A week in the life of the world | 18-24 October 2013

Vol 189 No 19 2.40 4.60* Exclusions apply

Incorporating material from the Observer, Le Monde and the Washington Post

Sri Lankas uneasy peace Tamils struggle to reconcile past

Why I stood up to the Taliban Malala on her lifein the UK

ras Tantrums, tiaras ps and teardrops oan French bemoan an Mini-Miss ban

Resentment swells in Sudan

Brutality and price rises anger middle classes Bashir faces criticism within his own party
Patrick Kingsley Khartoum
Fifteen men from Sudans state security rattled the door of Miyada el-Rufaeis house in Khartoum last month and asked for five minutes outside with her father. Abdel Fatah el-Rufaei has not been seen since. After 24 years, said Miyada, referring to the length of time since Islamist autocrat Omar al-Bashir took power in a coup, we know what ve minutes means. Miyadas father, a longtime political dissident, is no stranger to arbitrary detention. This is the sixth time in two decades that he has been held incommunicado by Sudans feared National Intelligence and Security Services, known as Niss. What is signicant this time is who has joined Abdel Fatah in prison. At least 800 Sudanese were rounded up that week and more than 200 killed in the streets as demonstrators across the country took to the streets in several days of protests against a cut in fuel subsidies that was the nal straw for a population already suering extreme economic hardship. Those involved were not just the usual students and activists like elRufaei, but middle-class Sudanese from well-to-do areas and those from the poorest districts of Khartoum and other towns. Estimates suggest fewer than 20,000 were on the streets of greater Khartoum at any one time a tiny proportion of the citys 5 million

Targets a peace rally by Darfuris, who are often subject to police violence Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters residents and no more than a few thousand congregated in any one place. But in Sudan, where dissent has long been stifled, this was still signicant. Ahmad Mohamed a rapper and activist from Girifna, a prominent protest movement said: This is not a revolution of the square, but of alleys and dusty neighbourhood roads. And its signicant because its reaching neighbourhoods where theres not really a big history of protests. According to Amin Mekki Medani, president of a coalition of 30 Sudanese NGOs, the magnitude and spontaneity of the protests are unprecedented. So, too, was the states brutality. Long accused of atrocities in Darfur, Korfodan and the Nuba mountains, Bashirs men have rarely murdered opponents on the capitals streets. But when crowds rst congregated in several districts in Khartoum in the days following 25 September, Niss troops often arrived in pickup trucks within minutes. In some cases they fired teargas, beating and arresting anyone they could nd. In others they red live rounds from their Toyota trucks. They shot us like mice, said Auob, an activist, who counted 19 dead in the run-down district of Mayo, populated mainly by Darfurian refugees, on 25 September, the rst day of protests. The next day he saw Niss using mounted machine guns to shoot two men queueing outside a hospital to see relatives injured the day before. Local people here largely stayed out of Sudans last round of major protests in summer 2012. But this time they were out in force, and Auob whose name has been changed for his safety claims the Continued on page 7

Abu Dhabi AED12 Bahrain BHD1.55 *Cyprus 2.30 Czech Rep CZK121 Denmark DKK32 Dubai AED12 Egypt EGP21 Hong Kong HKD43 Hungary HUF785 *Republic of Ireland 2.70 Japan JPY620 Jordan JOD2.40 Kenya KSH290 Kuwait KWD1.20 Latvia 5.55/LVL3.90 Lebanon LBP5000 *Malta 1.95 Mauritius MR153 Morocco MAD30 Norway NOK43 Oman OMR1.25 Pakistan PKR220 Poland PLN11.50 Qatar QAR12 Romania RON31 Saudi Arabia SAR13 Singapore SGD6.60 Sweden SEK45 Switzerland CHF7.50 Syria (US$)2.98 Turkey TRY8.50

2 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

World roundup
Obama toughest on leaks since Nixon
Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive war on leaks since the Nixon administration, according to a report published last week that says the administrations attempts to control information is hampering the ability of journalists to do their jobs. The author of the study, the former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, who was an editor

Ultranationalist violence hits Moscow

Moscow police arrested more than 1,000 migrant workers at a vegetable warehouse on Monday, hours after ultranationalists clashed with riot police. The rioters had raided a shopping centre used by migrants after the murder of an ethnic Russian. Police arrested more than 1,200 people in what was called a preemptive raid on the warehouse where the

