
Pat Nixon also made news on those foreign trips she took along with the President. In Yugoslavia, she remarked that both its parliament and the U.S. Congress should have more women members among their representatives. She encouraged women to run for office and even stated that she would support a qualified woman candidate regardless of her political party affiliation. Famously, she toured the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China with the President during his historic 1972 trips to those communist nations and became a living symbol of the U.S. government. For example, while Nixon was in closed-door meetings most of the time with officials in China, the international media followed Pat Nixon in her bright red coat as she met with workers, students, dancers, farmers and others living everyday lives. Joining the President in his 1969 trip to South Vietnam, she became the first First Lady to visit a combat zone, flying just 18 miles from Saigon in an open helicopter and accompanied by Secret Service agents draped with bandoleers.
The Vietnam War dominated the first part of the Administration and Americans who either supported or opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam shadowed many of Pat Nixon’s public appearances. Pat Nixon stated that the actual servicemen who were in Vietnam or who had returned home from the war knew the situation better than anyone else at home; the statement seemed to underline the conflict many Americans felt about the Vietnam War, supporting the concept and the actual troops, if not the devastation of war itself. Vigorously supporting her husband’s running of the war and defense of freedom there and saying she would give her own life for the effort, she voiced her support of amnesty for those men who had left the U.S. to avoid the draft. She was also “appalled” at the killing of four antiwar protestors at Kent State University by Ohio National Guardsmen.
While she continued to feel a deep ambivalence about the cost of politics to her personal life, Pat Nixon enthusiastically supported the President’s run for a second term in 1972 because she hoped to see congressional action on his welfare reform, environmental and health care reform proposals. She regularly read and marked the Congressional Record, Administration issue papers, studies and reports. Pat Nixon attended the first Nixon Cabinet meeting and at least one domestic briefing given to presidential advisors. In private, she could often offer devastating and pointed critical advice to the President; she did not seek to unravel or resolve a specific political issue but rather to offer a strategic approach to problems he faced. She did not believe, for example, that it had been a wise decision to have the Vice President Spiro Agnew so bluntly attack the national media.
Pat Nixon first learned about the criminal actions that came to be cumulatively known as the Watergate scandal and soon come to engulf the Administration only from the media. She and her daughter had been specifically left uniformed by the President and his advisors of the details of their actions and decisions as they were in the midst of it all. When the First Lady first comprehended the potential damage that the secret tape recordings made by the President could create, she offered the unsolicited advice that he destroy them while they were still legally considered private property – advice he did not follow. While she fully believed her husband was innocent and telling the truth to the American people, she became deeply disturbed by how isolated he became within a small circle of advisors. She had never had a good working relationship with his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, and his aide, John Ehrlichman, who had both, at times, sought to overrule decisions of Pat Nixon and her staff; she was relieved when they both resigned in the spring of 1973. When the threat of impeachment became real in late July of 1974, Pat Nixon advised her husband not to resign because of the blanket criminal indictment that might ensue, suggesting instead that he fight each individual article of impeachment. Once he decided to resign, however, she began packing their possessions and making the immediate arrangements for their return to California. He resigned on August 9, 1974.
Post-Presidential Life:
The immediate years following Nixon’s resignation and his and Pat Nixon’s return to their San Clemente, California estate “La Casa Pacifica” were difficult. Pat Nixon helped to maintain the former president through a series of traumas, ranging from legal wrangling resulting from his resignation to physical disability. In late 1974, he nearly died from phlebitis and other complications resulting from it, and then suffered through a depression.
In July 1976, Pat Nixon suffered a stroke, resulting in the temporary loss of speech and use of her left side. Through a rigorous physical therapy routine, she was able to rehabilitate full use of her motor and speaking skills, but her strength would remain uncertain. She most enjoyed the years following 1980 when she and the former president relocated to the East Coast where they were able to spend time with their children and grandchildren. Pat Nixon only rarely permitted the use of her name for various projects, including a San Clemente historical celebration, a fundraising effort to renovate and re-interpret the Smithsonian Institution’s First Lady’s exhibit, and a Carter Center conference on women and the U.S. Constitution. As a former First Lady, she only appeared at three public events, the dedication of Pat Nixon School (1975) in the Los Angeles area, named for her; the dedication of the Richard Nixon Birthplace and Museum (1990) in Yorba Linda, California and the dedication of the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum (1991). She accompanied her husband back to China during his first of several return visits to that nation, but never joined him on the four trips he made back to the White House.
Death:
22 June, 1993
Park Ridge, New Jersey
Burial: Richard Nixon Birthplace and Museum
Yorba Linda, California
China and India are both hungry for Burma’s vast natural riches. But will Burma’s people pay the price or can this Southeast Asian backwater finally enter the 21st century?
When geography changes — as when the Suez Canal joined Europe to the Indian Ocean, or when the railroads transformed the American West and the Russian East — old patterns of contact disappear and new ones take hold, turning strangers into neighbors and transforming backwaters into zones of new strategic significance. Entire groups decline or vanish; others rise in importance.
Over these next few years, Asia’s geography will see a fundamental reorientation, bringing China and India together as never before across what was once a vast and neglected frontier stretching over a thousand miles from Kolkata to the Yangtze River basin. And Burma, long seen in Western policy circles as little more than an intractable human rights conundrum, may soon sit astride one of the world’s newest and most strategically significant crossroads. Mammoth infrastructure projects are taming a once inhospitable landscape. More importantly, Burma and adjacent areas, which had long acted as a barrier between the two ancient civilizations, are reaching demographic and environmental as well as political watersheds. Ancient barriers are being broken, and the map of Asia is being redone.
For millennia, India and China have been separated by near impenetrable jungle, deadly malaria, and fearsome animals, as well as the Himalayas and the high wastelands of the Tibetan plateau. They have taken shape as entirely distinct civilizations, strikingly dissimilar in race, language, and customs. To reach India from China or vice versa, monks, missionaries, traders, and diplomats had to travel by camel and horse thousands of miles across the oasis towns and deserts of Central Asia and Afghanistan, or by ship over the Bay of Bengal and then through the Strait of Malacca to the South China Sea.
But as global economic power shifts to the East, the configuration of the East is changing, too. The continent’s last great frontier is disappearing, and Asia will soon be woven together as never before.
At the heart of the changes is Burma. Burma is not a small country; it is as big in size as France and Britain combined, but its population of 60 million is tiny compared with the 2.5 billion combined populations of its two massive neighbors. It is the missing link between China and India.
It is an unlikely 21st-century nexus. Burma is one of the world’s poorest countries, wracked by a series of seemingly unending armed conflicts, and ruled for nearly five decades by one military or military-dominated regime after another. In 1988, following the brutal suppression of a pro-democracy uprising, a new junta took power, agreeing to cease fires with former communist and ethnic insurgents and seeking to unwind years of self-imposed isolation. But its repressive policies soon led to Western sanctions and this, together with growing corruption and continued mismanagement, meant that any hope of even economic improvement quickly dimmed.
By the mid-1990s the view of Burma in the West became fairly set — a timeless backwater, brutal and bankrupt, the realm of juntas and drug lords, as well as courageous pro-democracy activists, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. A place worthy of humanitarian attention, but unconnected to the much bigger story of Asia’s global rise. China, however, viewed things differently. Where the West saw a problem and offered mainly platitudes and a little aid, China recognized an opportunity and began changing facts on the ground.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, China began unveiling plans to join its interior to the shores of the Indian Ocean. By the mid-2000s, these plans were being turned into reality. New highways are starting to slice through the highlands of Burma, linking the Chinese hinterland directly to both India and the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal. One highway will lead to a brand-new, multi-billion-dollar port, facilitating the export of manufactured goods from China’s western provinces while bringing in Persian Gulf and African oil, oil that will be transported along a new 1,000-mile-long pipeline to refineries in China’s hitherto landlocked Yunnan province. Another, parallel pipeline will carry Burma’s newfound offshore natural gas to light up the fast-growing cities of Kunming and Chongqing. And more than $20 billion will be invested in a high-speed rail line. Soon, journeys that once took months to make may soon be completed in less than a day. By 2016, Chinese planners have declared, it will be possible to travel by train all the way from Rangoon to Beijing, part of a grand route they say will one day extend to Delhi and from there to Europe.
Burma could become China’s California. Chinese authorities have long been vexed by the soaring gap in income between its prosperous eastern cities and provinces and the many poor and backward areas to the west. What China is lacking is another coast to provide its remote interior with an outlet to the sea and to its growing markets around the world. Chinese academics have written about a “Two Oceans” policy. The first is the Pacific. The second would be the Indian Ocean. In this vision, Burma becomes a new bridge to the Bay of Bengal and the seas beyond.
China’s leadership has also written about its “Malacca dilemma.” China is heavily dependent on foreign oil, and approximately 80 percent of these oil imports currently pass through the Strait of Malacca, near Singapore, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and just 1.7 miles across at its narrowest point. For Chinese strategists, the strait is a natural choke point where future enemies could cut off foreign energy supplies. An alternative route needed to be found. Again, access across Burma would be advantageous, lessening dependence on the strait and at the same time dramatically reducing the distance from China’s factories to markets in Europe and around the Indian Ocean. That Burma itself is rich in the raw materials needed to power industrial development in China’s southwest is an added plus.
Meanwhile, India has its own ambitions. With the “Look East” policy, successive Indian governments since the 1990s have sought to revive and strengthen age-old ties to the Far East, across the sea and overland across Burma, creating new connections over once impassable mountains and jungle barriers. Just north of where China is building its pipeline, along the Burmese coast, India is starting work to revive another seaport with a special road and waterway to link to Assam and India’s other isolated and conflict-ridden northeastern states. There is even a proposal to reopen the Stilwell Road, built by the Allies at epic cost during World War II and then abandoned, a road that would tie the easternmost reaches of India with China’s Yunnan province. Indian government officials speak of Burma’s importance for the security and future development of their country’s northeast — while also keeping a cautious eye on China’s dynamic push into and across Burma.
Watching these developments, some have warned of a new Great Game, leading to conflict between the world’s largest emerging powers. But others predict instead the making of a new Silk Road, like the one in ancient and medieval times that coupled China to Central Asia and Europe. It’s important to remember that this geographic shift comes at a very special moment in Asia’s history: a moment of growing peace and prosperity at the conclusion of a century of tremendous violence and armed conflict and centuries more of Western colonial domination. The happier scenario is far from impossible.
The generation now coming of age is the first to grow up in an Asia that is both post-colonial and (with a few small exceptions) postwar. New rivalries may yet fuel 21st-century nationalisms and lead to a new Great Game, but there is great optimism nearly everywhere, at least among the middle classes and the elites that drive policy: a sense that history is on Asia’s side and a desire to focus on future wealth, not hark back to the dark times that have only recently been left behind.
And a crossroads through Burma would not be a simple joining up of countries. The parts of China and India that are being drawn together over Burma are among the most far-flung parts of the two giant states, regions of unparalleled ethnic and linguistic diversity where people speak literally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages, of forgotten kingdoms like Manipur and Dali, and of isolated upland societies that were, until recently, beyond the control of Delhi or Beijing. They are also places where ballooning populations have only now filled out a once very sparsely peopled and densely forested landscape. New countries are finding new neighbors. Whereas the fall of the Berlin Wall reopened contacts that had only temporarily been suspended, the transformations under way are enabling entirely new encounters. There is the possibility of a cosmopolitan nexus at the heart of Asia.
But is a modern-day Silk Road really in the making? Until earlier this year, it was difficult to be optimistic, with Burma at the heart of the transformations and the news from Burma remaining so bad.Ordinary people were as poor as ever, political repression was the order of the day, and the Chinese projects under way seemed to be doing more to fuel corruption and devastate the environment than anything else. Fresh elections were held late last year, but they were widely condemned as fraudulent.
Over the past several months, however, there have been increasing signs that better days might lie ahead.
This March, the junta was formally dissolved and power handed over to a quasi-civilian government headed by a retired general, U Thein Sein. President Thein Sein quickly began to exceed (admittedly low) expectations, speaking out against graft, stressing the need for political reconciliation, appointing technocrats and businessmen to key positions, inviting exiles to return home, announcing fresh peace talks with rebel groups, and even reaching out to Aung San Suu Kyi, not long before released from house arrest. Poverty reduction strategies have been formulated, taxes lowered, trade liberalized, and a slew of new laws on everything from banking reform to environmental regulation prepared for legislative approval. Parliament, after a shaky start, began to take on a life of its own. Media censorship has been significantly relaxed, and opposition parties and Burma’s burgeoning NGO community have been allowed a degree of freedom not seen in half a century.
It’s a fragile opening. The president seems determined to push ahead, but his is not the only voice. There are other powerful ex-generals in parliament and in the cabinet, and the structures of repression remain intact. Burma is at a critical turning point.
And now, for the first time, Burma’s politics matter beyond its immediate borders. If this opportunity for positive change is lost, Burma may remain a miserably run place — but it will no longer be an isolated backwater. The great infrastructure projects under way will continue, as will the much longer-term processes of change. Asia’s frontier will close and a new but dangerous crossroads will be the result.
But if Burma indeed takes a turn for the better and we see an end to decades of armed conflict, a lifting of Western sanctions, democratic government, and broad-based economic growth, the impact could be dramatic. China’s hinterland will suddenly border a vibrant and young democracy, and India’s northeast will be transformed from a dead end into its bridge to the Far East. What happens next in Burma could be a game-changer for all Asia.
Thant Myint-U has served on three U.N. peacekeeping operations, as well as with the U.N. Department of Political Affairs, and is a former fellow at Cambridge University, where he taught history. He is the author of Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, from which this essay is adapted.
I was so excited for what lay ahead, I nearly forgot to wave goodbye to my parents. Armed with a college diploma, my first job offer, a one-way ticket to Paris and a new pair of heels, I was ready to take on anything. Little did I know, I would be back in New York seven short months later. But my parents would not be taking pictures at the airport or chatting about my future plans. I would be in a wheelchair, too weak to walk.
In Paris, the doctors had struggled to make sense of my symptoms — anemia, fatigue and persistent infections. They ran test after test — I was even hospitalized for a week — but the results were inconclusive. I was just 22, but the doctors released me with a diagnosis of “burnout syndrome” and orders to rest for a month.
Rest didn’t help. Desperate for an answer, I Googled my symptoms. It seemed I could have anything from the mumps to diabetes to something called cat-scratch fever. The word “cancer” also caught my eye. The first doctors I saw in the United States thought I was depressed and suggested antidepressants. I said no and insisted they keep looking.
A week later, my worst fears were confirmed. “Leukemia,” the doctor said, dropping the word like a bomb. Soon enough I would learn the specific diagnosis: myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder of the bone marrow. In my case, the disease growing inside me had morphed into acute myeloid leukemia. I would need intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to save my life.
The long-awaited answer reverberated in my head, and I found myself slowly pronouncing the syllables: loo-KEEM-ee-ah.
Where cancer is concerned, it’s safe to say there’s no such thing as good timing. But having a life-threatening disease in your 20s carries a special set of psychological and social challenges. It defies our very definition of what ought to be. Youth and health are supposed to be synonymous. If only I could sue my body for breach of contract with the natural order of things.
Cancer magnifies the in-betweenness of young adulthood: You’re not a child anymore, yet you’re not fully ready to live in the adult world, either. After my diagnosis, I moved back into my childhood bedroom. And as I get sicker, I increasingly rely on my parents to take care of me. But at the same time, I’ve had no choice but to grow up fast. Daunting questions that most of my peers won’t have to consider for many more years have become my urgent, everyday concerns: How will I hold onto health insurance if I’m unable to work? Will I be able to have children? How long will I live?
Even inside the hospital’s oncology ward, being a young adult with cancer can make a person feel like a misfit. I’m usually the youngest patient on the floor. In fact, I’m the youngest person my doctor has ever treated with this disease. (A vast majority of patients with my form of leukemia are over 60).
Young adults might just be oncology’s “tweens” — too old for the pediatric cancer floor but equally out of place in an adult oncology unit. I’m not suggesting that it’s worse to be young and sick, but rather that young adults with cancer are a less visible demographic, swept up in the mix of adult cancer statistics.
A 2006 report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services presents a shocking reality: Despite great strides in treatment for most cancer patients, adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 39 have seen little or no improvement in cancer survival rates for decades. The report describes how survival rates have “been hampered because cancer risk and adverse cancer outcomes have been under-recognized in this population.” It points to the fact that health care providers are often not on the lookout for cancer in this age group and, as in my case, misdiagnose symptoms — or miss them altogether.
Nine months, eight hospitalizations and seven chemotherapy treatments later, I’m realizing that age is an inextricable component of how we experience cancer.
Cancer has forced me to pause my life at a time when my peers are just beginning theirs. For my friends, most of them young adults in their 20s, this is an exciting time as they look forward to starting new jobs, traveling the world, going to parties, dating and finding love, and all the rest of the small and big milestones that are part of early adulthood.
