EDITORIAL:
Elections in
Israel this week indicate the new government will be
formed by the Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel Is
Our Home, this is a setback in the Obama
administration's bid to mobilize efforts to bring peace
to the Middle East. The surge in votes Tuesday for right
and extreme right parties revealed declining support for
negotiations with a divided Palestinian leadership.
Analysts and officials said that whether the new
government is formed by the Likud party or the Kadima,
it probably would be too divided to conduct peace
negotiations.Send your comments to
sumpinein@gmail.com
OSCAR
NOMINEES
Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole
Kidman, is shortlisted for Best Costume in 2009
Oscar awards
BURMA'S HUMAN EXPORTS
Her glasses were
Gucci and her bag YSL. The smart Burmese
businesswoman was perched neatly on a
sofa in the lobby of a Rangoon hotel,
delivering her sales patter to a small
group of businessmen. Her product? Human
beings. "We supply only strong bodies,"
she says crisply. "That is our
guarantee." The woman is a supplier of
workers for deep-sea trawlers, and her
stock of men come from Burma's beautiful
but impoverished Inle Lake area, where
fishing the tranquil waters no longer
makes enough to feed a family. "These
are just simple fishermen; they are not
educated, but what we promise you is
strong bodies," she says, using a phrase
she repeats again and again. It appears
that the businesswoman's potential
customers are middlemen, probably
Chinese. Through a translator, they
discuss placing the men on boats in the
South China Sea, trawling for tuna.
First, they will be flown to a Chinese
city. In echoes of the slave trade, she
describes a selection process worthy of
a livestock market. In a 21st-century
twist, she does so with the aid of
pictures on her laptop. "We make them
stand in the sun for one hour," she
says. "In the middle of the day when it
is very hot. We see how they manage, if
they look uncomfortable." The group
leans in to see the pictures on her
computer. "We make them carry 20 kilos,
like this," she continues, showing them
photographs I cannot see. "For deep-sea
fishing, they may need to carry very big
fish for long distances across the
ship." The group nods. The images of
Burma's Rohingya boat people, fleeing
oppression only to be allegedly abused
and cast adrift by the Thai military,
has drawn international attention to the
plight of one of the world's most
downtrodden people. The Muslim Rohingyas
face particular persecution in
military-ruled Burma, but throughout the
country, impoverished men and women who
see no future at home are embarking on
risky journeys abroad in search of an
income for their families. Hit by the
global recession and the mismanagement
and neglect of Burma's ruling generals,
in power for nearly five decades, the
country's farmers and fishermen are
suffering as never before, say aid
workers.
SEEN
FROM SPACE
Inauguration Day, seen from spacelooked
like
warms of
bees landed on a street somewhere? A
huge colony of worker ants on the march?
Or the effects of a Predator strike in
some distant battlefield.? You're
probably way ahead of us already. Those
aren't just any old buildings:
that's how the National Mall and the
US Capitol looked from space during Barack
Obama's inauguration when more than 2
million people, according to some
estimates, came to hear him take the
oath of office and deliver his inaugural
address. What a passing Martian would
have made of it is anyone's guess. How
do they all crowd together like that
without crushing each other? Don't they
have televisions?
CULTURE
CREOLE
STOMP
This band
incarnates the traditional
values of Cajun music in the
USA. The Cajuns live mainly in
Louisiana and are the
descendants of Acadian exiles.
Today, the Cajuns make up a
significant portion of south
Louisiana's population, and have
exerted an enormous impact on
the state's culture.
Every now
and again a band comes along that
redefines a genre of music and carries
it even further...that group is Dennis
Stroughmatt and Creole Stomp.
Always leaving audiences wondering "who
are they?," and "where do they come
from?," Dennis and CS are based in
southern Illinois and happily tell
audiences "we are from upper Louisiana."