Syrian rebels accused of killings

during the Posts investigations of Watergate, said Obama had become more aggressive, stepping up the Espionage Act to pursue those accused of leaking classied information. The war on leaks and other eorts to control information are the most aggressive Ive seen since the Nixon administration, Downie said in the report, which was commissioned by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

rioters believed the killer worked, Russian news agencies reported. Last Sundays rioting escalated after hundreds gathered where Egor Shcherbakov, 25, was murdered last week. It was the capitals worst nationalist unrest in three years. More Europe news, page 12-13

Syrian rebels killed at least 190 civilians and took more than 200 hostage during an oensive in Latakia province in August, according to Human Rights Watch, in what it says is the rst evidence of crimes against humanity by

opposition forces. It said many of the dead had been executed by militant groups, some linked to al-Qaida, who overran army positions and moved into 10 villages where members of President Bashar al-Assads Alawite sect lived.

Republicans attack memorial closures

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Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and other conservative Republicans led a protest last Sunday that tore down barriers at a second world war memorial in Washington and confronted police at the White House. Palin (pictured) accused President Obama of using veterans as pawns in the government shutdown. We are here to honour our vets, she told a crowd at the national mall, which had been closed since 1 October. Is this any way that a

commander-in-chief would show his respect to our military? Last Sundays protest tried to shift blame for the memorial closures, one of the most politically sensitive aspects of the shutdown, on to the White House. Polls show that most Americans blame Republicans for the crisis. Tea Party activists forced more mainstream Republicans into a corner by linking the scal battle to a repeal of the administrations healthcare law.

Nobel for chemical weapons watchdog

The international chemical weapons watchdog was the surprise choice for this years Nobel peace prize, a decision the Oslo committee said recognised m both its hazardous mission to destroy Syrias l chemical s weapons nd stocks and s of 16 years obal wider global eorts. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a relatively new global body, set up in 1997 in The Hague, with a relatively tiny annual budget of around $95m, trumped the established bookmakers favourites of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl turned advocate for female education, and

Fernndez could miss Argentina polls

Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, the president of Argentina (pictured), was released from hospital last Sunday, after undergoing surgery for a cranial blood clot, but doctors said she needs another month of rest. Doctors at the Fundacin Favaloro hospital issued a statement saying she should be

in strict repose and should avoid air travel for 30 days. Despite the restriction, her spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro said she was recovering well and is in excellent spirits. That period of rest would keep her out of the campaign for elections on 27 October. Polls indicate that her party could suer losses.

Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynaecologist who has helped huge numbers of rape victims. The chairman of the Nobel committee, Thorbjrn Jagland, said the award was a reminder to nations with chem remaining chemical weapons, like the US and Russia, to get rid of them, especially beca because th are they d demanding that others do the same, Syria like Syria. He added: We now have the opportunity to get rid of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction ... That would be a great event in history if we could achieve that. Malala Yousafzai interview, page 30

Ex-CEO says sorry for mine massacre

The man who led the mining conglomerate Lonmin during the Marikana massacre has broken his silence to apologise to the victims families and condemn the actions of South African police. In his rst interview since last years tragedy, in which 34 mineworkers were gunned down, Ian Farmer said he understood the police

were working in an extremely dicult environment of interunion rivalry and tit-fortat violence. But the former chief executive said: Quite frankly, it was wrong and they handled it badly on the day. Theres no other way to describe an incident in which 34 people were killed. More Africa news, page 10

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 3

Eyewitnessed The weeks events in pictures Centre pages 24-25

Azerbaijan president wins third term

Azerbaijans president has won a third ve-year term by a landslide, according to exit polls, extending decades of dynastic rule in the oilrich Caspian Sea nation, an ally of the west. An independent poll by the company Prognosis said Ilham Aliyev took nearly 84% of the vote. Two other exit polls showed similar gures.

Polonium nd suggests Arafat poisoning Summit to x Great Barrier Reefs future

Aliyevs campaign chief, Ali Ahmadov, quickly claimed victory. Ilham Aliyev has unconditional support of the population, he said. The main opposition candidate, historian Jamil Hasanli, had between 8% and 10% of the vote, followed by eight other contenders, the polls said.

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Swiss scientists gave details of their ndings of traces of the radioactive substance polonium-210 on items belonging to the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, which fuelled claims that he was poisoned by Israel in 2004. The discovery of polonium-210 was rst made public last year.

In a paper in the Lancet, toxicologists said they had examined 38 items belonging to the late Palestinian leader, including underwear and a toothbrush, and compared them with a control group of 37 items of Arafats that had been in storage before his death. They found traces of the substance that support the possibility of Arafats poisoning with polonium-210, the scientists reported.