Like my peers, I have yet to fully define who I want to become. But as a young cancer patient, it’s difficult to see ahead when I’m fighting for my life. I don’t know what the future holds. I just know I want to be there.
Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 23-year-old writer from Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
HSIPAW, Myanmar — As Chinese workers in hard hats and red overalls bulldoze deep trenches into the orange soil across northern Myanmar for gas and oil pipelines to China, China’s largest energy conglomerate is paying cash for land and trees in the pipelines’ path, and building schools and health clinics for some of the poorest people on earth.
The compensation offered by the China National Petroleum Corporation reflects a bitter lesson China learned about doing business in the new, more democratic Myanmar when construction on a major Chinese hydroelectricdam there was suspended last year after a groundswell of outrage erupted over what was seen as China’s imperious attitude toward Myanmar’s people and its environment.
The gentler approach also reflects hard calculations in an escalating battle with the United States for regional influence. As Myanmar loosens the grip of decades of military dictatorship and improves ties with the United States, China fears a threat to a strategic partnership that offers access to the Indian Ocean and a long-sought shortcut for oil deliveries from the Middle East.
With the United States reasserting itself in Asia, and an emboldened China projecting military and economic power as never before, each side is doing whatever it can to gain the favor of economically struggling, strategically placed Myanmar.
The Obama administration would like a swift foreign policy success in an election year. Having another country move from dictatorship toward democracy on Mr. Obama’s watch would be a political achievement; having a friendly country on China’s border would be a strategic one.
But the United States is handicapped in delivering meaningful assistance by economic sanctions that Congress is reluctant to lift. Myanmar must conduct fair parliamentary elections on Sunday, settle conflicts with ethnic minorities and release more political prisoners before more than two decades of harsh sanctions can be removed, administration officials say.
China, Myanmar’s chief patron for decades, wants to maintain a relationship that will allow unfettered access to Myanmar’s energy resources. But the Chinese, accustomed to unwavering loyalty from Myanmar at the United Nations and other diplomatic forums, are faced with a new government led by President Thein Sein that has shown signs of wanting to be less dependent on its old friend and more responsive to the concerns of its citizens.
In perhaps the most visible symbol of Myanmar’s new openness to the West, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited in December, the first secretary of state to do so in more than 50 years. Photographs of her shaking hands with the revered opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, women of similar age in white jackets, their hair drawn back in ponytails, radiant smiles on their faces, now hang in cafes and homes, an impossibility six months ago.
Mrs. Clinton tempered her visit with warnings that economic sanctions would not be lifted as fast as Myanmar would like. Even so, the United States restored full diplomatic relations, a reward for Myanmar’s political and economic changes so far.
In a counterpunch, Chinese officials blamed American meddling for the suspension of the $3.6 billion dam project last September, and said the American diplomatic foray was a direct challenge in its backyard.
“It is hard for the Chinese to see the United States push into Myanmar as not about China,” said Yun Sun, a Chinese foreign policy expert based in Washington. “The United States is a global power. It’s natural it would want a relationship with Myanmar. But China had a monopoly, and if you have to share it, it makes it difficult to swallow. That’s why the Chinese are angry.”
A prominent Chinese historian, Qin Hui of Tsinghua University in Beijing, warned his government that blaming the West meddling for the dam rebuff missed the point. The people of Myanmar had expressed “exceedingly broad-based opposition” to building a dam at the headwaters of the Irrawaddy River, the nation’s biggest waterway, he wrote.
China still enjoys a strong position in Myanmar.
The two authoritarian governments have known how to do business in closed-door deals on arms sales and megaprojects that critics say are laced with corruption. While Myanmar was isolated by international sanctions, China was its main foreign investor, and has the advantage of proximity over a long border. Beijing has plowed billions of dollars into the country, and the United States cannot compete with that, American officials say.
Washington is limited under the sanctions to offering about $30 million a year in humanitarian aid, an American official said, even as the United States Agency for International Development seeks to establish a presence.
Sandwiched between the United States and China are some Myanmar businessmen who see American-backed reforms as the best solution to the chronically weak economy and fear that the slow easing of American sanctions could work in China’s favor.
One businessman, who declined to be quoted by name because free speech can still be an uncertain proposition in Myanmar, said that if the United States insisted on maintaining sanctions and the economy failed to take off, China would come to the rescue with the old-style cronyism of big loans and huge infrastructure projects. The new gas pipeline alone, scheduled to open next year, will bring billions of dollars in royalties and transit fees. The oil pipeline to be completed after that will also offer sizable revenue.
For that reason, Washington needs to take a more pragmatic approach, said Aung Naing Oo, the Burmese deputy director of the Vahu Development Institute, a Thailand-based organization set up by Burmese refugees. “They should do more than talking,” he said of the Obama administration. “By continuing the sanctions, the United States is inadvertently helping those who want to take us back to the old ways.”
For now, China feels burned by Myanmar on the dam project.
The dam had provoked an outpouring of nationwide opposition, backed by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, and brought into the open a nascent antipathy to China, as well as to the ethnic Chinese population.
The dam on the Irrawaddy River, which has near mythic significance in Burmese culture, was being built by one of China’s biggest state-run power companies, China Power Investment. About 90 percent of the dam’s power was destined for Yunnan Province in China although, according to the World Bank, less than 20 percent of households in Myanmar have electricity.
Thousands of villagers were forcibly resettled by the military. They were given some compensation, including 21-inch television sets.
Opposition to the dam remains strong near the site at Myitsone. Some residents of the nearby village of Tanghpre tried to return home this month from a relocation camp. At the red-brick Roman Catholic Church of the Columbine Mission, Sister Lydia sobbed as she told how the police had detained her when she helped some of her congregation return.
On March 17, Sister Lydia lost her battle. The villagers she had assisted were bundled up by the military and taken back to their Chinese-built homes in the relocation camp. A sign planted in Tanghpre said: government property.
In a sign that the company has not given up, Lu Qizhou, the head of China Power Investment, said at a news conference in Beijing this month that mistakes had been made and that the company would try to take better care of the local population. Whether the Myanmar government succumbs to Chinese displeasure and allows the dam construction to resume remains unclear.
Meanwhile, the pipeline project — which starts at a deep-sea port on the Bay of Bengal and is being built by China National Petroleum, operators of projects in nearly a dozen countries — proceeds at an urgent pace. Trucks laden with pipes trundle through villages around the clock. Bulldozers dig trenches 12 hours a day.
The company is making relatively generous payments to cash-starved farmers to move off the rich soil that grew luxuriant crops of watermelons, castor beans and mangoes.
A quarter-acre farm fetches about $10,000, a large mango tree about $400, according to local businessmen in Hsipaw. In a flash of the kind of corporate responsibility increasingly practiced by Western natural resource companies, the Chinese corporation recently built a health clinic in one of the villages close to the pipeline, a sturdy concrete structure that contrasts with the flimsy bamboo houses.
About six miles north east of Mandalay, the second biggest city, the company donated a new school.
“They built a pipeline near here for their own economy,” said Daw Swe Oo, a math teacher. “They take a lot of our resources and donate back a little here and there. But I am just happy and excited to have a nice new school to teach in.”
SWITZERLAND SIGNS AMENDED TAX DEAL WITH GERMANY OVER OFFSHORE FUNDS
(The Wall Street Journal)
German and Swiss government officials, in an effort to end a long-running dispute between the two neighbouring countries over tax evasion and bank secrecy, signed a deal on Thursday that would tax wealthy German citizens’ investment income in Switzerland.
Under the pact, unreported savings of rich Germans will be taxed at 21% to 41%, up from the previously planned 19% to 34%, while future capital gains will be taxed at 26.4%. In addition, those Germans inheriting bank accounts in Switzerland can choose between reporting their new assets and paying the respective individual tax rate or paying a tax rate of more than 50% and retaining anonymity. The deal will need to be ratified by lawmakers in both countries if it is to be implemented by 2013.
HINDUJA PRIVATE BANK TO RAMP UP COMMODITIES TRADE FINANCE DESK
(Reuters)
Hinduja Bank, the Geneva-based private banking arm of the eponymous Indian family-owned conglomerate, intends to recruit five employees to double its commodities trade finance desk, chief executive Charles de Boissezon told Reuters on Thursday.
The Swiss-based wealth manager, with $3bn in client assets, also said that it plans to expand into India and South America, and begin financing oil deals.
UBS FINDS SURGE IN FIXED INCOME TRADING AMONG PRIVATE CLIENTS
(Bloomberg)
UBS’ two-year-old Investment Products and Services arm, which daily circulates research ideas among almost 4,200 client advisers at its private banking business, posted a jump in client trading this year as fixed-income sales increased, unit head William Kennedy told Bloomberg.
The Zurich-based division, which helps UBS target ultra-high net worth individuals with minimum investable assets worth Sfr50m (€41.6m), has seen “significantly” higher transaction volume this year in fixed income, compared with 2011, Kennedy said. The Swiss bank’s foreign exchange business “also remains robust with client activity levels at historic highs”, he added.
RATHBONE ARM SNAPS UP LONDON WEALTH MANAGER
(Investment Week)
London-based wealth manager RM Walkden & Company has accepted a £948,393 takeover bid from Rathbone Investment Management.
The move marks the latest step by the subsidiary of FTSE 250-listed Rathbone Brothers to expand operations, following a string of recent recruitments.
SWISS CENTRAL BANK MAKES FRESH INTERVENTION IN CURRENCY MARKETS
(The Daily Telegraph)
The Swiss National Bank on Thursday intervened again in currency markets, following a euro sell-off amid fresh concerns over the eurozone debt crisis that triggered panic buying of the Swiss franc.
The euro fell below the SNB’s franc ceiling of Sfr1.20 for the first time since the central bank stepped in last September, with the “Swissie” appreciating to Sfr1.1992 before falling back to Sfr 1.2020 against the euro.
MORGAN STANLEY WIDENS ‘CLAWBACK’ PROVISIONS FOR BONUSES
(Financial Times)
Morgan Stanley, which has been reducing salaries and awarding more bonuses to its bankers in the form of “deferred compensation”, on Thursday outlined another round of tweaking to its compensation structure, broadening “clawback” provisions for bonus payouts to top executives.
In a bid to better align staff pay with organisational performance, the Wall Street bank said in a proxy filing that the cancellation of bonuses “can be triggered” in situations “ranging from substantial losses to ethical lapses and include failure to appropriately supervise or manage an employee”. Morgan Stanley also revealed a 25% decline in the annual remuneration package for chief executive James Gorman last year, to $10.5m.
BREVAN HOWARD PARTNER PAYS $8M FOR OPRAH PENTHOUSE
(New York Post)
Mark Hillery, a London-based partner of Brevan Howard, and his wife Melissa have purchased Oprah’s penthouse in New York for $7.9m, broker Anjollie Feradov, who represented the couple, revealed.
Oprah paid $7.1m to acquire the 2,530-square-foot condo four years ago.
The proposed takeover by the London Stock Exchange of LCH.Clearnet, through the acquisition of a 60% stake, was approved by shareholders of both companies. The offer will give the London bourse access to the growing market for central clearing. Regulators are keen to push as much of the $700 trillion over-the-counter derivates market on to clearing houses as possible. See article»
Exuberance all round
» Investors toasted a prosperous first quarter for stockmarkets. In the first three months of 2012 the S&P 500 index rose by 12%, its best first-quarter performance since 1998. Japan’s Nikkei 225 had its strongest first quarter for 24 years, recouping nearly all the ground it lost in 2011. Emerging markets also bounced back: India’s Sensex was up by 13%, while the main Hong Kong index grew by 12%. Europe’s stockmarkets fared well. Germany’s Dax 30 rose by 18% and even Greece’s main index was up by 7%; last year half its value was wiped out.
» Finance ministers in the euro zone agreed to raise the combined ceiling of the currency block’s temporary and permanent bail-out facilities to €700 billion ($930 billion). Some argue the rescue pot should be bigger still.
» Sino-Forest filed for bankruptcy protection. The company was one of China’s biggest wood producers until it was accused last year of fraud by Muddy Waters, a short-seller that has made a name for itself by investigating the accounts of Chinese companies. It is now being sued by Sino-Forest for defamation.
» More questions were raised about the auditing of quick-spurt technology companies after Groupon revised down its quarterly sales. The online discounter had not accounted in its earnings for the high level of refunds it had to pay. This comes shortly after Congress passed the JOBS Act, which eases regulatory burdens on firms like Groupon that seek to capitalise on their dynamism through a speedy IPO.
» Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, criticised China’s big banks for acting like a “monopoly” and said private capital should be allowed “to flow into the finance sector”. Mr Wen’s comments could hasten reforms in the financial sector. On the same day that he spoke China’s securities regulator almost tripled the amount of money that foreign funds can invest in capital markets, to $80 billion.
» The price of carbon permits in the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme plummeted to another record low, after data suggested that Europe had produced a smaller amount of polluting emissions last year than had been thought. The underlying reason why carbon prices have tanked is that the market is oversupplied with permits.
Workers’ increasing clout
» Apple supported the recommendations of a report by the Fair Labour Association into conditions at the factories in China that assemble its products. Foxconn, which runs the factories, reportedly said it would try to comply with FLA standards on working hours by July 2013. See article»
» Research In Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry smartphones, announced its first quarterly loss in seven years. Jim Balsillie, one of its former bosses, stepped down from the board and both the chief operating officer and the head of technology announced their departures. Thorsten Heins, the new chief executive, hopes to turn things around by focusing on BlackBerry’s strengths among corporate customers, rather than slogging it out with its rivals in the mass market.
» James Murdoch stepped down as chairman of BSkyB, a television broadcaster, further reducing his responsibilities at News Corporation’s British businesses. Mr Murdoch, son of Rupert, has been heavily criticised for his handling of last summer’s phone-hacking scandal at News Corp’s British newspapers.
» The soaring cost of petrol in America did not deter people from buying new cars in March. Chrysler sold more cars and small trucks than in any month since March 2008 and Nissan had its best month yet. Sales were up by 12% compared with a year ago at General Motors and by 5% at Ford.
» Molson Coors agreed to buy StarBev, a brewer in central and eastern Europe, in a €2.7 billion ($3.5 billion) deal.
This could turn ugly
» Avon, a pioneer in the beauty business, rejected a $10 billion takeover from Coty, a supplier of perfumes including the David Beckham and Celine Dion brands. Avon’s attractiveness lies in emerging markets, where it rakes in most of its income, but it has financial and legal woes and is searching for a new boss to replace Andrea Jung, one of America’s best-known female executives. Avon immediately slapped down Coty’s approach, describing it as “opportunistic”.
Aung San Suu Kyi entre au Parlement birman
lundi 2 avril 2012
Il suffit de voir les images de liesse à l’annonce de l’élection de Mme Aung San Suu Kyi pour comprendre le changement qui marque la Birmanie. Il y a à peine plus d’un an, Mme Suu Kyi était encore assignée à résidence et n’avait pu se présenter aux élections. Avec son parti, la Ligue nationale pour la démocratie, elle a gagné 43 sièges (au deux chambres et dans les régions). C’est dire le chemin parcouru.
Certes un bulletin de vote ne fait pas la démocratie – les élections ne concernaient que 48 sièges sur les 664 que comptent les deux chambres, et l’ex-général Thein Sein devenu président garde une grande partie des cartes politiques et économiques en main. Et la question des minorités toujours en guerre n’est toujours pas réglée. Mais une étape est franchie.
En décembre 2011, le président Thein Sein a donné l’ordre à l’armée de stopper les combats contre les groupes indépendantistes shans et kachins. Mais le calme reste précaire.
Depuis que le pouvoir birman se donne des allures de gouvernement civil, tout se précipite : légalisation du parti de l’opposante Aung San Suu Kyi, libération de prisonniers politiques, visite d’un dirigeant américain pour la première fois depuis un demi-siècle…
Le 13 novembre dernier, sa peine d’emprisonnement effectuée, Mme Aung San Suu Kyi était libérée par les généraux au pouvoir. Par ce geste, la junte espère engager des négociations pour lever l’embargo occidental.
Ref. Le Monde
Social Issues of Myanmar:
Burma has always been a natural-resource rich nations considering the fact that its sino- Maoist dictator Ne Win pretty much channelled and isolated the financial wealth away from ordinary Burmese citizens leaving them very impoverished. Finance and budgets are not transparent.
Now there is privatisation of national assets to local oligarchs, corrupt politicians, Asean sharks from neighbour nations who broker with greed, and also rapid industrialization of rural land and communities which should be questioned. We should not accept capitalist Asean industrialists polluting the environment and taking advantage of modern Myanmar peoples’ assets, right ? A point to contemplate.
In his own words: the rise and fall of Khin Nyunt
The quiet narrow street leading to our destination is lined with big houses and mansions once inhabited by some of Myanmar’s former ruling military elite. Most of them, including the now officially retired Senior General Than Shwe, have moved to new homes in the capital city of Nay Pyi Taw, many with new civilian jobs. However, one formerly very high-ranking member of the old military regime, former prime minister General Khin Nyunt, is still living in Yangon. No new house has been built for him in Nay Pyi Taw; in fact until recently he was under house arrest at his home in Yangon.