While this may bring chuckles from many
and nodding heads from others "in the
know," this is the group that does
represent "old upper Louisiana." Dennis
learned to speak French and play French
Creole music in a southeast Missouri
French Creole community before moving to
the state of Louisiana. Their unique sound and mix of ancient
and modern Mississippi River valley
musical tradition positions them as the
only band to encompass French Creole and
Folk Music from the entirety of the old
Louisiana Territory. And although
Dennis continues to play with many of
his Louisiana based friends on occasion,
you can always find him at the helm of
Creole Stomp playing
somewhere from San Diego to Boston
Read DEATH OF
A FINANCIER by
JOHN FRANCIS KINSELLA
Tom Barton, a City
mortgage broker, decides
to quit his business in
the wake of the subprime
crisis and arrives in
Kovalam, in the south of
India. In the Maharaja
Palace he finds himself
in the company of
holiday makers from the
UK, Scandinavia and
Russia. Stephen Parkly,
the CEO of a successful
City bank, and his young
wife Emma are taking a
well earned year end
break. Parkly falls
gravely ill with a
mysterious infection,
whilst back in the City,
unknown to him his
mortgage and investment
bank, West Mercian
Finance is in grave
difficulties. Ryan
Kavanagh, a doctor,
comes to Emma’s aid with
the help of Barton,
after an attempted
cover-up by the Indian
authorities, who fear
for their tourist
industry and more
especially medical
tourism, as the disease
threatens the resort
with the tourist season
in full swing. Thousands
of British tourists
enjoying the sun are
unaware of the pending
disaster, many are
equally unaware their
savings about are to be
wiped out in the West
Mercian collapse.
More books by John Francis Kinsella from Vincennes Books: Borneo Pulp, The Legacy of Solomon, Offshore Islands, The Lost Forest
LONDON TO TIMBUKTU BY
FLYING-CAR
A voyage to fabled
Timbuktu in a flying car
may sound like a magical
childhood fantasy.
But this week a British
adventurer will set off
from London on an
incredible journey
through Europe and
Africa in a souped-up
sand buggy, travelling
by road - and air. With
the help of a parachute
and a giant fan-motor,
Neil Laughton plans to
soar over the Pyrenees
near Andorra, before
taking to the skies
again to hop across the
14-km (nine-mile)
Straits of Gibraltar.
WORST BUSH FIRES IN
HISTORY
The
death
toll
from
bush
fires in
southern
Australia
has
reached
an
estimated
200, the
worst in
the
country's
history.
Thousands
of
fire-fighters,
aided by
the
army,
are
battling
several
major
fires,
and the
number
of dead
is
expected
to rise
as fires
are put
out.
Arsonists
responsible
for
lighting
the
fires
could be
charged
with
murder,
police
have
said.
Entire
towns
have
been
destroyed
in the
fires,
fanned
by
extremely
high
temperatures
and
unpredictable
winds.
Temperatures are dropping now, but officials fear they will not be
able to
get the
fires
under
control
until
there is
substantial
rain.
Fire-fighters
have
been
battling
against
what are
described
as the
worst
conditions
in the
state's
history.
Witnesses
described
seeing
walls of
flames
four
storeys
high,
trees
exploding
and the
skies
raining
ash, as
fires
tore
across
30,000
hectares
of
forests,
farmland
and
towns.
A
City
trader
has been
arrested
over a
£40million
"mini-Madoff"
investment
fraud
- the
largest
of its
kind
since
the
start of
the
financial
crisis.
Terry
Freeman,
60, was
apprehended
at his
home in
Buckhurst
Hill,
Essex,
on
Monday.
It is
thought
detectives
are
investigating
claims
that the
company
the
foreign
exchange
trader
worked
for, GFX,
was
running
a Ponzi
scheme
similar
to the
£35
billion
one
Bernie
Madhoff
is
accused
of
operating
in the
US.
Under
the
schemes,
investors
are
promised
huge
returns
on their
investments
but are
simply
paid
instalments
on the
money
they
invested
in the
first
place.
The
frauds
are only
uncovered
when
stakeholders
try to
get
their
original
deposits
back.
Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning
The
Pyrenean
ibex, a
form of
wild
mountain
goat,
was
officially
declared
extinct
in 2000
when the
last-known
animal
of its
kind was
found
dead in
northern
Spain.