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Environmentalists and the mining industry have set out competing visions for the future of the Great Barrier Reef ahead of a summit that will aim to set Queenslands priorities for the next 30 years. The Queensland Plan, an initiative of the state government, was due to be nalised at a meeting

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in Brisbane this week. The plan, which the government said would help dene a long-term vision for the state, has received more than 78,000 submissions from the public and special interest groups. The environment is set to be a major issue of debate at the summit. More Australia news, page 4

Christians cant call their God Allah

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Black death threat to Madagascar jails

Madagascar is at risk of a major outbreak of bubonic plague unless it can clean up its ratinfested jails, health experts have warned. The Indian Ocean island became the most severely aected country last year, with 256 s cases and 60 fatalities black death from the black which, swept through Europe in the 14th century. The International Committee of the

A Christian newspaper in Malaysia may not use the word Allah to refer to God, a court has ruled, in a landmark decision on a matter that has fanned religious tension and raised questions over minority rights. Mondays unanimous decision by three Muslim judges in the appeals court overturned a 2009 ruling by a lower court that allowed the Malay-language version of the newspaper, the Herald, to use the word Allah. Many Christians in Malaysia say the word

has been used in this context for centuries. The usage of the word Allah is not an integral part of the faith in Christianity, chief judge Mohamed Apandi Ali said in the ruling. The usage of the word will cause confusion in the community. The government argued in the case that the word Allah is specic to Muslims and that the then home ministers decision in 2008 to deny the newspaper permission to print it was justied on the basis of public order.

Red Cross (ICRC) and the Malagasy prison authorities have launched a campaign against rodents in Antanimora prison in the capital, Antananarivo, which houses 3,000 inmates. Christoph Vogt, head of the ICRC delegation in Madagascar, said: The chronic ov overcrowding and the unhygienic con conditions in pi pr prisons can brin on new bring cases of the disT ease. Thats dangerous not only inm for the inmates but also for the populagen tion in general.

Fukushima sta exposed to radiation

Earthquake strikes heart of Philippines

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Six workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant have been exposed to radiation in the latest water leak in a week. The plants operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said several tonnes of radioactive water had spilled from a treatment facility after one of the workers mistakenly removed a pipe. The workers, who were wearing protective clothing and masks, came into contact with the water and were

being checked for contamination, a Tepco spokesman said. The accident occurred last week as 11 workers were about to remove salt from hundreds of tonnes of water that had already been cleansed ofalmost all of its radioactive caesium content at another treatment facility. Other radioactive materials still present in the water were measured in August at 37m becquerels per litre, the utility said.

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A 7.2-magnitude earthquake in the central Philippines killed at least 32 people and caused widespread damage. Tuesdays quake was centred within 3km of Carmen town on the popular beach island of Bohol, north of Mindanao. Five people died in a stampede in nearby Cebu, where the bell tower of the countrys oldest church collapsed. Five more people were killed when part of

a sh market collapsed in Cebu city, just across the strait from the quakes epicentre. Two more died and 19 were injured when the roof of a market in Mandaue caved in. Many of the central Philippines historic buildings were damaged. In Loboc town, south-west of Carmen, a 17th-century limestone church was left in ruins, while in Bohol a 400-year-old tower collapsed on to surrounding buildings.