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: Former Myanmar prime minister and military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Yangon on April 1.
Once dubbed the “prince of evil” by the Western media, Gen Khin Nyunt was freed in January by the new government led by President Thein Sein, himself a former general and a junior to Gen Khin Nyunt in the old regime. The charges levelled against him in October 2004 by the now-defunct State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) led by Sen Gen Than Shwe, were “disobedience” and “corruption”.
Looking back on his years in power and subsequent downfall, Gen Khin Nyunt says he has no regrets.
“I have a clear conscience as far as my service to the country. I happened to be at a particular turn in my country’s history. That was not my choice. I have been a sitting duck for all kinds of politically motivated attacks from all quarters, domestic and abroad. I understand this is not unique to me. This has been the case in many other countries too. I have never abused the power entrusted in me or built personal wealth,” he said.
“I never play golf,” he said suddenly. “My mentor U Tint Swe told me not to. You lose your precious time for work and it will also cost you risky social talks. I returned all the golf sets sent to me as gifts.
“I would say, in doing my job in the past, some of my colleagues might have misconceptions about me. However, I let all bygones be bygones. I will not waste time digging up or straightening out the past. I devote most of my time to religion now. Last week, I donated 1,000 pairs of robes to the Sangha to honour the 75th birthday of the Venerable Thitagu Sayadaw, one of the spiritual authorities of my faith,” said Gen Khin Nyunt.
The general has, he says, abandoned any aspirations to once again ascend the political heights. He has no desire to return to public life or politics, at least in the near future.
“Right now, I am devoting my time to running a small charity organisation in my hometown. I have been, and I always will be, just an ordinary citizen of the country, but of course with all the rights and responsibilities of an ordinary citizen in a democracy. I am satisfied with that.”
He and his family spent seven years in custody, but the original term of imprisonment far exceeded his life span. Two of his key followers, Colonel San Pwint and Brigadier Tin Ngwe, remain in jail. Another, Colonel Kyaw Win, died in prison.
At the time of Gen Khin Nyunt’s fall from grace rumours circulated among the public that Gen Than Shwe had removed him to pre-empt a coup. Three truckloads of gold ingots were said to have been found in his home compound and carted away by state authorities. However, the secret trial against him was brief, and the public was kept in the dark about what took place.
Gen Khin Nyunt is considered by some to be among the least corrupt and most moderate of the ruling elite of his time, but the once powerful general gained notoriety in the Western media for being the intelligence chief of a military junta which fiercely oppressed its political opponents, including Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy (NLD). Gen Khin Nyunt is said to have been atrocious in his dealings with anti-junta politicians.
SHOT CALLERS: Former dictator Ne Win, above, and retired Senior General Than Shwe.
Gen Khin Nyunt is also known as the driver behind the “seven-step road map to democracy”, which had a role in Myanmar’s current political reforms. The idea of a path to reconciliation between the Myanmar junta and the Western-backed NLD was first put forward in late 2003 or early 2004 by the Thai government led by Thaksin Shinawatra. It was known as the “Bangkok Process”. Gen Khin Nyunt visited Bangkok and appropriated the outline, and soon after Myanmar resumed its long stalled national convention to draft a constitution.
Less than a year later Gen Khin Nyunt was put on trial, blacklisted because of corruption within military intelligence organisations he headed and possibly also his overtures to ethnic groups and the pro-democracy camp and/or jealousy or disapproval from the power elite over lucrative business deals to which he was connected. At the time of Gen Khin Nyunt’s arrest, his son Ye Naing Win was an executive for Myanmar’s only internet service provider, Bagan Cybertech, which had just signed a multi-million dollar deal with Shin Satellite Plc, controlled by the family of former prime minister Thaksin, to lease transponder capacity. Bagan Cybertech was subsequently taken over by the military.
THE CLIMB TO THE TOP
Gen Khin Nyunt has kept a low profile since his release from house arrest three months ago, and has turned down requests for interviews by the Burmese language programmes of Western media. As our car approached his house, our guide cautioned us not to take any photos without first seeking permission. As the gate swung open, a man led us to a waiting area next to the newly-painted mansion in the middle of a large compound.
Then another man led us into the inner sitting room inside the house. Within a few seconds, a smiling Gen Khin Nyunt emerged from another room.
With seven years of house arrest showing on his face, the 71-year-old former intelligence chief started the conversation with a story about his childhood. Born in a small agricultural town near the sea, about 50km southeast of Yangon, he has five elder sisters. His father was a country lawyer. He recalled his experience living under Japanese occupation as a boy. That experience motivated him to join the army as a cadet officer in 1959.
He talked fondly about his military mentor, Colonel Tint Swe. His rise to prominence began when he was only a captain. It was in the late 1970s, when Myanmar’s socialist dictator, General Ne Win, who seized power in a 1962 coup, was looking for a personal aide. He asked Tint Swe to find a trustworthy security officer for his household. Tint Swe sent Gen Khin Nyunt, but not before giving him a list of ”dos and don’ts”. Gen Khin Nyunt worked hard, and earned the trust of Gen Ne Win in six months.
After the downfall of Gen Ne Win in 1988, Gen Khin Nyunt became the frontman of a new regime led by General Saw Maung which harshly suppressed the student-led uprising of 1988 and locked out the NLD after its landslide 1990 election victory. It was Gen Khin Nyunt who drafted Order 1/90 for the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), declaring that the wining party had to wait for office until a new constitution was drawn up and approved by a referendum. The order made him the main target of attacks by the global media.
When Gen Saw Maung was quietly removed in 1992, apparently for his promise to return the military to the barracks after a general election, Gen Than Shwe, from the Engineering Corps, succeeded him. Gen Khin Nyunt also survived this transition of power and the junta later re-fashioned its mission _ from ”law and order restoration” to ”peace and development”, with a name change from SLORC to SPDC.
The SPDC’s stated aims _ infrastructure expansion and a switch to a market economy _ were almost missions impossible for the unpopular regime, especially as it was under Western-imposed economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the SPDC hung on to power, and Gen Khin Nyunt remained at centre stage until his downfall in late 2004.
ETHNIC PEACEMAKER
Asked what was his greatest achievement while in power, Gen Khin Nyunt replied without hesitation: ”Of course, my peace deals. Our indigenous brethren are basically simple and honest though they may have certain prejudices in their minds. But once they trust you, you can win everything.”
In addition to his mostly undisclosed dealings as head of military intelligence, Gen Khin Nyunt could be described as a ”workaholic” among those who were trying to end the longstanding ethnic conflicts that began with Myanmar’s independence from Britain in 1948. As ”secretary number one”, his other official position in the junta, he made numerous initiatives offering concessions to various armed minority groups.
The Kokang led by Phone Kyar Shin was the first of the 17 armed ethnic groups that made a ceasefire agreement with him. This group of Chinese descent were not happy with members of the Myanmar Communist Party roaming in their region, and were also weary of the long civil war. They did not believe their eyes, said Gen Khin Nyunt, when accompanied by a handful of officials he risked his life by walking into their territory in response to their invitation for him to make initial contacts for peace negotiations.
”It was like walking into a killing zone,” he said. ”There were hundreds of Kokang soldiers armed with rifles on high ridges on both sides of the hills.” He later told them he had entrusted his life into their hands. The dramatic gesture contributed to a breakthrough, and a series of ceasefire deals, including with the Wa and Kachin, followed suit.
Gen Khin Nyunt was also close to winning a comprehensive peace agreement with the Karen National Union under the late General Bo Mya. During their direct talks in Yangon in 2002, Gen Khin Nyunt hosted a birthday party for the KNU leader at a five-star hotel. By that time, Gen Bo Mya had already made up his mind and pledged to sign a peace agreement to end the civil war. However, Gen Bo Mya’s failing health delayed it, and KNU hard-liners subsequently foiled the peace plan, said Gen Khin Nyunt.
Asked why he had succeeded in dealing with minority groups, Gen Khin Nyunt said: ”I started out with what I could offer, not with my demands, and with absolute sincerity on my part. You must win their trust.”
Regarding the current impasse in the renewed peace efforts with the Kachin, he said: ”They have their tribal and religious leaders. Dealing with the KIO [Karen Independence Organisation] or the KIA alone is not enough.” He did not elaborate, but said he still remembers the cordial talks he had with KIO leaders like Tuja Manam and Colonel James Lum Dau.
Tuja Manam was one of the key participants in the process of writing Myanmar’s constitution, both in the national convention and later in the drafting commission from 1994 to 2008. After the new constitution was adopted, he resigned from the KIO in order to enter the new political landscape, of which he was an architect. But his attempt to stand in the 2010 general election was rejected by the SPDC, which suspected his old KIO past. He tried again in last Sunday’s by-elections, but the government cancelled all three constituencies in Kachin State, including his, for security reasons.
Col James Lum Dau, the KIO foreign affairs chief in Bangkok, also has been vocal in defending constructive engagement with the Myanmar military government.
Overall, Gen Khin Nyunt signed as many as 17 ceasefire deals and gave assistance to economic development schemes in ethnic territories. These initiatives, combined with the misconduct of hundreds of his followers who amassed personal wealth using him as their shield, could have been the recipe for his downfall.
CHANGING TIMES
Myanmar is a different country in 2012. With Mrs Suu Kyi’s decision to cooperate with the government led by President Thein Sein and contest last Sunday’s by-elections, a series of speedy liberalisation steps have taken place to the surprise of the world. Somehow a new kind of politics seems to be taking off in Myanmar. There are criticisms of the constitution and its stipulation that 25% of the membership of the National Assembly must be made up of active military personnel, but the daily motions, debates and votes in the elected assembly in Nay Pyi Taw are freely mirrored in the domestic media without prior approval of the state censor board, as was needed before. More than 200 weekly journals are thriving with a news-hungry readership.
Open mass meetings and events commemorating the struggle against the old regime are now tolerated. The number of tourists visiting Myanmar has increased almost overnight. Western media are optimistic, yet cautious, about the rapid political changes. Benedict Rogers of Christian Solidarity Worldwide captured this mood in an article published in the Christian Science Monitor, titled, ”Go on Thein Sein, surprise us.”
Foreign ministers and diplomats from Western democracies have rushed to Myanmar to appraise the thaw. Washington has sent special envoy Derek Mitchell six times in seven months to Yangon to meet Mrs Suu Kyi. Foreign observers were also allowed to monitor last Sunday’s by-elections, although there were complaints of inadequate access.
Twice in our conversation, Gen Khin Nyunt emphasised his code of ethics as a military officer. He said he was loyal to three things: the country, the institution (ie, the military), and his superiors. In 2002, the spoiled grandsons of Gen Ne Win planned a putsch against Gen Than Shwe, whom they despised. As intelligence chief, Gen Khin Nyunt had to arrest these young men he had once babysat. Those close to him said he was almost moved to tears, but he was determined to do his job.
Regarding speculation that he may have been behind an attempt on the life of Mrs Suu Kyi on May 30, 2003, when her convoy was attacked by pro-junta men on the outskirts of Depayin Township in Sagaing Division, Gen Khin Nyunt said it was him who actually saved her from the angry mob. ”I sent my men to snatch her from the mob that night and they brought her to safety at a nearby army cantonment,” he said.
The incident, known as the Depayin massacre, left at least 50 people dead, according to the opposition.
Many observers have indicated where Gen Khin Nyunt’s vulnerability lay at the time of his downfall. He did not have solid backing from any of the powerful regional military commanders who practically ruled the country as warlords during the long junta era. He had been a desk officer rather than a fighting commander in the field. While ordinary people feared him because he was the actual CEO of the state’s terror machine, army generals on the front lines disdained him. They gained enemies in the long war against ethnic groups, while Gen Khin Nyunt gained more friends through peace deals.
FAITH IN REFORMS
Gen Khin Nyunt sees the reforms now under way in Myanmar as an extension of the efforts he helped initiate during his time in office.
”President U Thein Sein is one of my old colleagues. I respect him as well as his new role in transforming our country into democracy. He is continuing what we have collectively endeavoured throughout the years. I wish him success in his work and I will regard his achievements as my own.
Gen Khin Nyunt says despite his reputation while in office he also respects democracy icon Mrs Suu Kyi.
”I once said that I regarded Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as my own [younger] sister. This remains the same, my brotherly admiration and respect for her resoluteness. I have a track record of trying my best to work together with civilian politicians of all shapes and ages. Unfortunately, certain situations needed more time to mature during my time. So I sincerely wish her success in collaborating with the new government and bringing our country to democracy.”
writer : Songpol Kaopatumtip
Myanmar activists warily test new right to protest Writer: TODD PITMAN, Associated Press
DAWEI, Myanmar (AP) — When 200 activists in green T-Shirts marched along a pristine Myanmar beach to protest plans for a coal plant, they expected a long, tough struggle against the powers that be. But then, something bizarre happened.
A deputy Cabinet minister asked for a meeting. He listened patiently to their concerns about pollution. And then he told them the government agreed: It would halt construction of the controversial 4,000-megawatt plant on Myanmar’s southern panhandle.
In a long-repressed country whose people have grown accustomed to living in fear of government authority, it all seemed too good to be true. Just last year, anyone who dared even demonstrate in public would have likely have been beaten or detained by security forces.
“We were shocked,” said Aung Zaw Hein of the activist group, the Dawei Development Association, which staged the protest last month. “He asked us, ‘do you love your region?’ Then he said, ‘We love it, too. We just need to work together.’”
Hein’s group takes no credit for the decision to halt the plant, though, and remains suspicious of government motives. But the fact that President Thein Sein’s administration would even sit down and listen to any protesters at all is a testament to the dramatic reforms now under way here.
It’s also a sign that Myanmar’s civil society is beginning to stir in ways that would have been unthinkable before.
For almost half a century, the country was ruled by a reclusive, xenophobic clique of army officers who cracked down hard on any perceived dissent. The junta finally ceded power last year to a nominally civilian government which has embarked on an unexpected wave of reforms — freeing political prisoners, allowing democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to run for parliament, opening the way for exiles to return.
Myanmar’s most vocal activist groups have traditionally been based abroad in places where they can speak freely without fear of arrest. But there are around 800 registered non-governmental organizations and some 20,000 community groups working inside the country on charity, health and development issues, said Thant Myint-U, a prominent Myanmar historian and author.
These local civil society groups have quietly pushed for reform for years, and are responsible for “a big part of the changes that have taken place in Myanmar,” he said.
Today, they are speaking up more than ever before, because “the political environment is far more open,” the historian added.
In December, Thein Sein lifted a ban on demonstrations — allowing environmental groups like the Dawei Development Association to protest legally.
The group was formed around the same time, and shortly afterward sent an open letter to the presidency calling for the coal project to be canceled.
On Jan. 4, the activists staged a peaceful march along Maungmakan beach just outside Dawei, a rundown town south of the commercial capital, Yangon. They wore T-shirts that said “No Coal” and “Only Green Development.” They took photos of themselves and posted them on the group’s nascent Facebook page. They handed out pamphlets explaining how the plant could taint Myanmar’s air and water.
A few days later, Deputy Railways Minister U Thaung Lwin asked to meet them. The official, who is chairman of a government committee managing a mass seaport project in Dawei that would include the coal plant, asked them “not to create a panic” by protesting the project, Hein recalled. Then he took them out to eat at a local guesthouse, and paid the tab.
Despite the apparent victory, the environmentalists still wonder how it happened.
“We’re grateful the government did what they did, but … we don’t trust them 100 percent yet,” Hein said.
Myo Aung, a local freelance journalist who also volunteers for the group, shared the sentiment. “There must be an ulterior motive,” he said.
While the government may have had concerns over pollution, it’s also possible a lack of funding played a part. The plant is an integral part of a behemoth $50 billion deep sea port project undertaken by Thailand’s Italian-Thai Development construction company, which has been slow to attract investors.
The military-backed government may also be trying to boost its popularity among a skeptical populace ahead of April 1 by-elections in which Suu Kyi will run for parliament for the first time. Thein Sein is eager to show democratic progress to get crippling Western sanctions lifted.
Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar’s economy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, said there was growing national resentment over the sell-off of the country’s natural resources abroad.
Much of the electricity the coal plant would have generated was destined for neighboring Thailand, and “in this case, the efforts of such (environmental) groups nicely coincided with the interests of the government,” Turnell said.
Authorities here have made at least one similar about-face before.
In late September, Thein Sein abruptly suspended a controversial Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam in the country’s north, the $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project.
Local activists praised that decision, too, but suspected it had more to do with the government’s desire to assert independence from China or squash an issue that could unite political opponents than to curb environmental damage.
Dawei’s environmentalists know they face plenty of challenges ahead.