Shortly
before
its
death,
scientists
preserved
skin
samples
of the
goat, a
subspecies
of the
Spanish
ibex
that
live in
mountain
ranges
across
the
country,
in
liquid
nitrogen.
Using
DNA
taken
from
these
skin
samples,
the
scientists
were
able to
replace
the
genetic
material
in eggs
from
domestic
goats,
to clone
a female
Pyrenean
ibex, or
bucardo
as they
are
known.
It is
the
first
time an
extinct
animal
has been
cloned.
Sadly,
the
newborn
ibex kid
died
shortly
after
birth
due to
physical
defects
in its
lungs.
Other
cloned
animals,
including
sheep,
have
been
born
with
similar
lung
defects.
But
the
breakthrough
has
raised
hopes
that it
will be
possible
to save
endangered
and
newly
extinct
species
by
resurrecting
them
from
frozen
tissue.
It
has also
increased
the
possibility
that it
will one
day be
possible
to
reproduce
long-dead
species
such as
woolly
mammoths
and even
dinosaurs.
Dr
Jose
Folch,
from the
Centre
of Food
Technology
and
Research
of
Aragon,
in
Zaragoza,
northern
Spain,
led the
research
along
with
colleagues
from the
National
Research
Institute
of
Agriculture
and Food
in
Madrid. He
said:
"The
delivered
kid was
genetically
identical
to the
bucardo.
In
species
such as
bucardo,
cloning
is the
only
possibility
to avoid
its
complete
disappearance."
HELP MICHAEL
MOORE
KOALAS SUFFER IN
BUSH FIRES
THE INDEPENDENT NEW YORK
TIMES PRESENTS A ROUNDUP OF THE
WEEKLY NEWS
DAILY MAIL LONDON - Labour's
intimate relationship with the
financial industry has seen
dozens of bankers given honours,
appointed as ministers and given
jobs on Government taskforces,
reviews and quangos. An analysis
by the Daily Mail reveals that
while ministers are now railing
against the role of bankers in
causing the economic crisis,
they have spent the last decade
cosying up to the industry.
Labour has given 23 bankers
honours, brought three into the
Government as ministers and
involved 37 in commissions and
advisory bodies. Seven have got
jobs on quangos and agencies,
ten have been appointed to
various councils, and four were
given life peerages. Two banking
chiefs have been appointed to
senior posts inside Number Ten.
In addition, banks have been
awarded a string of Government
contracts and bankers have paid
for hospitality events enjoyed
by ministers. When Labour came
to power in 1997, it was
desperate to be seen as being on
the side of big business and
assiduously courted the City.
Ministers delivered light-touch
regulation that left the banks
free to pursue aggressive
lending and investment
strategies. In a 2007 speech to
the City, Mr Brown even claimed
bankers had forged an ‘era
that history will record as the
beginning of a new golden age
for the City of London’.
Of the finance chiefs honoured
by the Government, eight were
given knighthoods, seven CBEs,
four OBEs and four MBEs. Those
who were knighted include Fred
Goodwin, the former chief
executive of the Royal Bank of
Scotland, who has been blamed
for expected losses of up to
£28billion – the biggest in
British corporate history. In
2004, Sir Fred received his
knighthood, on the advice of Mr
Brown, for services to banking.
Two years later he was a member
of the Chancellor’s
International Business Advisory
Council. Nicknamed ‘Fred the
Shred’, he instigated the
acquisition of Dutch bank ABN
Amro that placed a toxic loan
timebomb at the heart of one of
Scotland’s oldest financial
institutions. Mr Brown now says
he is ‘angry’ about the
‘irresponsible risks’ taken by
RBS. Other bankers knighted
since Labour came to power
include Sir James Crosby, head
of HBOS, who was forced to quit
yesterday as deputy chairman of
the Financial Services Authority
watchdog; Sir Philip Hampton,
chief financial officer for
Lloyds TSB; and Sir Mervyn
Pedelty, chief executive of
Cooperative Financial Services.
The others are Sir George
Mathewson, group chief executive
of RBS; Sir John Bond, group
chairman of HSBC Holdings; Sir
Keith Whitson, group chief
executive of HSBC Holdings; and
Sir Peter Burt, executive deputy
chairman of HBOS.