4 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

International news

Xi gains from Obamas absence

Chinas president oers regional business and peace at Apec summit
Anne Gearan Bali Washington Post
Chin as President Xi Jinping took advantage of President Obamas absence from the premier Asian trade and economic summit to push Beijings oers to neighbouring nations. China is next door and seeks economic ties that benet and unite all states in the region of expanding economies, Xi said as the Asia-Pacic Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum got under way this month without full participation from the US, the worlds largest economy. Skirting security confrontations with Japan and several south-east Asian nations, Xi underscored Chinese commitment to a peaceful region that is good for business. The AsiaPacic is a big family, he told a group of business executives. A family of harmony prospers. China is ready to live in amity with others. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, acting as Obamas stand-in, countered that the US sets a model for business fair play. The worlds next star entrepreneurs will not be born out of economies that repress innovation and steal good ideas, he said. Every entrepreneur and business in the Asia Pacic needs to know that they can reap the benets when they develop the next big thing, Kerry said, in an implicit challenge to the alleged Chinese practice of appropriating intellectual property. If your ideas are at risk of being stolen, and your innovations can be ripped o, you will never reach the full potential of that country or economy. Xi and Kerry were selling their nations as the best business partners for emerging economies in Asia, but the contest highlighted the larger confrontation between the US and China for economic and military inuence across the continent. Obamas no-show left a clearer eld for Xi, who bracketed his visit to Bali with stops elsewhere in Indonesia and in Malaysia. Obama had been due to visit both nations, but cancelled the trip because of the federal government shutdown. Xi acknowledged a slowdown in Chinas economic growth, but he said it was expected and not a cause for concern. I am fully condent about the future of China, Xi told the delegates. I am deeply convinced the Chinese economy will sustain its sound growth. Xi made no direct reference to bitter territorial disputes with several nations whose delegates populated the hall, including Japan and the Philippines. As the summit kicked o, the Kerry and his Japanese and Australian counterparts had issued a statement opposing coercive or unilateral actions to change the status quo. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei are also involved in sovereignty disputes with China. The US has tried to unite south-east Asian nations under its banner, promising rhetorical and some military help. Shen Dingli, Shanghais Fudan University vice-dean of the Institute of International Aairs, said the US no longer had the clout to make the rules and lead the world but was still sticking to its old strategy without the resources to back it up. China, by contrast, does not seek hegemony and has an opportunity to win friends in the region as a result, Shen said. Xis friendly, relatively low-key address drew applause and appreciative comments in the hall of executives and government officials. He never mentioned Obama or the presidents decision to stay home to tend to the domestic political crisis. I think its very damaging, Brookings Institution Asia scholar Kenneth Lieberthal said of Obamas absence. The most acute damage may be to Obamas chances to line up a transPacic free-trade deal in the coming months, Lieberthal said. Theres a big dierence between having the president go out for a major meeting like this and having the secretary of state substitute for him.

Good neighbour? Xi Jinping addresses the summit in Bali Chinese foreign ministry said the US, Australia and Japan should not use their alliance as an excuse to intervene in territorial disputes in the East China and South China seas. China and Japan both claim tiny, uninhabited islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

Gandhi launches campaign Australia climate warning

Jason Burke Delhi
Rahul Gandhi, 43, scion of Indias most famous political dynasty, has launched the ruling Congress partys campaign for re-election in polls due next spring with a promise to bring in a young government. Analysts agree that 120 million rsttime voters in India will be crucial in determining if the current coalition, in power since 2004, can win in what is predicted to be a bitter and close contest next year. Half of Indians are under 26, with an even higher proportion in the big, poor northern states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where Gandhi addressed large rallies last week. Uttar Pradesh, which has poverty levels worse than many parts of subSaharan Africa, has the highest number of potential first-time voters in India, with 23 million. Gandhi, vice-president of the Congress party, recently took on the Congress old guard, publicly opposing an executive order from the 81-year-old prime minister, Manmohan Singh, which would have allowed politicians convicted of criminal charges to remain in oce and stand in elections. About 30% of Indian lawmakers across federal and state assemblies have criminal charges against them, and after a supreme court order in July many faced being expelled from their seats, including government allies seen as important for electoral success. Gandhi, a former management consultant, is the son of Sonia Gandhi, widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and current president of the Congress party. The main opponent for Gandhi and Congress is Narendra Modi, the controversial chief minister of Gujarat state and prime ministerial candidate for the Bharatiya Janata party, a Hindu nationalist conservative party that held power before being defeated in 2004.

Oliver Milman
Indigenous Australians face disproportionate harm from climate change, according to a leaked report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The second IPCC report, which is due to be released next March, also warns that climate change could swamp billions of dollars worth of coastal property via sea-level rises and cause the number of heatwaverelated deaths in Sydney to triple by the end of the century. It says there is high agreement among scientists that indigenous people will face signicant challenges from heat stress, extreme weather events and heightened rates of disease by 2100. A sharp increase in heatwaves will aect the broader Australian population, especially older people, through heat-related deaths and hospitalisa-

tions. In Sydney, the number of deaths caused by heatwaves is expected to triple from 2.5 deaths for every 100,000 people to 7.4 deaths for every 100,000 people by 2100. Water and food-borne diseases are projected to increase, with up to 870,000 new cases of bacterial gastroenteritis by 2100. But the IPCC warns there is minimal scientic consensus on specific disease projections and their link to climate change. Australia is set to suer nancial as well as human loss, with the IPCC saying sea-level rise is a signicant risk to the country because of the heavy population skew towards coastal cities and towns. A rise of 1.1 metres would aect assets worth $226bn, according to the report, threatening 274,000 residential and 8,600 commercial buildings. Risks to road and rail infrastructure would increase signicantly with a rise above 0.5 metres, the report said.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 5