A much smaller, 400-megawatt coal plant is still on the drawing board. It is needed for the seaport and a vast industrial complex which will link Myanmar’s Indian Ocean coast to the rest of Southeast Asia with railways, highways and oil and gas pipelines. Industrial estates will house refineries, a steel mill, a fertilizer plant and a petrochemical complex. Some 20,000 villagers will be evicted from their homes.
Hein said his group’s objective was not to stop the mega-project, which could help an undeveloped region where jobs are scarce, but rather to “make sure this is done responsibly, with transparency.”
That goal will be especially crucial as international investors increasingly rush in to tap into a country widely considered one of Asia’s last unspoiled frontiers.
U Tin Maung Swe, who chairs a government body helping oversee the Dawei project, said experts were studying other ways to fuel the still-hoped for 4,000 megawatt power plant.
He spoke of environment-friendly possibilities like hydropower, solar power, wind power — just the kind of “green” options the Dawei Development Association would like them to explore.
But if none of that works, Swe said, “at last, we will choose coal-fire power.”
While the major non-American Western oil companies adopt and wait-and-see policy and US firms remain barred by Washington’s sanctions, shadowy oil enterprises are gaining footholds in Burma.
Among firms which have recently won licenses to explore for oil and gas are little-known businesses based in Panama, Nigeria and Azerbaijan—countries where corporate accountability can be murky.
Not only does the bidding process remain opaque, the pedigree of some of the participants is too.
CIS Nobel Oil Company claims to be London based, but on investigation its only contact address is in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, a former republic of the Soviet Union on the Caspian Sea.
A map showing oil and gas blocks in Burma. (Source: Burma’s Ministry of Energy)
Nobel is to prospect for oil and gas on an unnamed onshore block awarded by the Burmese Ministry of Energy. Virtually nothing is known about Nobel other than that it does some prospecting in the Caspian Sea and has links with Azerbaijan’s state oil company.
Nobel and a clutch of other little known firms bid for licenses when the ministry put forward 18 onshore blocks for development last year.
A firm registered in the Central American country of Panama called Geopetrol International Holdings secured a license for another block which it will operate with Burmese partner A-1 Mining Company.
Panama is notorious for providing so-called flags of convenience for murky shipping companies which do not comply with international safety standards and regulations.
Burma’s Energy Ministry has also awarded a license to a firm called Tianjin New Highland, which appears to be Chinese but has links in the unstable African state of Nigeria, noted for its “black gold curse”—the political and business corruption around its oil wealth which has left millions of Nigerians in poverty.
Tianjin New Highland appears to have begun life in Hong Kong but is registered in the money laundering tax haven of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It also operates under the name Tianjin Energy Resources.
“These are by no means mainstream oil businesses and the ownership of some of them is rather lost in the web of addresses and registrations,” said an industry analyst in Hong Kong who did not wish to be identified.
“Take Geopetrol International as an example. It gives the impression sometimes of being based in Switzerland or France and with business links in India, but it is formally registered in Panama.”
Geopetrol already operates some form of joint venture with Goldpetrol, a subsidiary of Interra Resources of Singapore, which actually has links with Indonesia.
Confused? These webs can be extensive, leaving anyone seeking information on ownership confused and bemused.
Another little known Indonesian firm, Istech Resources Asia, has been named by the Burmese Energy Ministry as being successful in obtaining an onshore license, although it appears a local partner is still being arranged.
Under new rules, all foreign oil and gas firms starting up in Burma from now on must take on a Burmese partner.
Istech has an address in Jakarta and according to the Bloomberg Business Week companies guide specializes in oilfield support services. However, Bloomberg says on its website that the firm “does not have any key executives recorded.”
For reasons that have not been explained, only nine of the 18 onshore blocks offered last year have been awarded, and only four of those had, up to last week, completed development agreements.
Local firms named in these partnerships so far are Aye Myint Khine Company, A-1 Mining Company, and UNOG.
UNOG Pte Ltd is registered in Singapore but is run from Burma. Oil industry data names Win Kyaing as managing director. He is also linked to another firm called IGE.
Some equally obscure foreign firms are already in operation in onshore blocks in Burma, with names such as Silver Wave Sputnik Petroleum and Zarubezhnet Itera, with vaguely Russian connections.
Sputnik Petroleum says it is registered in Singapore, while its sister company Silver Wave Energy leads back to the small Russian republic of Kalmykia on the Caspian Sea. Zarubezhnet Itera has links with the Russian state in Moscow.
Only two major international oil firms took up offers in the last license bidding round. These are Petronas of Malaysia and PTTEP of Thailand, both state owned and both already engaged in Burma’s oil and gas industry.
“The apparent lack of interest from major players was surprising, although last year’s bidding round took place before big changes like Aung San Suu Kyi being elected to Parliament and the EU suspending its sanctions,” analyst Collin Reynolds in Bangkok told The Irrawaddy on May 8.
“It will be interesting to see if the next round attracts any big Western companies. However, I think many of them are waiting to see how the reforms pan out and whether they are going to be permanent. US oil firms are of course still excluded from any active participation.”
Another batch of onshore development blocks will be put up for sale in August, the Energy Ministry’s director general of planning Htin Aung said last week. A batch of offshore licenses will be offered by the end of this year, he said.
Industry giants such as Chevron, Total, Shell, Nippon, CNOOC and Mitsubishi sent representatives to the March trade show in Rangoon organized by the Ministry of Energy to promote development.
The ministry’s Htin Aung told the show’s participants that Burma has “proven” oil reserves of almost 140 million barrels and 322 billion cubic meters of gas.
Raising that volume of hydrocarbons from beneath land and sea is going to require large and long-term investment—much more than the likes of Silver Wave Sputnik Petroleum, Nobel Oil and GeoPetrol can muster.
MASSIVE LAND CONFISCATION FOR COPPER MINE IN BURMA : Why can’t we stop the human greed ??
Over 7,800 acres of farmland in Salingyi Township, Sagaing Division, has been confiscated for a copper mine project with landowners forced out of their villages, according to local sources.
A number of concerned residents told The Irrawaddy that grabbed lands belong to people in Salingyi’s Hse Te, Zee Daw, Wet Hmay and Kan Taw villages and authorities ordered residents to leave the area earlier this year. Most of the villagers do not want to relocate but some have already left, they claim.
Farmers also said that they were only given a small amount of compensation for their property as, according to company officials and local authorities, their lands are actually owned by the state and the confiscation was carried out by presidential order.
“Copper produced from this project can be fixed with a price but our farmlands are priceless. Those lands can exist forever so I don’t want any compensation no matter how much it is,” said Khin Maung Win, one of the victims.
Locals also told The Irrawaddy that farmers have submitted an appeal to President Thein Sein, the chief minister of Sagaing Division and other relevant authorities in order to get their lands returned, but no measures have been taken in response so far.
Led by the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd and two Chinese companies, copper mining in Kyaysintaung and Letpantaung areas of Salingyi reportedly began in late 2011.
A similar project is also operating in Monywa, the capital of Sagaing Division, in which a Chinese company is reportedly involved.
The copper project in Monywa is one of the largest in Burma. It was initiated by the Myanmar Ivanhoe Copper Company Ltd (MICCL)—a joint venture between the former Burmese Ministry of Mines-1 and the Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines.
The US Treasury Department put the MICCL onto its sanctions list in 2009. Reference. The Irrawaddy
FIRMS LOOK ABROAD TO PLUNDER SE ASIAN RIVERS -
China’s Three Gorges Dam project has been beset with environmental and logistical problems. (Photo: Christoph Filnkl)
Corporations owned by governments are at the heart of a relentless push to build hydro-electric dam systems in Southeast Asia.
These corporations are driven by a combination of political pressure for energy security and to justify their existence and growth.
The dams―in Burma, China’s Yunnan Province, Laos and Cambodia―jeopardise farmland, fisheries, forests, natural irrigation and rare wildlife and threaten to force many thousands of people from their homes, say environmental protection groups.
Three of the biggest corporations involved are China’s Sinohydro Corporation, the China Power Investment Corporation and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT).
Between them, they are building or have plans to build enough electricity generating capacity from hydro dams to fuel the whole of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore on present power consumption in those countries.
Blueprints for hydro dam construction projects in Laos alone, a country of only six million people, would create an installed electricity generating capacity of 40,000 megawatts―enough to keep the lights, air conditioners and factories operating in Thailand and Malaysia.
Such targets include controversial dams on the Irrawaddy and Salween rivers in Burma, the Mekong where it runs through Laos, and some of the region’s last animal and plant wilderness areas in Cambodia.
And despite stop orders at present on two major projects―the Myitsone on the Irrawaddy and the Xayaburi on the Mekong―campaigners are not hopeful they will be permanently halted.
The American NGO International Rivers thinks dams planned for the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong and forested areas of Laos and Cambodia will “probably” go ahead finally because public accountability in the region remains weak.
“These dams have been pushed in the name of development, for prosperity and happiness of the people,” Pianporn Deetes, a spokeswoman for International Rivers, told The Irrawaddy.
“Any scientific and local knowledge evidence [against the dams] would not mean anything for such decisions,” she added.
The Chinese state-owned and controlled Sinohydro Corporation, possibly the world’s biggest hydro-electric developer, claims the Three Gorges system in China and the Bakun Dam in Malaysian Borneo among its dubious credits.
The colossal Three Gorges can in theory generate 12 times Burma’s present electricity producing capacity, but is beset with problems ranging from water shortages to environmental degradation.
The Bakun Dam in Malaysia’s Sarawak State is a white elephant which has been under construction for 15 years, has cost taxpayers over US$2 billion and is still not fully operational. In the process it has despoiled an area of tropical forest the size of Singapore.
Two large unfinished projects, one in Burma the other in Laos, underline how determined these state corporations are to build their dams regardless of the opposition.
In Burma, the victory celebrations by opponents of the 6,000-megawatt Myitsone project on the Irrawaddy have been short lived. Only seven months after President Thein Sein decreed that the unpopular dam was suspended indefinitely, evidence is growing that its Chinese developers, led by Sinohydro, are still active on the site.
In Laos, despite an unequivocal call by the Mekong Rivers Commission (MRC) to halt all construction on the 1,300-megawatt Xayaburi project pending a new environmental impact study, there is evidence of continuing site work, claims International Rivers.
The main backer of the $3.7 billion Xayaburi dam is EGAT which will buy most of the electricity generated by the project.
Thailand is a member of the four-country MRC which agreed at a ministerial-level meeting last December to stop work on the dam. The Vietnamese and Cambodian governments are concerned that the dam will reduce water flow and stop fish swimming upstream to spawning grounds. The lower Mekong provides food for millions of people living alongside its route from Laos to the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam.
“Until recently, many of us hoped that the MRC would resolve regional crises such as these,” says California-based International Rivers. “The past year, however, has revealed glaring holes in the ability of the MRC to make decisions. In the case of the Xayaburi Dam, for example, Laos and Thailand have defied the regional process and proceeded with preliminary construction.”
In Burma’s Kachin State, reports as recent as April 6 indicate that preparations are in progress around the Myitsone site near the confluence of the N’mai and Mali rivers where scores of Chinese workers remain.
In Shan State near the border with Thailand, Chinese surveyors have been reported working in the vicinity of an even bigger hydro-electric dam, the 7,300-megawatt Tasang scheme on the Salween River. Sinohydro is also the main contractor here, and one of the chief backers and likely main recipient of any electricity generated is, once again, EGAT.
The Chinese have also dammed their own upper reaches of the Salween and Mekong rivers, but why do the Thais not build dams in their own backyard?
“Thai companies often feel there are too many obstacles within Thailand and prefer the benefits of working in unregulated environments where projects can be maximized without the need to comply with all of the laws and regulations investors face inside Thailand,” Pianporn explained.
“In Thailand, civil society can at least raise environmental concerns to the companies and government for better standards and good governance.”
A statement published by the Burma Rivers Network NGO on behalf of dozens of community groups alleged last week that despite recent reforms which have wooed senior Western politicians, major energy-related development projects in Burma continue to trigger “human rights abuses against local villagers, particularly ethnic communities.”
“These projects have been started without standards to prevent harmful environmental and social impacts, and will therefore cause more refugees,” the statement said. “Large-scale development projects should not be implemented in areas of Burma where conflict remains unresolved, as this will simply fuel further conflict.”
International Rivers says the next decade is critical for the future of major regional rivers, notably the Mekong, but warns that “the region’s governments and greedy foreign interests” seem intent on constructing scores of dams which will have “devastating impacts on downstream communities.”
Investment strategies: Thematic thinking enters mainstream
Investment strategies following themes such as the rise of emerging markets or the development of sustainable energy may be gaining traction, but critics claim they are little more than a marketing ploy MORE…
The Great Debate: Do hedge funds have a place in client portfolios?
At the most basic level, there are typically only two ways to potentially generate a return on an investment in a financial instrument. First, one can passively collect a risk premium (beta). Second, one can actively extract money from other market participants (alpha). MORE…
Hedge Fund Insights 2012
Sharing industry, market and strategy insights from hedge fund expertsAfter a successful start to Hedge Fund Insights 2012, we are pleased to announce that the global series will visit Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo this May.Lyxor’s team of senior economists, hedge fund managers and their investors will analyse trends in emerging and developed markets, evaluate the effects of global economic turmoil and political unrest and, discuss their impact on inflation, oil prices and currency instability.For more information and to book your place, please go to; www.ftbusiness.com/insights2012.
New Fund Solutions
European answers to global questionsWednesday 13th June 2012
08:30 to 12:30, followed by a networking lunch
Allen & Overy office, Bishopsgate, LondonProfessional Wealth Management (PWM), in association with the Association Française de la Gestion financière (AFG), presents ‘New Fund Solutions’, an event utilising Paris fund industry expertise to help optimise your future investment strategies.Register now to join a host of high-ranking management companies, French boutiques, institutional investors and data providers as we seek to provide European answers to global questions.
Yuri Bender talks to Adam Wethered, founder of private investment office Lord North Street, about the shift of assets by wealthy clients from European private banks to family offices.
Swiss banking lawyer Shelby du Pasquier talks to Yuri Bender about the challenges faced by Switzerland’s private banks following sustained pressure from US authorities.
The Financial Times Ltd, Registered no. 227590 Registered office Number One
Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL, England
Behavioral finance offers valuable insights—particularly the idea that rational investors can’t always correct for mispricing by irrational ones. But as a team of McKinsey authors argued in 2005, in “Do fundamentals—or emotions—drive the stock market?”, the critical question for executives is how often these deviations arise and whether they are so common and important that they should influence the financial decisions of companies. In fact, the authors claim, significant deviations from intrinsic value are unusual; despite transitory booms and busts, markets generally soon revert to share prices reflecting economic fundamentals.
Did you miss the last Classics Newsletter?Companies that live beyond the law Especially in low-income nations, many companies avoid taxes and regulations, underreport employment, and even fail to register. Policy makers tend to see this informal economy as a source of work for the unskilled. Yet the McKinsey Global Institute found that such businesses prevent more productive formal ones from gaining market share.
Dear Mr WIN,
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Little Dix Bay boasts one of the best (and largest) kid’s clubs in the Caribbean with a miniature Caribbean chattel house, dress-up area, arts and crafts centre, outside play area and even its own shipwreck! Fun supervised activities include treasure hunts, nature walks and not-to-be-missed pirate parties. If you travel with your family this summer then you can enjoy a 50% discount off a second room for the kids. ENQUIRE
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Release your little darlings at this luxury ranch and you may well be reunited with little grizzlies…but this is the aim of the Little Grizzlies program. Revolving around daily life on the ranch, kids will learn about rivers, ponds and mountains whilst playing at being cowboys or making like native Indians and building tipi tents. Ice skating, igloo building and ice cream sundaes ensure thrilling days and happy youngsters. ENQUIRE
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Verdura Golf & Spa Resort is frequently voted the Best Family Hotel in Europe. No wonder really when you consider its exclusive beach, array of facilities, hectares of open countryside and idyllic climate. Parents can relax in the knowledge that everything has been thought of, as the resort supplies everything from high chairs and crayons to Nintendo WII consoles and cots. They will even childproof rooms on arrival for families travelling with children under the age of 4. ENQUIRE
One&Only Le Saint Geran, Mauritius
If you’re worried about your children over-indulging on junk food and sugary treats on holiday then One&Only Le Saint Geran is here to assist. Annabel Karmel, the best-selling author of 24 books on feeding babies and children, and mother of three, has completely revamped the resort’s Kids Only menu. With tempting, nutritious dishes such as Yummy hidden-vegetable bolognese, Finger lickin’ good chicken fingers and Cooler-than-cool Watermelon lollies on the menu, there’s no excuse not to tuck in. ENQUIRE
Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort – Al Maha, Oman
Where else can you request the resorts’ dedicated Turtle Ranger to alert you when there’s action from the resident nesting turtles, giving you time to head to the beach with your family to watch? This is just one of the family friendly activities you can experience at this beachfront resort. Kids will also love the treasure hunts and sand city competitions; the Cool Zone Kids Club and the Adventure Zone play area ENQUIRE
Banyan Tree Phuket, Thailand
The summer Family Festival kicks off this month in the Laguna resort area of Phuket. Designed to satisfy all generations there’s a varied programme of fun kids activities during the day: followed by evening entertainment – live music, magic shows & family movies – when parents can relax with happy hour bar prices. For somewhere to stay, look no further than Banyan Tree Phuket. The Two Bedroom Pool Villas offer plenty of space for families and boast a private pool and fully equipped kitchenette. ENQUIRE
Four Seasons Resort at Kuda Huraa, Maldives.