SATELLITES
COLLIDE IN SPACE
A US and a Russian satellite
have collided in space hundreds
of miles above Earth in what is
believed to be the first major
crash of two spacecraft in
orbit.
The collision – which
occurred nearly 500 miles over
Siberia on Tuesday – caused
massive debris clouds to shoot
out into the atmosphere and
posed a risk to astronauts
aboard the International Space
Station. Nasa said that it would take
weeks to determine the full
magnitude of the crash, during
which an Iridium commercial
satellite from a Maryland-based
company was destroyed after it
was struck by a spent Russian
satellite. “We knew this was going to
happen eventually,” said Mark
Matney, an orbital debris
scientist at Johnson Space
Centre in Houston. Nasa believes that any risk
to the space station and its
three astronauts is low as it
orbits about 270 miles below the
collision course. There also should be no
danger to the space shuttle
scheduled to launch with seven
astronauts later this month,
officials said, but that would
be re-evaluated in the coming
days. The Russian satellite, which
was launched in 1993 and weighed
nearly a tonne, was out of
control. The Iridium commercial
satellite was launched in 1997
and weighed 1,235 pounds. No one has any idea yet how
many pieces were generated or
how big they may be. “Right now, they’re
definitely counting dozens,” Mr
Matney said. “I would suspect
that they’ll be counting
hundreds when the counting is
done.” The Bethesda-based company
that owns the Iridium commercial
satellite said that it had "lost
an operational satellite”.
MICHELLE
OBAMA
Michelle
Obama
has
ended a
period
of
relative
seclusion
to grace
the
cover of
Vogue
magazine
and
detail
her new
life as
“Mom-in-Chief”.
In an
extensive
and at
times
gushing
interview,
the
First
Lady
talks
about
her
young
children’s
schooling
and her
desire
to open
up the
White
House to
a new
generation
of
hip-hop-loving
youngsters.
Much of the
interview
centres on the
Obamas’ two
daughters, Malia,
10, and Sasha,
7. “I’m going to
try to take them
to school every
morning as much
as I can,” Mrs
Obama says. The
two girls attend
Sidwell Friends,
a Washington
private school
that costs more
than $28,000
annually for
each child. “But
there’s also a
measure of
independence.
And obviously
there will be
times I won’t be
able to drop
them off at all.
I like to be a
presence in my
kids’ school. I
want to know the
teachers; I want
to know the
other parents.”
Although Vogue
has photographed
every First Lady
since Lou Hoover
in 1929 — except
for Harry
Truman’s wife,
Bess — Mrs Obama
is only the
second to have
graced the
cover. The first
was Hillary
Clinton, in
December 1998.
SENTENCED
TO BLINDING
TEHRAN: An Iranian man
has been sentenced to be
blinded under Islamic
laws in retribution for
blinding a woman by
throwing acid on her
face for rejecting his
marriage proposal, press
reports said on
Thursday.
A Tehran criminal court
on Wednesday issued the
ruling against the
jilted suitor identified
as Majid, 27, who
confessed to throwing
acid on Ameneh Bahrami's
face four years ago,
Kargozaran newspaper
said.
Despite years of
treatment in Spain,
Bahrami has lost sight
in both eyes and still
bears serious injuries
to the face and body,
the report said. The
newspaper did not say
whether the convict
would appeal against the
ruling that he also be
blinded by acid.
Under the Sharia-based
law practised in the
Islamic republic, those
convicted of causing
intentional physical
injury are punishable by
"qisas", or the
eye-for-an-eye Islamic
penalty.
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP?
Barack Obama’s
grandfather was imprisoned and brutally
tortured by the British during the
violent struggle for Kenyan
independence, according to the Kenyan
family of the US President-elect.
Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama’s
paternal grandfather, became involved in
the Kenyan independence movement while
working as a cook for a British army
officer after the war. He was arrested
in 1949 and jailed for two years in a
high-security prison where, according to
his family, he was subjected to horrific
violence to extract information about
the growing insurgency.