International news

Sri Lanka boom fails to mollify Tamils

Colombo still hopes to pacify the north with economic development
Jason Burke Kilinochchi
Amid scruy palms a few metres from a dirt track, two brothers are building their third house in under a decade. They hope it will last longer than the others. They do not want to be identied for fear of security agencies but their story is a common one in Kilinochchi, a small town in northern Sri Lanka, once the capital of the de facto state run by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In Kilinochchi, more than four years after the Tamil Tigers were routed by the Sri Lankan army, there are new banks, ATMs, shops, street lighting, an internet cafe and a station that still smells of fresh paint. Trains run three times a day to Colombo, 320km to the south. A large sports complex is taking shape, alongside the widened road. But for the two brothers none of this is progress. Before, it was safe for women, now it isnt Before, we could talk freely, now we cant, one said. OK, so there is some development, but that is not real freedom this is not true peace. Such sentiments are as widespread as the construction across much of the north, an area dominated by people from the Tamil minority. As David Cameron and other leaders prepare to travel to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka in November, the question of what a real peace might look like and how it might be achieved looms ever larger. The choice of Sri Lanka as the summit venue has been controversial. The hosts face criticism for failing to investigate alleged war crimes by the military, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, at the end of the war against the Tamil Tigers. There are also concerns about the governments limited eorts to reach a genuine political reconciliation with the Tamils. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an analyst and activist in Colombo, said the summit would consolidate the regime. They will be able to say to the world and at home: look, 50 countries have come we are not pariahs. However, some say it was international pressure that convinced a reluctant President Mahinda Rajapaksa that elections for a provincial council in the north, the first for 25 years, should go ahead in late September. The results underlined how development had done little to weaken resettled families had access to a toilet and only one in 25 had to walk more than 500 metres to nd water. More than 160 schools are now open. But progress is patchy up to half of respondents in some areas said they had insucient food. Much of the growth has been spurred by loans or foreign aid. Debt has soared and there are many who cant pay back what theyve borrowed, said Ahilan Kadirgamar, an economic analyst in Jaffna. One debtor is Sanmugam Sivalingam, who borrowed $3,550 to buy a rickshaw 18 months ago. He said he made only around $5 on a good day and, with monthly repayments of $150, he often goes hungry. The government is also banking on war weariness among northern Tamils to buy time for its strategy to win over separatist sentiment with development. Though few in the north admit it, there was disaection with the Tigers at the end of the conict. Now there is a growing nostalgia for the Tigers, said a veteran Tamil rights activist in Jaffna. The war should have ended six months before it did, with thousands of lives saved. There was nothing heroic about the final days but that is the legend now being spread. It is an insult to all those who died. For people like Ananthi Sasitharan, the war may have been lost but the struggle, as the newly elected provincial councillor calls it, is far from over. Her husband was a Tamil Tiger leader and among the hundreds, possibly thousands, who went missing after surrendering at the end of the war in May 2009 and who, campaigners say, were summarily executed by soldiers. We do not want another armed struggle. We have suered very much from the war. But during the LTTE time [in power] we had a very happy life. So the political struggle must go on, Sasitharan said. In Kilinochchi, a water tower felled by the Tamil Tigers as they ed the town has been turned into a neat tourist site, with a souvenir shop, postcards, orange ice lollipops and a plaque commemorating its opening by Namal Rajapaksa, the presidents 27-year-old son and new minister for youth. Sinhalese tourists take photographs and pose with an army patrol. But Sasitharan said the sight of the tourists made her very angry. They destroyed our beautiful country. They eliminated our society and erected victory monuments in our land and now they are coming to enjoy our destruction, she said. We are a people changed by war. There is no healing.