As well as an excellent kids club there are endless activities at this Four Seasons resort for children of all ages from cooking classes to surf lessons; mini spa days to marine discovery sessions; whilst parents slink off to the Island Spa or back to the spacious villa for some R&R time. The Two Bedroom Royal Beach Villas and Family Beach Bungalows are perfectly designed for families. ENQUIRE
French Riviera Villa
Enjoy a home away from home and the freedom that comes with renting your own private villa. Positioned on the hills of Mougins on the French Riviera, this villa offers six bedrooms with the space and facilities essential for all the family! While the kids run riot in the large garden, splash around in the heated swimming pool and practice their swing on the private tennis court, we can organise an in-house masseuse to come and pamper parents! Ideal for multi-generational getaways this villa offers something for everyone. ENQUIRE
Text by Gemma Wilson – Global Product Manager.
ADB sees Myanmar adding 6%
Published at Bangkok Post on 12/04/2012at 02:19 AMEconomic growth in Myanmar is expected to jump sharply thanks to higher investment following the political and economic developments in the country over the past several months, says Asian Development Bank.
Craig Steffensen, ADB country director for Thailand, said both the success of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar’s by-election and the announcement that the official exchange rate would utilise a managed float system starting on April 1 would serve as catalysts for economic development.
The Thai economy stands to gain from tremendous opportunities in investment and transportation linkage.
The ADB, in its latest forecasts for regional economic growth, said Myanmar is expected to post 6% growth this year and 6.3% in 2013. The bank projects 5.5% growth for Thailand this year and next.
Mr Steffensen said growth could be higher if the EU and US ease sanctions imposed during the past two decades.
Myanmar has amended some key laws to facilitate foreign direct investment. Among them are a land ownership law that allows farmers to own land and places it with banks as collateral, and a foreign direct investment code that offers corporate income tax breaks for firms.
But Mr Steffensen said problems with macroeconomic stability were reflected by high inflation and a current account deficit, immediate challenges that Myanmar must still overcome.
Myanmar announced the reference rate of the kyat was 818 to a dollar on April 1, weakening from the unofficial market rate of about 800 to a dollar in 2011.
The ADB expects the move will cause imports to widen the current account deficit to 5% of gross domestic product this year and next. Unifying the several unofficial currency markets will also expose losses in state enterprises.
Rapid economic growth could raise inflation in Myanmar to 6% over the next two years.
Mr Steffensen said over the long term, more comprehensive improvements are needed in Myanmar to lift its overall development status, particularly investment in health care and education.
Myanmar has the lowest income per capita in Asean, with ADB estimating one-fourth of its population is in poverty.
Meanwhile, in Thailand income inequality has shown signs of improvement, said ADB economist Luxmon Attapich.
But she cautioned that the gap between Thailand’s richest and poorest remains wider than in many other countries in the region.
“We found the country’s wealthiest 10% earned 40% of the country’s income, while the poorest 10% earned just 1.7%,” she said.
Thailand’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell to 0.42 in 2010 from 0.48 in 2009. In contrast, the average for the region rose to 0.46 in 2010 from 0.39 the prior year. Under the gauge, a coefficient of zero means perfect equality while one means maximum inequality.
Burma: democracy’s edge
<!–Thursday 12 April 2012[, by -->
Exclusive 12 April, Le Monde - by Elizabeth Rush
Two years ago, before Burma began to make international headlines, the then military-run government started auctioning off 90% of the country’s state-owned enterprises — everything from petrol stations, to rice mills, cinemas, soy sauce factories and turn-of-the-century apartment buildings went under the gavel. While the government ran advertisements in the state-run newspaper inviting tenders, prohibitive participation fees were levied and 25% of the total payment was due up front for successful bids.
Winning a cinema in Rangoon meant that you would pay $625,000 at the signing and fork out the remaining $1.9m over the next six months. A TV station cost you $15m. And the port of Rangoon? A military-run company, the Myanmar Economic Corporation, purchased a slice in 2010 (1). By international standards, the price tag on these potential cash cows was low. But in Burma, the cost coupled with the favoritism required to secure a winning bid made acquiring these assets near impossible for most. Burma’s state-owned properties ended up in the hands of the select few who had billions of Kyat to toss around at the end of a military dictatorship that was, for the silent majority, beyond crippling.
A man-powered Ferris wheel at the Thadingyut festival in Yangon’s Pazundaung township.
For much of the previous half century, a single dollar would get you upwards of 800 Kyat on the black market. The currency was officially pegged to an absurdly low 6.4 Kyat to the dollar. But only state-run companies actually had access to dollars at the official and unbelievably strong ratio, restricting any involvement in international development to those linked with government enterprises. Those who have benefited from the junta’s longstanding punitive economic restrictions are precisely those who purchased most of the country’s assets on the eve of this ever more exciting new era. An era that is probably less about democracy than attracting international investment.
Large-scale privatization is not uncommon, especially for Asian countries transitioning away from state-controlled economies, and non-democratic regimes towards free-market models and the political pluralism inherent therein. Vietnam did it. South Korea did it too. But international investment is only as progressive as the environmental protections, land ownership regulations and mandatory development of both skill-based and intellectual economies that ought to accompany the influx of new capital. Shouldn’t these be the demands we make of Burma’s government before declaring an end to sanctions? Yet, as the recent elections have turned attention to Burma, little has been said about this internationally.
In Burma, rumors have long been as credible as the military-controlled media (if not more so). So both outsiders and the people of Burma ought to be more cautious about taking their cues from the well-designed popular narrative of the day. The reforms taking place in Burma are strong public statements of political transformation, but their scope is limited.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to just one of 640 seats in the parliament. And while her party, the NLD, swept the by-elections, we need to remember that only about 7% of the parliamentary seats were contested. The constitution, as it stands, reserves 25% of parliamentary positions for the military. This makes future NLD control close to impossible when you consider the country’s diverse ethnic makeup and the government’s execution of the previous election. The 2010 elections — in which all of the parliament’s non-reserved seats were contested, and the election that would produce the president of the country — were both unfree and unfair. Not only was Aung San Suu Kyi unable to participate (she was under house arrest) but election monitors were forbidden. Still, reports flooded in of fearful voters, ballet box stuffing, and pre-ticked ballets.
At the same time, the alacrity with which Burma has performed much of the work needed to disentangle itself from historic appearances is astounding. Over the last year, the country sought to change international perceptions: from seeming remote and brutal, it now presented a shining example of how, in US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s words, “even the most repressive regime can reform and even the most closed society can open.” Just last week, the US announced further easing of sanctions, inappropriately linking a single, well executed yet minimally important election with the entire country’s economic development. Many of the sectors that will expand as a result of the lifting of sanctions are precisely those bought and sold in last year’s inherently corrupt fire-sale of state assets.
It is easy to get swept up by the images of Burmese people rejoicing in the streets of Rangoon. But those of us outside of Burma ought to contextualize these images carefully. A public discussion of privatization in Burma is a necessary component to securing a bright future for those people so ebulliently celebrating their country’s willingness to reform.
The longstanding military dictatorship aside, there is an innocence to Burma. This is because it has been held at an arm’s length from the whirlwind of globalization and development. And it deserves better that what it is currently in line to get — all of capitalism’s gravest challenges from sweat shops to resource off-loading.
Though the political changes taking place are fantastic, those of us whose investment, both direct and indirect, is destined to transform Burma should not forget from where these changes originated and what their true aim might be — more money for the same select few. The West needs to ensure that with its increased investment, the Burmese people are guaranteed more than a decent wage and imported soda pop. An end to sanctions should mean nothing short of the mandatory development of both intellectual and skill-based economies and regulations to guarantee that the teak is not demolished, the gas not all siphoned overseas, and that the land is not ruined by industrial processes we refuse to carry out in our own backyards.
Breaking the cycle of colonization under the auspices of globalization is possible in Burma precisely because this is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. The future is, as the generals have now so graciously granted, as much ours to decide as it is theirs. The West ought to consider the privilege of both celebrating Burma’s reforms and investing in its future with the gravitas its long-suffering people deserve.
Aung San Suu Kyi entre au Parlement birman
lundi 2 avril 2012
Il suffit de voir les images de liesse à l’annonce de l’élection de Mme Aung San Suu Kyi pour comprendre le changement qui marque la Birmanie. Il y a à peine plus d’un an, Mme Suu Kyi était encore assignée à résidence et n’avait pu se présenter aux élections. Avec son parti, la Ligue nationale pour la démocratie, elle a gagné 43 sièges (au deux chambres et dans les régions). C’est dire le chemin parcouru.
Certes un bulletin de vote ne fait pas la démocratie – les élections ne concernaient que 48 sièges sur les 664 que comptent les deux chambres, et l’ex-général Thein Sein devenu président garde une grande partie des cartes politiques et économiques en main. Et la question des minorités toujours en guerre n’est toujours pas réglée. Mais une étape est franchie.
En décembre 2011, le président Thein Sein a donné l’ordre à l’armée de stopper les combats contre les groupes indépendantistes shans et kachins. Mais le calme reste précaire.
Depuis que le pouvoir birman se donne des allures de gouvernement civil, tout se précipite : légalisation du parti de l’opposante Aung San Suu Kyi, libération de prisonniers politiques, visite d’un dirigeant américain pour la première fois depuis un demi-siècle…
Le 13 novembre dernier, sa peine d’emprisonnement effectuée, Mme Aung San Suu Kyi était libérée par les généraux au pouvoir. Par ce geste, la junte espère engager des négociations pour lever l’embargo occidental.
En Grèce, succès de la gauche radicale, impasse institutionnelle
par Valia Kaimaki, mardi 8 mai 2012
Le camarade Staline peut reposer tranquillement dans sa tombe, le Parti communiste (PC) grec veille, bien décidé à poursuivre sa mission éternelle : servir la révolution ouvrière, guetter son arrivée, préparer les troupes, et surtout ne pas permettre aux sirènes de faire entendre le chant d’une victoire de la gauche. Pendant la courte campagne électorale, en Grèce, tous les invités communistes des plateaux de télévision insistaient sur une chose : nous sommes le PC, pas la gauche.
Après l’annonce des résultats, ils se disaient ravis d’avoir gardé l’essentiel de leur puissance électorale (8,48 %)... en attendant la révolution. Une blague qui faisait le tour des journalistes depuis des années est désormais sur toutes les lèvres : la chef du parti, Mme Papariga, reste complètement inactive, comme une vieille bigote qui attend le jugement dernier. Un résumé de la politique du PC en Grèce : pas question d’alliance avec la gauche et surtout avec Syriza, ce « parti bourgeois ».
Issu de multiples divisions et réunions (à partir de 1968) de la gauche réformatrice et progressiste, Syriza a fait la plus importante percée de ces élections décisives. A lui seul, ce résultat pourrait sonner le glas du bipartisme.
L’un des trois enjeux majeurs du scrutin consistait précisément à déterminer si l’une des forces de gauche parviendrait à s’assurer une position dominante. Question tranchée : avec 16,8 % des suffrages, Syriza obtient incontestablement ce statut de leader, se hissant même au rang de deuxième force politique du pays – derrière Nouvelle Démocratie (ND, droite), avec seulement deux points d’écart. Chez les jeunes qui ont voté pour la première fois, chez les sans-emploi, et dans toute la région d’Athènes, Syriza arrive en tête.
Cela a déplu aux grands médias et à leurs chiens de garde. Tout au long de la soirée électorale, devant les caméras et derrière les micros, ils se sont montrés étonnement agressifs avec les invités de Syriza : « Vous proposez de former un gouvernement, mais comment allez-vous y parvenir ? Comment ? COMMENT ? » Beaucoup plus indulgente, leur attitude à l’égard du chef du parti néonazi Aube dorée, qui, sur le point de prononcer son discours, a exigé : « Levez-vous », dans un grec ancien mal décliné. Certains se sont exécutés.
Deuxième enjeu, justement, le pourcentage de l’extrême droite. Un résultat nettement moins réjouissant. Avec presque 7 % des suffrages, les néonazis ont emporté la sixième place et fait une entrée spectaculaire au Parlement. 7,5 % des électeurs ayant voté pour Nouvelle Démocratie en 2009 ont préféré Aube Dorée, de même que 4,5 % des électeurs en provenance du Parti socialiste (Pasok), arrivé troisième avec 13,18 % des suffrages (moins que son tout premier score, en 1974, sous Andreas Papandreou).
Le troisième enjeu, « qui gouvernera le pays ? », reste la grande inconnue. Trois sièges seulement manquent aux grands partis de jadis pour former un nouveau gouvernement pro-mémorandum (1) c’est-à-dire, pour continuer comme avant les élections. Ils ont pensé convaincre trois députés, des « Grecs indépendants » (nouveau parti, cession de la ND, fortement anti-mémorandum et nationaliste, arrivé en quatrième position), de donner leur vote, avec la promesse d’un ministère. Sauf que le souvenir de juillet 1965 – quand le gouvernement de Papandreou (grand-père) fut destitué par ses propres députés, ce qui avait accentué l’instabilité politique et ouvert la voie au coup d’état de 1967 – marque encore la vie politique du pays. On ne devient pas facilement un « traître » : ce scénario a été invalidé au lendemain des élections.
Ce mardi 8 mai, après que le leader de Nouvelle démocratie s’en est déclaré incapable, M. Alexis Tsipras a été chargé par le président de la République de former un gouvernement. Ce jeune homme charismatique de 38 ans a su s’affirmer comme un personnage politique incontournable, d’abord au sein de la mosaïque de Syriza, puis dans la société toute entière. Ses adversaires l’accusent de populisme, lui reprochent un style un peu « macho », mais nul ne conteste qu’il fut le seul dirigeant politique capable d’assurer une place à l’opposition dans le Parlement pendant cette dernière période, marquée par une politique d’austérité extrême. Il a su également mener une campagne électorale brillante et imposer son agenda. Au point que tous les discours des dirigeants des autres partis ont fait référence aux propositions de Syriza : la renégociation du mémorandum imposé par la troïka et l’effacement d’une partie de la dette grecque, sans pour autant sortir de l’Union européenne ou de la zone Euro.
Néanmoins, les chiffres ne sont pas au rendez-vous. Même si le PC acceptait de donner son accord – ce qui relève de la science-fiction –, même avec l’appui du troisième parti de la gauche (la Dimar – « Alliance Démocratique » –, scission de Syriza, qui défend une politique plus proche de celle du Pasok), et enfin même avec l’aide du Pasok dont le chef a déclaré qu’il va soutenir un gouvernement de gauche, il ne serait pas possible de former un gouvernement.
La faute à la loi électorale, taillée sur mesure pour maintenir le bipartisme : la formation qui arrive en tête du scrutin remporte cinquante sièges supplémentaires au Parlement (sur un total de trois cents), afin de pouvoir facilement former un gouvernement. C’est ainsi que ND a vu ses effectifs parlementaires presque doubler, « volant » des sièges qui, sinon, seraient revenus à Syriza dans la région d’Attique.
M. Tsipras va conserver le plus longtemps possible le mandat qu’il reçoit ce 8 mai. Pendant ces trois jours, il va répéter inlassablement son message d’unité de la gauche, que le PC et la Dimar ont formellement rejeté avant les élections. Cette fois, il va aller plus loin, proposer des congrès communs, tendre la main aux écologistes (qui n’ont pas pu franchir le seuil de 3 %), aux maoïstes, aux léninistes, aux trotskistes, aux dissidents du PC, à toute la galaxie des partis de la gauche. But inavoué et vœu cher à tous les Grecs de gauche : faire imploser le PC pour le reformer sur de nouvelles bases et donner à la gauche grecque sa juste position dans la société.
Puis ce sera au tour des autres partis de recevoir un mandat pour former un gouvernement, la perspective d’une coalition majoritaire s’éloignant toujours un peu plus à chaque fois.
Quelles perspectives s’offrent alors ? Probablement le retour aux urnes. Néanmoins, les partis du centre (ND et Pasok) ne souhaitent pas de nouvelles élections, car c’est surtout Syriza qui en bénéficierait.
La Grèce se trouve donc dans une impasse : il n’est possible de former un gouvernement ni avec ni sans Syriza. Le scénario le plus cauchemardesque serait que Nouvelle Démocratie et le Pasok donnent à M. Tsipras leur appui sans participer à son gouvernement, sacrifice qu’ils accepteraient pour sauver les règles qui fondent le bipartisme. M. Tsipras serait ainsi obligé de diriger la Grèce sans disposer de véritable pouvoir ni, d’ailleurs, de cadres formés. Sans leviers, sans filet…
(1) L’accord de prêt signé par l’ancien gouvernement avec la troïka (Union européenne, Banque centrale européenne, Fonds monétaire International), qui impose une sévère austérité.