IMAMS
AND RABBIS GATHER TO PROMOTE
PEACE
Paris,
15 December 2008, the Foundation
Hommes de Parole inaugurated the
Third World Congress of Imams
and Rabbis for Peace at UNESCO.
The theme of the Congress is
The Sacredness of Peace.
Abdoulaye Wade, President of the
Republic of Senegal and
President of the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference and Mr
Koïchiro Matsuura, Director
general of UNESCO opened the
proceedings.
FRAUD SQUAD TO
INVESTIGATE CITY BANKERS
The Serious
Fraud Office is
investigating at
least six cases
of alleged
swindling by
financial
institutions
linked to the
credit crunch.
The news of the fraud inquiries will send fear spreading through the
City. The probes
are in a
preliminary
stage and have
been carried out
by small teams
before
full-scale
inquiries are
ordered. However,
politicians
believe that
criminal charges
will be brought
against some
financiers
involved. The SFO is
also in talks
with the City
regulator and
the Scottish
Crown Office
after leader of
the Liberal
Democrats in
Scotland, Tavish
Scott MSP,
called for the
Royal Bank of
Scotland to be
investigated to
find out whether
shareholders
were misled over
last year’s £12
billion rights
issue. There is no
evidence that
RBS or any other
banks have
committed any
offences. The SFO has
already
announced that
it has launched
an investigation
into the UK
activities of
Bernard Madoff,
the American
fund manager
accused of a £33
billion fraud. Meanwhile,
banking
regulator Sir
James Crosby
faced calls to
resign today
amid new claims
that he tried to
silence warnings
about the risks
being run by
greedy banks. Sir James,
currently deputy
chairman of the
Financial
Services
Authority and
one of Gordon
Brown’s favoured
City advisers,
is now accused
of trying to
stop Lib-Dem
Treasury
spokesman Vince
Cable from
issuing warnings
about the
dangers of a
crash. The
revelation is a
new blow to Sir
James, who was
yesterday
accused of
firing a senior
risk regulator
at HBOS who
tried to warn
that the
industry was
heading for
disaster owing
to its excessive
lending and
over-rapid
expansion. Yesterday the
former bosses of
Royal Bank of
Scotland and
HBOS offered
their "profound"
apologies for
their part in
the banking
crisis, despite
vigorously
defending their
individual
actions.
GUNMEN ATTACK
KABUL
Not much
hope for the
security
services if
the 2 men
illustrated
are the
elite
troops. The
guy on the
windowsill
is perfectly
silhouetted
and can't
see in
whilst his
compatriot
below is
climbing the
ladder
one-handed
whilst
pointing an
automatic
rifle (no
doubt with
the safety
off) at the
guy above!A
suicide
bomber and
several
gunmen
launched
co-ordinated
attacks in
Kabul this
morning,
leaving the
Government
in confusion
and 'many
dead'
according to
local
officials. At least
two
government
ministries,
both
connected to
the rule of
law, were
targeted in
the attacks,
which began
mid-morning
in the
Afghan
capital.
Reports also
indicated
that a
police
station had
been
attacked.
Reports
from the
Ministry of
Justice, in
the centre
of the city,
suggested
gunmen
supported an
initial
assault by a
suicide
bomber. A
Justice
Ministry
official,
Mohammad
Ali, told
reporters
that the
fighting was
still
ongoing
around the
ministry
with at
least five
gunmen holed
up in the
building.
HIC! DID YOU
SAY
ALKA-SELTZER?
THE GREAT
DEPRESSION
FRANCE'S
TOXIC AIRCRAFT CARRIER
A former French aircraft
carrier is due to arrive
at a shipyard in Teeside
to join a fleet of so
called 'ghost ships'. The ship, called the
Clemenceu, is to be
dismantled and recycled
at Graythorp, after
being rejected by India
and Egypt for being too
toxic.
DUBAI HEADS INTO CRISIS
An abandoned car in a parking garage in
Dubai. One report said 3,000 cars were
sitting abandoned at the Dubai Airport.