Symbol a soldier in Colombo on Sri Lankas Army Day last week Reuters demands for greater autonomy. Despite what Commonwealth observers described as intimidation by the army, the Tamil National Alliance, once a proxy for the LTTE, won 30 out of 38 seats. Rajapaksas United Peoples Freedom Alliance holds power in all other eight provinces. The president has opposed moves to grant greater autonomy anywhere, let alone to the north. Instead he is banking on economic growth and development to win over Tamils. Few doubt there has been an economic boom. More than twice as many new vehicles were registered in the north in 2011, the last year for which statistics have been released, than were on the roads in 2009. There are at least twice as many cattle, and agricultural land that fell into disuse during the conict has been cleared. Many, including the two brothers building their home in Kilinochchi, work as labourers on construction sites. Conditions for the hundreds of thousands displaced by the ghting have improved, albeit from a very low base. A survey earlier this year by the UNHCR revealed 63% of recently

Canada brands Commonwealth chief as Colombo stooge

Canada last week attacked the Commonwealth secretary general as a stooge for a Sri Lankan regime it accuses of human rights abuses. Last Tuesday, Hugh Segal, Canadas special envoy to the Commonwealth, accused Kamalesh Sharma of acting as a shill [a stooge] for the Sri Lankan leadership, defending their every mistake. Canadas prime minister, Stephen Harper, said he would boycott the Commonwealth heads of state summit because of alleged human rights abuses by Mahinda Rajapaksas government. India is undecided about whether its prime minister, Manmohan Singh, should attend. Canada is the Commonwealths second-biggest funder after the UK and is now reviewing its $19m-a-year nancial backing and looks set to cut support for the secretariat headed by Sharma. Canada is likely to be isolated in snubbing the summit. Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, has told Rajapaksa he would attend. John Key, New Zealands prime minister, last month conrmed his attendance at the summit. Robert Booth and Jason Burke

6 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

International news

PMs kidnap marks new low for Libya

Ali Zeidans seizure is only an extreme form ofwhat is now normal
Ian Black
Libyas slide into chaos reached a new nadir with the brief abduction of prime minister Ali Zeidan. It was an alarming reminder that rival armed militias, a weak central government and a rise in Islamic extremism are a dangerous mixture. Conflicting regional and tribal demands have been a regular feature of the political scene since Muammar Gaddas overthrow by Nato-backed rebels in August 2011 one of the most dramatic moments of the Arab spring. Few Libyans want to see the dictator back many of the countrys problems are his own toxic legacy but a chronic lack of security and a worsening economic climate are casting dark clouds over the future. The US special forces raid earlier this month to capture a fugitive Libyan al-Qaida leader, apparently the trigger for the move against Zeidan, was a humiliating reminder both of the impotence of the government and of how the country has become a safe haven for terrorists. No one has yet been charged over the deadly assault on the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2012. The Russian and French embassies in Tripoli have both been attacked this year. rants are opening, and there is even a branch of Debenhams. Fewer armed men and truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns are on the streets. But the gunmen, some with links to the government, are still in their barracks. Eorts to integrate them into a national army and police force are moving slowly. Saif al-Islam, Gaddas son, remains in custody in the western town of Zintan, where local ghters refuse to hand him over for trial in Tripoli. It was no coincidence that Zeidans rst comments after his release included an appeal to the thuwwar revolutionaries to assimilate into the state, and play an active role in it through its civilian and military institutions. Economic issues are compounding the general sense of an open-ended crisis. Libya has Africas largest oil reserves the source of enormous potential wealth for a country of just 6 million people. But oil terminals have been blockaded by militiamen demanding a greater share of the revenues for their own regions. Foreign investment has been sluggish because of insecurity, red tape and corruption. Western governments were quick to condemn the abduction and express support for the political transition. In September 2011 the British prime minister David Cameron and the thenFrench president Nicolas Sarkozy were hailed as heroes for their role in helping overthrow Gadda when they appeared at Tripolis luxurious Corinthia hotel where Zeidan was hustled into the custody of gunmen.

Dark clouds ... Libya is plagued by chaos Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters But Zeidans kidnapping is only an extreme form of what has become depressingly normal in Libyas post-Gadda political culture. Power comes not from debate in a bitterly divided parliament or the interim executive, but from the barrel of a gun. Opponents of government policy routinely take over a ministry or surround congress to force submission to their demands. Protests by state employees began even before Gadda was killed by rebels in his home town of Sirte, two months after the fall of Tripoli. There is still no new constitution. On the surface, the capital feels more normal than it did in the rst year after the revolution. New restau-

Battle for democracy

Libyas prime minister has denounced his kidnapping as an attempted coup and warned that some of the countrys many armed militias want to turn it into another Afghanistan or Somalia. This is a coup against legitimacy, he said. Ali Zeidans speech puts the prime minister, a former human rights lawyer once exiled in Switzerland, on a collision course with powerful militia formations based in Tripoli, in a trial of strength he characterised as a battle for democracy. Chris Stephen