Ref: Le Monde diplomatique
Argentina's critics are wrong again about renationalising oil
In taking back oil and gas company YPF, Argentina's state is reversing past mistakes. Europe is in no position to be outraged
Argentinia's president, Cristina Kirchner, announces that the oil company YPF is subject to expropriation. Photograph: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images
The Argentinian government's decision to renationalise the oil and gas company YPF has been greeted with howls of outrage, threats, forecasts of rage and ruin, and a rude bit of name-calling in the international press. We have heard all this before.
When the government defaulted on its debt at the end of 2001 and then devalued its currency a few weeks later, it was all doom-mongering in the media. The devaluation would cause inflation to spin out of control, the country would face balance of payments crises from not being able to borrow, the economy would spiral downward into deeper recession. Then, between 2002 and 2011, Argentina's real GDP grew by about 90%, the fastest in the hemisphere. Employment is now at record levels, and both poverty and extreme poverty have been reduced by two-thirds. Social spending, adjusted for inflation, has nearly tripled. All this is probably why Cristina Kirchner was re-elected last October in a landslide victory.
Of course this success story is rarely told, mostly because it involved reversing many of the failed neoliberal policies – that were backed by Washington and its International Monetary Fund – that brought the country to ruin in its worst recession of 1998-2002. Now the government is reversing another failed neoliberal policy of the 1990s: the privatisation of its oil and gas industry, which should never have happened in the first place.
There are sound reasons for this move, and the government will most likely be proved right once again. Repsol, the Spanish oil company that currently owns 57% of Argentina's YPF, hasn't produced enough to keep up with Argentina's rapidly growing economy. From 2004 to 2011, Argentina's oil production has actually declined by almost 20% and gas by 13%, with YPF accounting for much of this. And the company's proven reserves of oil and gas have also fallen substantially over the past few years.
The lagging production is not only a problem for meeting the needs of consumers and businesses, it is also a serious macroeconomic problem. The shortfall in oil and gas production has led to a rapid rise in imports. In 2011 these doubled from the previous year to $9.4bn, thus cancelling out a large part of Argentina's trade surplus. A favourable balance of trade has been very important to Argentina since its default in 2001. Because the government is mostly shut out of borrowing from international financial markets, it needs to be careful about having enough foreign exchange to avoid a balance of payments crisis. This is another reason that it can no longer afford to leave energy production and management to the private sector.
So why the outrage against Argentina's decision to take – through a forced purchase – a controlling interest in what for most of the enterprise's history was the national oil company? Mexico nationalised its oil in 1938, and, like a number of Opec countries, doesn't even allow foreign investment in oil. Most of the world's oil and gas producers, from Saudi Arabia to Norway, have state-owned companies. The privatisations of oil and gas in the 1990s were an aberration; neoliberalism gone wild. Even when Brazil privatised $100bn of state enterprises in the 1990s, the government kept majority control over energy corporation Petrobras.
As Latin America has achieved its "second independence" over the past decade-and-a-half, sovereign control over energy resources has been an important part of the region's economic comeback. Bolivia renationalised its hydrocarbons industry in 2006, and increased hydrocarbon revenue from less than 10% to more than 20% of GDP (the difference would be about two-thirds of current government revenue in the US). Ecuador under Rafael Correa greatly increased its control over oil and its share of private companies' production.
So Argentina is catching up with its neighbours and the world, and reversing past mistakes in this area. As for their detractors, they are in a weak position to be throwing stones. The ratings agencies threatening to downgrade Argentina – should anyone take them seriously after they gave AAA ratings to worthless mortgage-backed junk during the housing bubble, and then pretended that the US government could actually default? And as for the threats from the European Union and the rightwing government of Spain – what have they done right lately, with Europe caught in its second recession in three years, nearly halfway through a lost decade, and with 24% unemployment in Spain?
It is interesting that Argentina has had such remarkable economic success over the past nine years while receiving very little foreign direct investment, and being mostly shunned by international financial markets. According to most of the business press, these are the two most important constituencies that any government should make sure to please. But the Argentinian government has had other priorities. Maybe that's another reason why Argentina gets so much flak.
What is the real legacy of colonialism?
Atrocities committed as Britain's imperial rule ended have been revealed in newly published documents. Writers Kwasi Kwarteng and Richard Gott discuss the history's legacy
Failures of the empire … Richard Gott and Kwasi Kwarteng. Photograph by Felix Clay.
This week, the Foreign Office released thousands of lost – or hidden – colonial-era documents, but it is unknown how many more, which recorded atrocities at the end of the British empire, were destroyed. Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng and writer Richard Gott meet to discuss this latest chapter in Britain's imperial history. Emine Saner listens in.
Kwasi Kwarteng: It's shocking that these documents were destroyed. I'm surprised there wasn't a 50- or 100-year ban on seeing these – to sanction the destruction of documents is terrible.
Richard Gott: It makes one feel that the Foreign Office is not really fit for purpose. Not only did it destroy them, but also lost them. Last year, it had an internal inquiry into what went wrong and the report was public, but redacted.
KK: I can't condone it, but to give some context this happened in the 1960s, at the height of the cold war when governments did that sort of thing.
RG: Everybody in parliament knew what was going on – they knew about torture, castration, these dreadful things happening. It wasn't just radicals such as Barbara Castle and Fenner Brockway – the Labour party was far more radical then than it is today on colonial issues, and actually the Conservative government as well, because eventually it was Iain Macleod [Secretary of State for the Colonies under Macmillan] who was responsible for decolonising the empire.
KK: I think [the decision to destroy documents] is a revealing episode in decolonisation, which is one of the themes I’m interested in – the chaos, lack of organisation, arbitrariness of many of the decisions leading to, in some cases, human rights abuses. This shows the desperation of the unwinding of empire.
RG: You feel everything was accelerating and people were beginning to wonder what on Earth they were doing. After 1945 the imperial idea was disappearing down the plughole, but nobody expected it to happen as quickly as it did.
KK: The collapse of the empire is something that needs to be looked at again because it was dramatic. In my research, looking at India, I remembered someone saying it took the British 300 years to establish rule in India, but it only took 70 days for them to leave.
Emine Saner: Do you get the sense there is a strong revisionist movement?
RG: There was a brief moment with the publication of the book [Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World] by Niall Ferguson, where he tried to portray the empire in a better light, but I think that’s disappeared, curiously enough.
KK: That was published around the time of the second Gulf war and he was a cheerleader for US neocons. Like all good history, it was really about the present. That was the high-water mark of the neocon idea – that we could export democracy, free trade – and that’s what the British empire was about, that was Niall’s argument. You and I have different political outlooks, but we both reject that naive neocon view of the empire. You stress the violence; I stress the incompetence and the consequences.
RG: He wrote his book before two important books appeared about Kenya and the Mau Mau [by David Anderson and Caroline Elkins] that were fundamental in revealing the extent to which the end of empire ended in war crimes. Kenya saw 10 years of violence – the British hanged 1,000 people. They now think 100,000, even 300,000 people, died during the Mau Mau campaign.
KK: My problem with Niall’s book was that it was deterministic; that the empire was a necessary precursor to modern American hegemony. But to many now, the British empire is as antique as the Roman, even though its consequences are still being felt. We need to understand the empire on its own terms.
RG: It’s still with us. Whenever I open the newspaper, anywhere you look, whether it’s Burma, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone, the British were there.
KK: The title of my book is Ghosts of Empire and it’s alive in that sense, you can see the eerie echoes.
RG: I’d go further – I think people like Tony Blair tried to revive the empire.
KK: I’m not sure I’d go that far. The only empire that is relevant is the American empire, and you could argue that Blair was trying to ally Britain to that, but there’s no sense in which he was acting unilaterally in the way a British imperial thinker such as Disraeli or even Churchill would try to act. Empire is a mixed legacy. There were terrible things, but I don’t think it was an appalling catalogue of complete woe. Some good things came of it – a sense of the rule of law, some penetration of parliamentary democracy, the English language, [which has] facilitated a more globalised world. But it didn’t set out to do those things.
RG: I have a much darker picture of the empire. A huge amount of extermination went on, seizure of land – it’s a very bleak picture.
KK: That’s fuelled, if I may say, by your ideology – you’re one of the few self-avowed Marxists left in public life. That class struggle and violence and power …
RG: Well, it was there.
KK: I’m not saying it wasn’t, but I think to describe it all in those terms is too one-sided. The one element that your analysis misses is the extent to which native rulers co-operated. If it had just been pure force, the thing wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.
RG: Then we’re back to class. The British cleverly allied themselves with power.
ES: Where do you stand on reparations?
KK: I think it’s all nonsense. It’s something that happened so long ago, where would you draw the line? I think it’s a mad route to go down.
RG: I’m not in favour of reparations either, but politicians, when they visit old parts of the empire, ought to display a degree of humility about the past, which they rarely do.
ES: How should empire be taught?
KK: I would not take the view that it should be entirely negative. We must never think that these countries were utopias before the British came.
RG: I’m not sure Michael Gove wants much nuance [shortly after the election in 2010, Gove asked Ferguson to help rewrite the history curriculum].
KK: What Gove wants is a sense of narrative understanding of what happened.
RG: Empire and Britain should be taught together – the history of both are intertwined. We should emphasise the downside as well as the upside – if you can find any upsides.
KK: The only way to understand how Britain has evolved in the last 30 years as a multiracial society is to understand empire. So it’s even more important now, to understand Britain as it is today.
If you haven’t noticed by now, true energy independence is at the end of a long and winding road of broken promises and wordy speeches.We know the song and dance all too well.It begins with a few notes about eliminating U.S. dependence on foreign oil entirely, followed by a two-step over renewables alleviating a very serious decades-long addiction to crude.
It’s been done eight times since Nixon took the oath of office in 1969 — and with every repeat performance, we nod our heads and clap along.
It should be noted that the presidential dedication to energy independence doesn’t come without a bit of humor…
The 32 solar panels that Carter installed on the White House were promptly taken down as soon as Reagan took a seat in the Oval Office. In fact, it was one of his first executive decisions.
So where are we today, 36 years into listening to the same broken record?
It appears the next 25 won’t be much different:
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Profit from the Greatest Markup in History
Over the next ten years, up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas will flow from Canadian shores to an energy-starved China for a record profit.
The deal — agreed to in November — hands one small group of companies (and smart shareholders) payments four times larger than what any domestic energy company could ever get away with charging.
So what’s the solution to our energy independence that the last eight U.S. leaders have missed?
It’s so simple, it’s complicated: access to cheap energy.
Granted, our move away from oil won’t happen overnight (and I wouldn’t pay much heed to anyone saying it will)… but it will happen.
Over the last year, investors have been successful banking on future LNG exports.
U.S. LNG is the bandwagon everyone’s jumping on — and the same place they could end up getting burned.
So far, our Commander in Chief has been supportive of LNG exporting projects.
(Were you expecting anything different during an election year?)
I, for one, am not expecting our future flood of shale gas to hit foreign shores just yet.
The uproar we talked about last week still hasn’t been felt.
Here’s the catch: Obama doesn’t have to openly oppose it.
Because buried deep in the government’s archives is a particular piece of legislation that’s been tucked away for decades…
The Export Administration Act of 1969 effectively gave the president the authority to limit or suspend exports of U.S. commodities (among other things) in the interest of national security, short supply, and foreign policy.
I can think of a few individuals who consider our domestic energy supplies — specifically, our cheap natural gas — an interest to national security.
Right now, natural gas costs roughly the same as a $15 barrel of oil.
A best-case scenario wouldn’t collapse current oil prices that low.
When the first shipments of LNG depart from Gulf Coast facilities, the inevitable outcome would be rising domestic natural gas prices.
When that happens, how long until political pressure reaches a boiling point for the current president?
More importantly, is there a way for us to properly prepare for the upcoming shift to natural gas?
On the one hand, low prices have been crushing North American gas producers; on the other, future LNG exports could be nipped in the bud by pushing the right political buttons.
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Here’s What Wall Street is so ANGRY About
Wall Street money managers get rich off the fees they charge individual investors for stock recommendations that may — or may not — perform well.
No wonder they’re not happy that I’m offering top-notch investment research and stock recommendations… stocks that can jump 213%, 426%, even 610%… for just $5 a month.
That’s right: For a limited time, I’m offering $20,816 worth of top-rated investment research and stock recommendations for just $5 a month.
There’s a better way to invest in natural gas — and it isn’t from potential exporters whose shipments could be cut with the snap of presidential fingers.
Just as we saw in the early days of the U.S. petroleum industry, the real investment potential lies with infrastructure.
According to EIA data, there are more than 210 natural gas pipeline systems and over 300,000 miles of transmission pipelines across the United States:
Add to that 1,400 compressor stations, 11,000 delivery points, 24 market hubs, and over 400 underground storage facilities… and we’re still not prepared for the transition from oil.
Though we’ve covered several of these infrastructure plays recently, the real money here is in supplanting oil’s domination in the transportation sector.
When millionaires are filling up their trucks for $1 a gallon, it’s a no-brainer to hop aboard.
A true insider in the energy markets, Keith is one of few financial reporters to have visited the Alberta oil sands. His research has helped thousands of investors capitalize from the rapidly changing face of energy. Keith connects with hundreds of thousands of readers as the Managing Editor of Energy & Capital as well as Investment Director of Angel Publishing’s Energy Investor. For years, Keith has been providing in-depth coverage of the Bakken, the Haynesville Shale, and the Marcellus natural gas formations — all ahead of the mainstream media. For more on Keith, go to his editor’s page.
As Aung San Suu Kyi, new passport in hand, prepares for her first trip out of Myanmar in nearly a quarter century, investors and analysts are flocking in, hoping that recent gestures of democratic reform will prevail.
There are still many voices arguing for a cautious approach, with concerns that this recent wave of optimism about prospects for a change in Myanmar’s political order is premature, the Economic Intelligence Unit wrote in a recent report on the country.
The EIU, like most other agencies, says that the vast untapped natural resources coupled with the population of more than 60 million are all the positive for the country. Investors agree that with an abundance of minerals, metals and fossil fuels, and a tourism sector left in ruins by sanctions, Myanmar sparkles with opportunity.
Sanctions are falling away after April byelections that brought the National League for Democracy (NLD) into parliament for the first time. Optimistic observers believe there is now no turning back on the path to democracy.
“The reality is that no one can afford to ignore Myanmar’s potential,” said Jeremy Kloiser-Jones, head of the Hong Kong-based investment firm Bagan Capital, in an interview with AFP.
Tokyo announced last month that it would forgive about $3.7 billion of Myanmar’s debt and resume suspended aid.
“Now that the government has waived debts and yen-denominated loans will resume, huge business chances are ahead for us,” said a spokeswoman for the trading house Marubeni.
Marubeni, which has opened an office in the capital Nay Pyi Daw to complement the one it operates in Yangon, is looking at electricity and transport infrastructure projects, she said.
Rival Itochu is on the lookout for “information on mining rare metals such as molybdenum and tungsten”, a spokesman said, describing the country as the region’s “last frontier”.
Other countries have followed suit. When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak visited Myanmar in March, he said he was looking to stimulate trade that jumped by a third in 2011 to be worth $792.7 million.
Khoo Kay Peng, a director of the Malaysian marketing company GFW Urban Youth, said he and his partners aimed to raise $2 million to open a business hotel in Yangon, which he says has only around 3,000 usable rooms.
Countries such as Thailand and China are ahead of the pack in Myanmar, with combined investments of $9.4 billion in 2010, according to EU figures. China, long immune to the international opprobrium of dealing with distasteful regimes, has bought up vast amounts of oil, gas and timber.
Meanwhile, South Korean companies have also been active in Myanmar for years, notably in energy, with Daewoo International and the Korea Gas Corporation signing deals while Suu Kyi was still a prisoner in her own home.
The EIU has set out various scenarios for Myanmar. The first, ongoing reform but with limited real structural changes, has a 60% probability, it believes.
Under this scenario the reforms continue in order to secure international legitimacy and reduce China’s influence, which is already happening to some small extent.
The short-term goal is to ensure there will be no objections to Myanmar chairing Asean in 2014, as scheduled, but not much real political change will occur.
Under this scenario, a lot of the sanctions and restrictions on business are lifted and multilateral agencies such as the IMF and World Bank start to provide much-needed help to build infrastructure and spur domestic consumption.
Under this scenario, the EIU believes GDP growth would be around 5% this year and 5.3% next year, 5,9% in 2014, 6.5% in 2015 and would average 7.7% in 2016-20.
The major risks, it says, are:
- structural imbalance with weak policymaking and low-quality institutions;
- a rapid rise in current account deficit;
- pressure on foreign exchange reserves and the currency;
- weakness in public finances with the state budget remaining in the red;
- the possibility of social unrest.