USA AID FAILS IN UGANDA
DUNGU, Congo — The American
military helped plan and pay for
a recent attack on a notorious
Ugandan rebel group, but the
offensive went awry, scattering
fighters who carried out a wave
of massacres as they fled,
killing as many as 900
civilians. Dungu used to be
tranquil but is now surrounded
by chaos. The operation was led
by Uganda and aimed to crush the
Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal
rebel group that had been hiding
out in a Congolese national
park, rebuffing efforts to sign
a peace treaty. But the rebel
leaders escaped, breaking their
fighters into small groups that
continue to ransack town after
town in northeastern Congo,
hacking, burning, shooting and
clubbing to death anyone in
their way. The United States has
been training Ugandan troops in
counterterrorism for several
years, but its role in the
operation has not been widely
known. It is the first time the
United States has helped plan
such a specific military
offensive with Uganda, according
to senior American military
officials. They described a team
of 17 advisers and analysts from
the Pentagon’s new Africa
Command working closely with
Ugandan officers on the mission,
providing satellite phones,
intelligence and $1 million in
fuel. No American forces ever
got involved in the ground
fighting in this isolated,
rugged corner of Congo, but
human rights advocates and
villagers here complain that the
Ugandans and the Congolese
troops who carried out the
operation did little or nothing
to protect nearby villages,
despite a history of rebel
reprisals against civilians. The
troops did not seal off the
rebels’ escape routes or deploy
soldiers to many of the nearby
towns where the rebels
slaughtered people in churches
and even tried to twist off
toddlers’ heads. “The operation
was poorly planned and poorly
executed,” said Julia Spiegel, a
Uganda-based researcher for the
Enough Project, which campaigns
against genocide. The massacres
were “the L.R.A.’s standard
operating procedure,” she said.
“And the regional governments
knew this.”
READING DEATH
OF A FINANCIER
THE CREDIT CRUNCH
SONG
DON'T LOOK AT THIS IF YOU
HAVE A WEAK HEART AND YOUR ARE WORRIED ABOUT
YOUR BANK
HALIFAX BANK
OF SCOTLAND LOSES £10 BILLION?
The British
banking group HBOS stunned the City by
warning of £10 billion in annual losses,
which it rescued with Government backing
at the height of the financial turmoil
last autumn. The taxpayer already owns
43% of the group after pumping in some
£17 billion into the two banks, and was
left with paper losses of more than £2.5
billion at one stage yesterday as
Lloyds' shares tumbled up to 40%. The
Chancellor Mr Darling has defended the
Government decision to broker the merger
of Lloyds and HBOS and offer financial
backing, saying that failure to do so
would have brought down HBOS and
potentially collapsed the whole UK
banking system. Speaking from the G7
finance ministers summit in Rome, the
Chancellor said the immediate priority
was to identify banks' bad assets and
"put them out of the system", warning
that without this step normal lending to
businesses and individuals cannot
resume. Asked on two occasions during an
interview with BBC2's Newsnight whether
he could rule out nationalisation of the
Lloyds Group, Mr Darling did not do so.
Instead, he responded: "I said in
January there is a range of options that
we will be deploying, a range of levers
that can be pulled to help all banks,
because I have made it very, very clear
that the integrity of the banking system
is very, very important. "What we are
focusing on at the moment is making sure
that we can identify these bad assets
and then deal with that problem. That's
our focus at the moment and that will
continue not just here but it will
continue across the world as well."
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman
Vince Cable said: "It looks increasingly
as if Lloyds is being dragged under by
the dead weight of HBOS, a financial
disaster created by Andy Hornby and his
predecessor, Sir James Crosby.
"Obviously we need to digest the detail,
but it looks increasingly as if Lloyds
HBOS will now go into majority public
ownership, followed inevitably by
nationalisation."
EURO
PUT STRAINS ON WEAKER ECONOMIES
“The Italians, the
Spaniards, the Greeks, we all have been
living in happy land, spending what we
did not have,” said George Economou, a
Greek shipping magnate, contemplating
his country’s economic troubles and
others’ from his spacious boardroom. “It
was a fantasy world.” In Greece, another
of the euro zone nations in trouble,
stores like this one in Athens are
offering deep discounts to stay open.