Algeria shuts o Moroccos contraband petrol trade

Isabelle Mandraud Le Monde
Donkeys are replacing pickups as they make less noise. Twice a day, at dawn and again at nightfall, the placid beasts laden with large blue cans set o along stony trails. When they reach the Algerian border they carry on alone, coming back, still unaccompanied, bearing their precious load. At Oujda, 16km inside Morocco, their return is eagerly awaited. This summer the Algerian government moved to stop petrol tracking, stepping up the tension on its border with Moroccos Oriental province . Only the donkeys are left to convey the vital fuel, and prices have soared. The cabinet assembled in Algiers last month for a meeting attended by President Abdelaziz Bouteika the first time since December 2012 due to his uncertain health to discuss a new bill designed to combat petrol smuggling. In the build-up to the presidential election next April, the Algerian authorities are determined to manage hydrocarbon resources more eciently. With so much vanishing over the border there are sometimes shortages in the oil-rich country. For at least three decades Oriental residents have enjoyed a regular supply of cheap, all-purpose petrol. Ocially the land border between the two countries has been closed since 1994 following the murder of two Spanish tourists, which the Moroccans blamed on Algerian extremists. It is supposedly watertight and the barrier at the Zouj Bghal checkpoint at the end of Route 7 is denitely closed. But north and south of the crossing point there has been a steady stream, in both directions, of contraband goods, from milk to Turkish-made clothes to cannabis resin. There are close links between families on either side. No less a gure than President Bouteika was born in Oujda. But petrol is a special case. According to Mohammed Benkaddour, head of the Association for the Protection of Oriental Consumers (Apco), the trade provides a livelihood for between 3,000 and 5,000 families, a gure to be multiplied by five to obtain the number of people concerned, in a poor area where unemployment is high. Morocco has no oil reserves, so the authorities have been all the more inclined to turn a blind eye to the smuggling, which has saved millions of dollars on imports. Local people soon realised things had changed. Ahmed, a father of three, is at his wits end. For the past 10 years he has made a living smuggling petrol, but he has never seen anything like it. Before I would get 10 or 12 30-litre cans twice a day, now its barely three or four; as a result I earn three times less, he says. Its all the fault of the people in power and its always us that pays the bill. Wholesalers, who used to make $650 a day, built big houses, but the work has stopped. Fuel prices have rocketed: a 30-litre can, once $11, now costs $36. This situation is exacerbating social tension, at a time when Morocco is trying to reduce the compensation fund that subsidises staples such as sugar, flour and petrol, and weighs heavily on the current account decit. Twice in recent months the government, led by the Islamist Justice and Development party (PJD), has raised ocial petrol prices across Morocco, causing widespread discontent.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 7

International news

Canadian pair describe Cairo jail ordeal

Doctor and lmmaker detained and beaten after seeking police help
Patrick Kingsley
Shortly after arriving at Egypts notorious Tora prison, the Canadian lmmaker John Greyson was beaten and kicked so hard that for the next week there was a single bootprint perfectly etched on my back. His companion Tarek Loubani a Canadian-Palestinian doctor was subjected to the same brutal treatment. We both went foetal to try to protect ourselves, remembers Greyson. I was in pain for about a week. It was not quite what Greyson and Loubani had envisaged when they arrived in Egypt on 15 August. The pair intended to remain only briey in Egypt; their nal destination was Gaza, where they planned to train and make a lm about Palestinian doctors. Instead they found themselves arrested during a crackdown on supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, and spent the next 50 days detained without charge most of it in a cramped jail cell shared with 36 other prisoners. There was no way you could sleep without touching your neighbour, said Greyson, of the conditions within their tiny three-by-10-metre cell. You had to co-ordinate with them when you wanted to roll over. It was a nightmare that lasted until the early hours of last Sunday, when Egyptian prosecutors let the pair leave prison. It followed a high-prole campaign for their release featuring a 150,000-strong petition signed by actors Ben Affleck and Charlize Theron and finally intervention from the highest level of the Egyptian All the cells occupants including Greyson and Loubani had been arrested in an arbitrary roundup in central Cairo on 16 August and accused of attacking a police station during a protest. Many had either been nowhere near the station or were not at the protest in the rst place. For their part, Greyson and Loubani were not even aware of the stations existence. They were travellers in transit, and attended the protest merely to bear witness. Once the demonstration fell victim to Egypts fourth state-led massacre in six weeks, they put their skills to work at a nearby mosque that had been transformed into a eld hospital. Greyson documented the wounded on camera, while Loubani treated them. After the flow of bodies slowed to a trickle hours later, the pair left to nd their way back to their hotel. They got lost in an area where many of the streets had been blocked off by a series of walls aimed at protecting government ministries. When they stopped to ask for directions at a police checkpoint, their nightmare began. An ocer grew suspicious at Loubanis Palestinian accent (as the home of Hamas, an aliate of Morsis Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine has become tainted by association). Like hundreds of others that day, they were hauled into state custody for little reason other than police paranoia. Greyson and Loubani were nally freed last Sunday after Loubanis father flew to Egypt to campaign for their release. Mahmoud Loubani eventually found himself on speakerphone with Egypts entire cabinet. The pairs treatment improved subsequently. After release, Tarek Loubani said: We saw a lot of people get massacred, and have their rights trampled in jail. Neither is acceptable.
Jonathan Steele, page 20