The second scenario, albeit with only a 25% likelihood according to the EIU, is a “Golden Era” of rapid political and economic reforms.
Under this scenario, sanctions and other restrictions are lifted, but the NLD is unlikely to form the government in the next parliamentary elections in 2015.
This would lead to an influx of foreign direct investment and capital for development that could lift GDP by 5% this year and 6.3% next year, 7.2% in 2014, 8.1% in 2015 and 8.5% in 2016-20.
The risk here, though, is that supporters of incumbent President Thein Sein would not allow the reforms to continue at such a rapid pace.
The last scenario, with a 15% probability, is one in which the reform process is rolled back and the military reasserts itself. Under such a scenario, GDP growth would be 4-5% from this year until 2020.
The EIU said that given a GDP per capita of $900 against $5,000 in Thailand, Myanmar clearly has a lot of potential for growth.
Products such as motorcycles, television sets, refrigerators, air-conditioners and other consumer goods have a bright future, as do mobile phones in a country with a penetration rate of less than 10%.
Apart from this industries such as healthcare and education hold great interest. Myanmar has said it would quadruple the budget for healthcare this year and would focus on building new hospitals, educating doctors and also securing medical supplies.Apart from this, the EIU sees potential for Myanmar as a low-cost manufacturing hub although a clearer policy is necessary. It notes that a previous shift of investments by foreign companies in the garment industry ran aground in 2003 the United States and European Union banned clothing imports from Myanmar. The impact was severe on manufacturers who were at that time supplying to major brands including Levi Strauss and Reebok.
Other areas such as construction, banking and finance, retailing, telecoms, and tourism all need to be upgraded and could require huge investments.
Myanmar could boom if it sticks to reforms: IMF
By Paul Handley | AFP – Tue, May 8, 2012
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Construction labourers are seen …
This file photo shows a money changer …
The International Monetary Fund said Monday that Myanmar could be Asia’s next boom economy if the country sticks to its new path of political and economic reforms.
In its first-ever “Article IV” review of the economy, the IMF praised the initial moves to free up its currency in recent months and encouraged the government, politically isolated for a quarter-century, to stick to the path of reform.
“Myanmar’s new government faces a historic opportunity to jump-start development and lift living standards,” the Fund said in the milestone report.
“Myanmar could become the next economic frontier in Asia if, with appropriate reforms, it can turn its rich natural resources, young labor force, and proximity to some of the most dynamic economies, to its advantage.”
But the Fund cautioned the government, now starting to enjoy a gush of foreign investment as it opens up, to take each step carefully with a focus on maintaining economic stability.
“IMF economists believe that any rapid reforms on a large scale could make any potential mistakes very costly. Although planned reforms will take time to implement, prioritization is essential to deliver tangible benefits to the majority of the population,” it said in a note accompanying the review.
“We see certainly a strong reform momentum coming out of Myanmar,” said Meral Karasulu, IMF mission chief for the country.
“Over the past two years, the progress is very tangible.”
Karasulu said the Myanmar government’s move to put the kyat currency on a managed float at the beginning of April was a key beginning.
For years the currency has been tightly controlled, with multiple rates used by the government and various markets, and has served as a deterrence to trade and investment in the country.
Now, says Karasulu, the government is committed to unifying the rates under a managed float by the time it hosts the Southeast Asian games at the end of 2013.
“There are still many informal market exchange rates,” Karasulu said.
But, she added, “I do not find it unrealistic” to aim for complete currency reform by the end of 2013.
“Others took… up to two years” as well.
Karasulu said the government has moved away from simply printing money to fund its deficits, which together with distorted exchange rates has fuelled extreme inflation in recent years.
The IMF has seen a “significant decline” in so-called deficit monetization, by “about half,” she said.
That has helped calm price rises: inflation that averaged nearly 33 percent in the fiscal year that ended in March 2008 was down to 8.2 percent in fiscal 2010-11, and 4.2 percent in the year just ended.
Karasulu said the government could easily further cut the practice by allowing the state banks and insurance companies to invest more of their reserves in state bonds. Currently both groups face tight restrictions on such purchases.
While the country still owes several billion dollars to bilateral and development lenders it defaulted on years ago, the IMF said the government’s finances are fairly stable and show promise in the macroeconomic environment.
The economy grew an estimated 5.5 percent last year and will pick up pace to about 6.0 percent in the current year, with inflation rising to 5.8 percent on average.
With a surge in foreign investment sparking a rise in imports, the country’s current account shortfall is expected to widen.
Even so, Myanmar’s reserves were $7.1 billion in September 2011, and “are expected to remain comfortable” this year.
Army procurement switch puts boot into Afghan dream
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A frail economy boosted by Western cash inflows, the procurement decision taken by the Afghan government will deal a blow once again to local manufacturers, which will also push a lot of workers to revert back to work for the Taliban. – Reuters photo
KABUL: Gazing glumly over millions of dollars worth of machinery which used to churn out thousands of police and army boots each day but now sits wreathed in plastic sheeting, Farhad Saffi fears he is seeing the death of an Afghan dream.
Saffi’s Milli Boot Factory, in Kabul’s sprawling industrial hinterland, was a model for Afghanistan, showcasing local manufacturing while giving jobs to hundreds of people who may have otherwise have picked up insurgent guns.
But a US decision to hand procurement to the Afghan government has left Saffi with something of a developed world problem – local officials opted for cheaper boots made in China and Pakistan, killing off Milli’s contracts after a year.
“The US government told me when I started I would have contracts for five years, until at least 2014,” he told Reuters.
“The Afghan government gave me only three months notice of cancellation and now I have $30 million worth of raw material I can’t use.”
When it opened, inside huge white sheds that once held PVC piping machinery but is now home to high-tech German injection moulding and boot-making equipment, Afghan and US generals were keen to be photographed alongside a local success story.
US Navy Rear Admiral Kathleen Dussault toured in 2010 to present Saffi, just 23, with a quality certificate for the plant to supply fledgling Afghan National Security Forces with top-quality boots under contracts worth up to $40 million a year.
Saffi sold his leather boots, which underwent a rigorous quality testing process in the United States, for $62 a pair, while Chinese-made boots with imitation leather cost the Afghan government $22 in a contract for up to 700,000 pairs a year.
“The Afghan government is just looking for the lowest price,” he said, surveying a room piled high with rolls of leather and raw material bought from Taiwan.
“They asked me to sell for $15 a pair, but the leather alone cost me $40. The Chinese boots use fake leather and quickly fall apart, but they are cheap.”
From 2002 until the end of 2011, $85.5 billion was spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan, according to US government figures, while international aid worth $57 billion has flooded into the country.
NATO-led forces, who have mostly handled purchasing for the Afghan security forces in the decade-long war, have since 2010 operated under “Afghan First” rules requiring them to buy where possible from local companies, boosting the economy and employment while underpinning anti-insurgent strategies.
Contracts for Afghan businesses included 100 percent of Afghan uniforms and boots, textiles, furniture, tents, software and transformers, according to NATO data.
Those contracts spawned 15,000 jobs, while making savings on imports for combat-related spending worth $650 million – still a fraction of the estimated $200 million spent on the war a day.
THE $10-A-DAY TALIB
The Afghan First Policy backs anti-insurgency efforts by ensuring that people employed locally with better jobs and incomes aren’t tempted to join the estimated 25,000 Afghan Taliban fighters in the country, often called the ‘$10-a-day Talib’, referring to the payment offered to would-be fighters.
Some of the 700 workers laid off from Saffi’s factory are now thinking of doing just that, seeing no other future as Western nations and NGOs look to leave the country with the withdrawal of most NATO combat troops in 2014.
“The factory must be reopened. If it doesn’t we will have to join the Taliban for a job. What else can we do? We have families to feed,” said Ares Khan, 23, as he packed some of the last boots Milli will produce without a government change of heart.
Workers at the factory earned between $400 and $900 a month, well over the average wage in a country where up to a third of the 30 million population live under the poverty line.
But many businessmen and workers fear security will evaporate with the Western exodus, taking job opportunities and investment dollars with them to safer havens elsewhere, as Afghanistan’s moneyed elite have done for decades.
Khan’s friend, Khair Mohammad, who came to Kabul from Ghazni province where NATO forces are engaged now in one of the last large offensives of the war, also sees no future outside the insurgency if the Afghan government closes off jobs.
“There are sixteen people in my family and there is no bread winner except me. When I go back to Ghazni I will have to join the Taliban,” Mohammad said.
More than $12 billion a year spent on the war has driven up prices in Afghanistan, and wages for an internationalised few. Mohammad said his living costs were already high.
AFGHAN ABILITY
US military officials say the decision to hand a large slice of procurement to the Afghans was made in March, with responsibility handed over to the Defence and Interior Ministries.
“The decision was part of the transition process to Afghan security and control,” said US Navy Lieutenant Aaron Kakiel, a logistics officer for the 130,000-strong NATO-led coalition in the country.
Afghan companies, Kakiel said, had supplied everything from boots to uniforms and sleeping bags, construction and even IT services for the country’s security forces, which will eventually number around 352,000.
Milli is not the only company to fall foul of the switch to local procurement, with several uniform and equipment suppliers either nervously eyeing soon-to-expire contracts, or having already lost orders to cross-border competitors.
A rival company executive, who asked not to be named because his firm fears retribution from Afghan military buyers, said, like Milli, he had invested millions of dollars into his business, but his supply contracts were now in limbo.
“The term of our contracts in some fields has ended. It’s not clear if the government will contract with us again, or with some other companies in other countries,” the executive said.
“My company has imported material from the US for products which get manufactured in Kabul and that will be useless if we don’t get contracts back. We will have to sack people.”
Lieutenant-General Abdul Basir Asafzari, who heads logistics and procurement in the Ministry of Defence, said only 30 per cent of supply currently was coming from Afghan companies, and President Hamid Karzai had also ordered the military to choose local firms where possible.
The reason Milli had contracts cancelled was because it was importing low-quality boots from China and other countries and relabelling them, he said.
“Milli boot company did not fulfil its commitments. There were some complaints from soldiers about the quality,” Asafzari said.
But Mohammad Akbar Ahmadzai, from the NGO Building Markets, which helps build jobs and investment in developing countries by supporting entrepreneurs, said Milli’s boots had been genuine and met US-based quality tests.
Other business experts, who would only comment anonymously, said Milli and others may have fallen foul of Afghanistan’s labyrinth of bribe and patronage payments, with better-connected competitors manoeuvring to kill them off.
NATO’s Kakiel said Milli and others may also have misunderstood complex contract provisions which stipulated only one year of guaranteed sales.
In 2011, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan saw US agencies contract out over $4 billion, out of a total of $17.3 billion, with Afghan companies.
More than 90 percent of that was spent on products bought from Afghan sellers (49 per cent), construction (28 per cent), support services (11 per cent) and transportation (6 per cent).
But an audit by the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, released in January, said the Afghan First Initiative (AFI) had been marred by inadequate contract solicitation and vetting, while data on claimed employment benefits had been limited.
BUSINESS CONFIDENCE
Saffi, whose family fled under Taliban rule and returned in 2002 to find everything destroyed, said his experience had shaken his faith in both the US government and the future promised by Karzai.
“We tried to do a good job here in this factory, but right now this has happened,” he said. “The only judgment we can make is that my company and the country are going the same way.”
Most people in Kabul’s business world, he said, were nervous about the unpredictable investment climate and deteriorating security, a sentiment reinforced by an audacious Taliban attack on the city centre and nearby provinces in mid-April.
Saffi said he now had to employ 30 personal bodyguards just to ensure his children can attend school, without insurgent harm or kidnap, while police snipers were based on the roof above his home.
“When my company is closing and also going down, the same way you can think of the country. I am president of my company and Karzai is president of the country,” he said.
“I am managing my company, and now my workers are leaving. The same will be happening to the country. The president must manage his country.”
Land Grabs Intensify as Burma ‘Reform’ Races Ahead of Law
Burmese farmers protest the confiscation of their land at a rally in downtown Rangoon on Oct. 27, 2011. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)
While foreign governments heap praise on the Burmese government’s liberal tilt, land theft appears to be increasing as state agencies and powerfully placed domestic firms position themselves to welcome foreign investment.
Farmers across the country are being muscled out of their fields with little hope of appeal to the law. This is because despite all the trumpeting in the West about President Thein Sein’s “reforms,” the rule of law in Burma is closer to 12th Century Europe than the 21st Century.
In medieval Europe, land ownership was determined by sharp swords and private armies. In present-day Burma, powerful businesses linked to the army do much the same.
Land confiscation is being reported near the south coast, in the Rangoon region, around Mandalay and in northern areas close to the border with China.
Farmers and their families are being forcibly moved for major projects, such as the oil and gas pipelines being built through the country from the Bay of Bengal to the Chinese border, and for smaller industrial projects by firms with long crony links to the military.
Even where the local authorities have sided with expelled farmers, big businesses feel confident enough to ignore them. Just last week, The Irrawaddy reported how industrial firm Zay Kabar has continued to bulldoze snatched land despite a stop order issued by the administrative office of the Rangoon area’s Mingaladon Township.
Zay Kabar is owned by Khin Shwe, a member of Parliament for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.
“[Burma] faces new challenges, notably as former military personnel move into new roles in other sectors including industry, carrying with them their previous authority,” the Asian Human Rights Commission said in a recent submission to United Nations Human Rights Council.
“The convergence of the military, government agents and business is an enormously dangerous development, as can been seen in the increasingly grave problem of land-grabbing.”
The commission alleged that 70 percent of court cases in Burma are “decided in part or whole by the payment of money. As economic boom increases the money within the system, the effect of corruption will only grow.”
Business investment risk assessor Maplecroft, based in Britain, says that despite the widespread praise for supposed political reforms, Burma continues to come to the top of its poor rule of law index. It says the government continues to dictate judicial decisions.
“Tangible improvements in the rule of law, including increased judicial independence and greater transparency in the regulatory system, will be required before the long-term potential of the economy can be realized,” Maplecroft says.
Claiming ownership of a slice of land, especially in potential development areas around the bigger conurbations or tourist attractions, will enhance Burmese businesses looking to attract wealthier foreign investment partners.
Land ownership has been vague since the 1960s when most of it was nationalized during the socialist reign of Ne Win. Successive military rules have eroded the rule of law so that questions of ownership depend more on political influence or money than any historic right.
A new land law is supposed to be under debate in the Burmese Parliament but it has been subject to very little open analysis and some observers think it will merely strengthen the ability of military-linked businesses to claim they are acting within the law when they decide they want a piece of land.
“Existing laws do little to prevent confiscation by government-aligned figures, and that looks set to continue if a bill currently being debated in Parliament comes into force,” said a report by the Democratic Voice of Burma. “The Land Act will effectively allow powerful tycoons to monopolize arable land and force off small-scale farmers,” it concluded.
One of the biggest land grabs has occurred in recent weeks in Sagaing Division, where scores of people in three villages have been ordered to leave their homes in a bid to take over 7,500 acres, reportedly for copper mining projects.
The Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH), run by the military in various guises, and Chinese businesses are involved in these land confiscations.
“These incidents mirror what has gone on in China over the past 20 or more years as the economic boom has demanded more and more agricultural land for projects ranging from coal mines to hydroelectric dam systems,” Hong Kong energy industries analyst Jeff mead told The Irrawaddy. “The absence of a proper rule of law has made it difficult for people to resist but today in China there is a more emboldened public prepared to make protests heard.”
One positive consequence of the current reformed-minded government is that aggrieved people in Burma are less frightened of publicly objecting to injustice. This is illustrated by the legal action being taken this month by several farmers who had land confiscated from them last year in the Mandalay area.
About 40 acres of the farmers’ land was taken by yet another military body, the Bureau of Air Defense, in cahoots with a firm called High Tech Concrete, which is owned by noted army-linked businessman Aik Tun.
Such bold action is not without serious risks though. Five farmers in the Magwe Division who sued UMEH and the Htoo Trading Company last year over land confiscation ended in prison.
The farmers’ land was taken to build a caustic soda factory. The farmers were jailed for allegedly offensive comments, trespass and “violation” of the law.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific warned last week that although Burma seems to be on the brink of “tremendous opportunity,” there remained a danger that the chief beneficiaries would be the well-placed business cronies of the military establishment.
All the signs are that without the rule of law and an independent judiciary, this is exactly what’s happening.
The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991 offered a historic opportunity to transform that part of the world into open societies; but the Western democracies failed to rise to the occasion and the entire world has to suffer the consequences. The Soviet Union and later Russia needed outside help because an open society is a more sophisticated form of social organization than a closed society. In a closed society there is only one concept of how society should be organized, the authorized version, which is imposed by force. In an open society citizens are not only allowed but required to think for themselves, and there are institutional arrangements that allow people with different interests, different backgrounds, and different opinions to live together in peace.The Soviet system was probably the most comprehensive form of closed society ever invented by man. It penetrated into practically all aspects of existence: not only the political and military but also the economic and the intellectual. At its most aggressive, it even tried to invade natural science—as the case of Lysenko showed. To make the transition to an open society required a revolutionary change in regime which could not be accomplished without outside help. It was this insight that prompted me to rush in and establish open society foundations in one country after another in the former Soviet empire.