For some of the countries on the
periphery of the 16-member euro currency
zone — Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal
and Spain — this debt-fired dream of
endless consumption has turned into the
rudest of nightmares, raising the risk
that a euro country may be forced to
declare bankruptcy or abandon the
currency. The prospect, however
unlikely, is a hum
THE OPEN SOCIETY
THE TIMES
LONDON: In the maelstrom of the financial
crisis it seems, at times, as if all fixed
positions have been abandoned. The temporary
expedients required to deal with a credit
crunch, the like of which the world has not seen
for 75 years, have altered the course of
arguments about the relationship of government
to markets, the appropriate level and type of
regulation. But not everything solid has melted
into air. There is a genuine danger that the
financial crisis is used as a cover under which
a revived economic nationalism is smuggled back.
The great policy triumph of the past thirty
years has been the gradual triumph of free trade
and open economies over tariff walls,
protectionism and variations on economic
autarky. The result has been the most
extraordinary growth in prosperity in all of
human history. And neither has this prosperity
been confined to the rich economies. More people
ceased to be poor in the latter half of the 20th
century than in any 50-year period previously.
The emergence of China and India promises that
the next half-century will be, on that score,
even better. In the same period there has been
peace in Europe, a continent that had known
constant conflict before. The same terrain on
which two bloody world wars were fought is now
covered by a single market in which free nations
trade with no regard for national borders.
Across the world, the West's greatest export has
been not its goods but its best idea -
democratic representation. There are still very
many tyrannies in the world, but far fewer than
there were, and only the most egregious do not
feel the need to clothe themselves in the
rhetoric of liberal democracy. Prosperity has a
tendency to beget democracy. Open economies
require open societies that in turn liberate the
potential of their peoples to contribute to the
continuing prosperity of the nation. The gravest
error, even in the seemingly exceptional
circumstances of crisis, would be to yield on
the basic principles that have served the world
well for a generation. President Bush did not
always encapsulate ideas clearly but he did on
the occasion that he warned the world not to
give way to the temptations of protectionism,
nativism and isolationism. Exactly the attitudes
that he deplored have been on display in recent
weeks. President Obama's stimulus package, which
is currently going through a bruising passage in
the Senate, contains a Buy America clause that
curtails competition for steel. President
Sarkozy of France offered help for Renault on
condition that production was repatriated. The
dispute at the Lincolnshire oil refinery was a
demand for special protection for British
workers on the ground of their nationality
rather than their productivity. Much recent
political debate in the advanced industrial
economies has centred on the way that
international events disrupt long-established
social ties. The objection to the free movement
of labour is that it tends to dissolve settled
communities that have been built around a
particular skill or industry. The argument is
not frivolous - but it is misguided. Small
communities can be oppressive as well as
sustaining. Social ferment in the United States
has been stimulated by huge advances in racial
integration and the opening of institutions -
the armed forces, the professions and now the
presidency - to a far wider pool of talent. The
important political point is that these debates
straddle the old political division of Left
versus Right. The new division in international
politics is between those who wish their nation
to be open to the world and those who wish to
close the door and turn away. A time of crisis
is a difficult moment to stress again that the
open economy and the open society are the best
options - so all the more reason for doing so.
HELP THOSE IN NEED IN
THE CONGO
Since food prices began to rise
100 million more people have been pushed into poverty,
according to the World Bank, with as many as two billion
on the verge of disaster. Almost half the world's
population, let's remember, live on less than $2.50 per
day. Millions die annually of hunger and starvation, and
more than a billion do not have access to fresh water.
GIVE GENEROUSLY - DIRECTLY TO
THESE CHARITIES
With the world financial crisis
these numbers are poised to rise dramatically with
population growth, dwindling natural resources and
higher consumer prices across all goods and services. So
as the stock market tumbles and the world economy
falters, it's important to remember that it's more than
financial losses we are talking about, it's the loss of
life.
Send your comments to
sumpinein@gmail.com
Paris,
15 December 2008, the Foundation
Hommes de Parole inaugurated the
Third World Congress of Imams
and Rabbis for Peace at UNESCO.
The theme of the Congress is
The Sacredness of Peace.