But the open societies of the West lacked this insight. After the end of the Second World War, the United States launched the Marshall Plan; after the collapse of the Soviet system the idea of a similar initiative was unthinkable. I proposed something like it at a conference in the spring of 1989 in Potsdam, which was then still in East Germany, and I was literally laughed at. The laughter was led by William Waldegrave, a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s foreign office. Margaret Thatcher was a staunch defender of freedom—when she visited Communist countries she insisted on meeting with dissidents—but the idea that an open society needs to be constructed and that the construction may require—and deserve—outside help was apparently beyond her understanding. As a market fundamentalist, she did not believe in government intervention. In fact, the formerly Communist countries were left largely to fend for themselves. Some made the grade; others did not.
//
There is much soul-searching and finger-pointing going on with regard to Russia. Articles are being written asking, Who lost Russia? I am convinced that we, the Western democracies, are largely responsible, and that the sins of omission were committed by the Bush and Thatcher administrations. The record of Chancellor Kohl’s Germany is more mixed. Both in extending credits and in making grants, Germany was the largest financial contributor to the Soviet Union and later to Russia, but Kohl was motivated more by the desire to buy Russian acquiescence in German reunification than to help transform Russia.
I contend that if the Western democracies had really engaged themselves, Russia …
Farhad Saffi, manager of Milli Boot company which faces closure [Jennifer Glasse]
I first met the Saffi family in 2010 I was in Afghanistan doing a series on building the Afghan military and NATO’s training mission was keen to show off the Milli boot factory.
Colonel John Ferrari, then the deputy commander for programmes of the training mission, said supporting the Milli boot factory was part of their Afghan First programme.
“One of our goals is to make the Afghan security forces sustainable over time, and that means that the Afghan economy and the Afghan people can support their security forces,” Ferrari said.
Family patriarch Ihsan Saffi agreed.
He first started making boots in Afghanistan in 1979.
He and his family fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took over and they returned in 2002. His equipment and factories were destroyed.
But, he decided to rebuild, and in 2010, he told me the reason was simple.
“Afghanistan is our own country, I want to help my own country, I want to help my own people, there are many poor people I want to bring them here and give them jobs.”
It was an encouraging story. Saffi was already employing about 500 workers and paying their salaries even though the factory was not fully up and running.
He wanted to be ready as soon as NATO approved the boot quality.
Ihsan Saffi saw it as an investment in security and stability.
“If every businessman invested here and opened a factory,” he said, “people would have work.
“Everyone knows if people had jobs, there wouldn’t be fighting. Everyone would be busy earning money for their children, they wouldn’t fight.”
Saffi had just purchased a $6m machine to make molded boot soles. He was certain this would ensure high quality for years to come and make him the official bootmaker for the Afghan army and police.
In 2009, NATO had promised the Milli Boot Company a five-year IDIQ contract. That is indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, but with NATO’s aim to increase the size of the Afghan security forces to exceed 300,000, the Saffis were confident they had a secure market for their boots.
A new reality
When I returned to the boot factory this week, the mood was not so optimistic.
Ihsan’s son Farhad manages the business. He says he was shocked to learn in February, that NATO was transferring procurement responsibilities to the Afghan government and that they would no longer be buying his boots.
“They will be buying boots for them from China, the lowest quality and the lowest price,” he said.
The Afghan military, however, denies it is in control of the contract.
Spokesman Major General Zahir Azimi told me that the contract might be transferred in six months. NATO’s training mission says they turned over control in March.
Caught in the middle, is Farhad Saffi.
He has laid of 70 per cent of his 150 workers.
The remaining few dozen continue to make boots, because otherwise the expensive chemicals needed to mold the boot soles would expire.
Farhad Saffi says he will have to fire the remaining workers when the chemicals run out in about a month. Saffi points out his stockpiles of leather and cloth, enough to make 700 000 pairs of boots, in a storeroom welders two years ago were specially building for this purpose.
He imported so much raw material because transporting supplies into the country has been difficult since November 2011, when NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border post and Pakistan closed its border to NATO supply trucks.
Saffi said if he knew the contract was going to be cancelled, he would not have brought the millions of dollars of supplies into Afghanistan.
“Surely we are disappointed why this has happened, and so suddenly,” Farhad Saffi said. “They should have informed us six months ago. The US government should have told us that this transition would be happening in the very near future so that we would know what to do.”
From promise to uncertainty
Now Saffi says he does not know what to do. He has more than 120 000 boots sitting in boxes.
He says he can not match the price of the cheaper Chinese boots he may have to compete with.
But, he insists the quality of his boots is better, because they are made with real leather that is two millimeters thick, and heavy duty cloth. Saffi says they will last far longer than the less expensive, poorly made Chinese boots.
If the government only goes with the lowest price, Saffi will loose the bid.
Azimi, at the Afghan ministry of defence, says when the contract does come up for bid, the government will want high quality and a low price.
“Afghanistan has an open trade policy,” Azimi explained. “It will be up to the company to bid and it needs to be able to compete with other companies.”
Saffi is confident that he makes the best boots in Afghanistan.
He is hoping the competition will be fair, but Azrakahsh Hafizi, the chairman of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industry says the biggest challenge the Milli Boot company will face is corruption.
“In every government office, the corruption is huge,” says Hafizi. “If you are not corrupt, they are thinking that, you are crazy. It’s the mentality of the government of Afghanistan.”
Whatever happens ultimately to the Milli Boot Factory, it is a cautionary tale.
One of the workers, Mohammed Nasim, told me there is not another factory like it in Kabul and that if this busines fails, after so much investment by the Saffi family and years of support from NATO, it will discourage other businesspeople from investing in Afghanistan.
That would be another setback for this country.
NATO forces are heading for the exit, taking with them not only soldiers and equipment, but billions of dollars of potential business when they depart by the end of 2014.
In the meantime Afghanistan must learn to stand on its own feet, both militarily and economically.
Privatising Margaret Thatcher’s funeral would be a fitting tribute to her legacy
The Iron Lady herself would surely agree that poor taxpayers should not be further burdened in these times of austerity; Ref: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
An e-petition has called for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral to be funded and managed by the private sector. Photograph: Geoff Caddick/EPA
Margaret Thatcher’s close ideological ally Ronald Reagan famously said the 10 most dangerous words in the English language were: “Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Neither Thatcher nor Reagan were enamoured with the state and its role in society. They wanted private companies to be able to reach into every party of our lives. So why not extend this privatisation experiment into the after-life?
“In keeping with the great lady’s legacy, Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral should be funded and managed by the private sector to offer the best value and choice for end users and other stakeholders. The undersigned believe that the legacy of the former PM deserves nothing less and that offering this unique opportunity is an ideal way to cut government expense and further prove the merits of liberalised economics Baroness Thatcher spearheaded.”
This is a brilliant idea, and surely one even Thatcher will approve of. It can be a fitting tribute to her ideological legacy.
Let me be clear: it’s isn’t nice to wish death on most people, and I’m not doing that here for Thatcher. She deserves a degree of respect like other people, in my view, despite what she did as prime minister.
Surely the serious point behind this petition is to ask how far ideologues are willing go. Wouldn’t Thatcher prefer the first privatised funeral instead of a state one? After all, why go out on a state subsidy?
Consider the endless possibilities, for die-hard Thatcherites, of privatising the event. I think we can agree it should be ticketed so it can turn a profit. Perhaps an IT company (let’s call them Crapita for example), could sell tickets via the internet. You may have to wait a couple of months to get the system off the ground but at least it’ll work … eventually. If it’s anything like the privatisation of the railways, none of the funeral services would run on time and you’d end up with 500 people in a church meant for 200.
But there could be optional extras otherwise denied by the state. You could pay to have an opportunity to wail, as North Koreans seem to have perfected. Wailing while stabbing a picture of Arthur Scargill should obviously cost much more. Opportunities to sell Thatcher memorabilia (a picture of her with Pinochet, sir?) would be endless. It could even boost our sagging economy.
The television rights to the event should be auctioned off, perhaps for a private library dedicated to Thatcher (with John Maynard Keynes banned from the economics section of course).
Surely Thatcher herself would agree that poor taxpayers should not be further burdened in these times of austerity.
And, in the interests of balance, I think it’s only right to say I’d be happy to repeat the call when the time comes for Tony Blair.
Critical Thinking: Well, in Myanmar the government has done similar aggressive privatisation of citizens’ public assets, institutions and resources, very much like
Thatcher’s Britain. Intellectuals, economists and communities of local citizenry should question and form an inquiry into the impact of such privatisation and incurring impacts. Many thanks dear,
Professors of Garunar L’ Universite Orientale Royale
A whole world sold on sell-offs
Ten years after the fall of its great exponent, privatisation has become the common currency of political parties
The Guardian, Wednesday 22 November 2000 02.28 GMT
Love her or loathe her, Margaret Thatcher changed the industrial landscape of Britain. It is 10 years to the day since she was ousted in a palace coup. But the main legacy of her time in Downing Street lives on, not just in Britain but across the world.
The shorthand version of the Thatcher years, as retold in the Iron Lady’s memoirs, and on the after-dinner circuit – where she earns an estimated £1.5m a year – is that Britain was changed from the land of Red Robbo and wildcat strikes to the land of “Sid” and the share-owning democracy. In one stroke, the dead hand of the state was removed from the economy, unleashing a new spirit of enterprise and derring do.
But memoirs, like memory, can play tricks. By the time the usually steely-eyed Lady Thatcher made her tearful departure in November 1990, one in four of the population owned shares and more than 40 former state-owned businesses had been privatised, a process which affected more than 600,000 workers in former nationalised industries.
Privatisation was, however, no overnight revolution; rather it was a slow-burn process that only really began in Mrs Thatcher’s second term. In fact Jim Callahan sold a chunk of BP in the 1970s to to keep the International Monetary Fund happy. What is more, the record of some companies that were denationalised looks different today from the late 80s, when tycoons like Lord King at British Airways were members of the prime minister’s inner court.
Mad dash for shares
The truth is that privatisation hardly featured at all between 1979 and 1983, when Mrs Thatcher was preoccupied by three struggles – the fight against inflation, the fight against the unions and the fight against the Argentines. Even during the second term, from 1983 to 1987 – easily the most radical of the four successive Conservative terms in office – there was no real conception of how a scheme to make money for the Treasury could be used as a weapon to win votes.
It was only after the mad dash for shares in British Telecom in 1984 that the penny dropped in Downing Street. Privatisation was not just about ownership and industrial organisation, it was also about politics. As such, the BT sell off was followed by the privatisation of British Gas in 1986 and of Rolls-Royce, British Airways and the British Airports Authority in 1987.
Apart from the unions and the Labour party, everybody seemed happy. The government had extra cash to spend on tax cuts, voters had shares which were going up in value and those running the companies had freedom to act and much fat ter pay packets. But how much has really changed? To be sure, many of those working in the old nationalised industries have lost their jobs as the newly cost-conscious companies responded to shareholder demands to boost productivity and profits. But BT is still seen as flabby and staid, BA is struggling to compete in the global airlines business, and Railtrack – a company sold off long after Mrs Thatcher was ousted – is dogged by controversy about whether privatisation is to blame for the state of the nation’s railways. The tough regulation to prevent the privatised utilities exploiting their natural monopolies has made some of them hanker after giving up their PLC status.
In her memoirs, the former prime minister evocatively described the sale of state assets as essential to “eroding the corro sive and corrupting effects of socialism”. Yet five years after she left office, a star was created out of a 30-stone pink and black pig named Cedric, who was to come to symbolise corporate excess with its snout buried in the “trough of privatisation”. Ironically, though, the level of pay being protested about then – a 75% rise for chief executive Cedric Brown, to £475,000 and potential performance-related bonus of £594,000 – would now barely cause even a raised eyebrow.
Unsurprisingly, Lady Thatcher and her teams of politicial and financial advisers prefer not to dwell on the boardroom self-enrichment that followed privatisation, arguing instead that there were beneficial effects for the wider economy.
Tony Carlisle, a City public relations adviser involved in 90% of the privatisations, acknowledges: “One of the key accusations of privatisations is that it works for the bosses and the shareholders, but … pity about the poor consumer.”
But he argues that privatisation actually served the consumer well. Through deregulation and increased competition, there is more choice about which company gas, electricity and telephone services can be bought.
Without privatisation, companies such as Vodafone and Energis might never have been created. A senior corporate finance executive closely involved in the privatisation says: “You may argue about the pricing, the public policy and the structure of the deals but if it had not been done you would not have the competition we now see across all industries”.
The more cynical take the view that privatisation demonstrated that being British was not best. One highly regarded City analyst says: “In general, companies with British in their names haven’t done very well. Being British quickly became too parochial.”
Words such as “globalisation” have quickly eclipsed “privatisation” in the City’s lexicon of catchphrases. The big, national monopolies that were privatised increasingly drew their customers outside national boundaries.
“British” is now eradicated from British Steel, after merging with Hoogovens of Holland to form Corus; from British Gas, now three separate companies, only one of which refers to itself as BG. British Petroleum has long been BP and now BP Amoco after its multi-billion dollar takeover of the US company.
Another frequent criticism is that the companies were sold off too cheaply. Another City analyst warns this can be a too simple conclusion drawn from the way in which many of the share sales were overscribed. Not all the share sales were successful. BP, for instance, hit the market in the midst of a stock market crash, leaving many banks licking their wounds.
Tell Sid
Yet, an analysis of the companies which were privatised during the Thatcher years shows that the privatisation portfolio, constructed for the Guardian by investment bank ING Barings, outperformed the benchmark FTSE 100 for most of the period. An indication that investors were sold the companies too cheaply, or a reflection of sound management which outpaced the rest of the industry?
To one City analyst it is almost irrelevant whether the privatisation portfolio outperformed the market. “The ‘Tell Sid’ campaign sticks in people’s minds. It made people more aware that the equity market could be a form of saving for the future just as it became the state could no longer provide for old age,” the analyst said.
Tony Alt, a corporate financier at investment Rothschild who was involved in many of the major privatisations, regards the most important legacy as creating “a platform for privatisations around the globe”.
More than £400bn of assets have now been privatised in countries as diverse as the Czech republic and New Zealand, and a word which gained currency during Lady Thatcher’s government is now internationally recognised.
But the real political impact of privatisation has not been in Prague or Wellington but in London. In 1983 when he first became an MP, Tony Blair fought on a Labour manifesto committed to an extension of state ownership. The strength of Mrs Thatcher’s enduring legacy is that Labour has not only turned its back on nationalisation, but now has privatisation plans of its own.
| 18.02.12 | 14h41 • Mis à jour le 18.02.12 | 16h21
From
Mark Fischetti is a senior editor at Scientific American who covers energy, environment and sustainability issues. – - markfischetti
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Photograph by Alexia S | Styling by Sara Ruffin CostelloTeatime with Orlando and Miranda Rock and their children, (from left) Matilda, Cosmo, Lila and Jemima.
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Ben HoffmannLE PENSEUR Bernard-Henri Lévy, photographed in the living room of his suite at New York’s Carlyle hotel.
arietta Tree’s high-WASP background had all the makings of the glamorous fantasy that Ralph Lauren has burnished to a high gloss: a New England pedigree that predates the Revolution (she was born Mary Endicott Peabody, the granddaughter of the founder of the Groton School), a prep-school adolescence, with summers in Northeast Harbor, Me., and the full complement of fizzy coming-out parties in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Transplanted to England in the early years of her second marriage, to Ronald Tree, she presided over Ditchley, the stately home he had refurbished with his former wife (who, as Nancy Lancaster, went on to great renown as a decorator). In Europe and America, Marietta traveled in what used to be called ”the highest circles.” Indeed, the surface of her life remained impeccable until her death, in 1991, at 74. But this book cannot sustain the fairy tale, if only because in the long run neither could she.
Bill Clinton speech 
I highly appreciate the efforts made by Bill Clinton and also Bill Gate to tackle the HIV/Aids epidemic 
Slide Show 
SUBJECTS: 
Emma Dodge HansonSuleika Jaouad
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: Former Myanmar prime minister and military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Yangon on April 1.
SHOT CALLERS: Former dictator Ne Win, above, and retired Senior General Than Shwe.
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If you haven’t noticed by now, true energy independence is at the end of a long and winding road of broken promises and wordy speeches.We know the song and dance all too well.It begins with a few notes about eliminating U.S. dependence on foreign oil entirely, followed by a two-step over renewables alleviating a very serious decades-long addiction to crude.
Add to that 1,400 compressor stations, 11,000 delivery points, 24 market hubs, and over 400 underground storage facilities… and we’re still not prepared for the transition from oil.
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