Home John Greyson, right, and Tarek Loubani arrive in Toronto Reuters government. But even then their ordeal was not quite over. Still banned for several days from leaving the country, they were only allowed to y home to Canada last Friday. Speaking to a newspaper for the rst time since their release from Tora, the pair gave testimony that shines a rare light on the abhorrent conditions inside Egypts prisons and police jails. When Greyson and Loubani arrived at Tora, warders purposely left the three dozen men inside the cramped truck, so that they might overheat in the blazing Cairo sun. One was on the point of a heat-induced coma before the trucks doors were opened. Outside were two lines of policemen with batons and electric cattle prods who, Loubani said, stood there beating people as they went between them. Soon afterwards the pair suered the further assault that left Greyson with a boot-marked back. Loubani had received an earlier beating at a police station. Conditions in their minute cell were appalling. The 38 detainees slept on concrete, with just one water tap between them. One prisoner arrived with a broken foot that went untreated for three weeks until it got so bad it had to be removed. This young guy with a 100% preventable problem ends up having to have his foot amputated, said Loubani, looking pale after six weeks on a prison diet. That was a theme again and again people were not treated. The pair were keen to emphasise the plight of their fellow detainees, who were also detained without charge and have still not been released. One guy was arrested on what would have been his wedding day, said Greyson. Another man missed his childs birth. A lot of people lost their jobs, and some lost their homes.

Dissent in Sudan spreads to middle classes after price rises and police violence
Continued from page 1 particularly brutal crackdown was fuelled by the regimes discrimination towards those from Darfur. Salah Sanhouri, a popular 27-yearold pharmacist connected to Sudans elites, became a lightning rod for middle-class outrage when he was shot dead while protesting in the upmarket district of Buri. Many in the middle classes who were uninterested in last years protests identied with Sanhouri, said Usamah Mohamed, a well-known activist jailed last year. But the initial cause of the protests was economic. The day before protests began, Bashir announced economic reforms aimed at easing the strain on government finances weakened through years of corruption, the cost of wars on three fronts, international sanctions, and the loss of oil revenues with the secession of South Sudan. The most controversial of the reforms was the removal of a fuel subsidy. Overnight the price of a gallon of fuel jumped from around $2.80 to $4.80. That morning thousands of workers and schoolchildren suddenly could not afford the bus, so either walked long distances to work or stayed at home. And the cost of food rose in proportion with the cost of transporting it. It was the nal straw for many who had long resented how Bashirs corrupt cronies lived in luxury. Everything is just expensive, said Betul el-Refaei, Miyadas sister. At a public hospital the doctor might be free, but you have to bring your own cotton or injections. The same with education. You have to buy your books. In government schools they gather money from pupils to pay for electricity. To add to the insult, many grew furious at patronising comments made by Bashir. The Sudanese, he said, should be grateful to him because his tenure had brought them the hot dog. Perhaps the greatest threat to Bashir comes from his own National Congress party. Thirty of his nominal allies led by his former adviser, Ghazi Salahuddin Attalah sent Bashir an open letter this month that criticised both his cuts and the crackdown. People are back inside their homes for now, said Betul el-Refaei. But theyre boiling with anger.

8 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

International news

UN sued over cholera deaths

Haitians class action in US will test organisations traditional immunity
Rashmee Roshan Lall Port-au-Prince
Human rights lawyers have led a lawsuit against the UN seeking compensation for the families of thousands of Haitians who died of cholera as a result of sanitation lapses at a UN camp. The class action claim came just days before the UN formally renewed the mandate of Minustah, the French acronym of the mission in Haiti, after a troubled decade keeping the peace. Sloppy sanitation at a Minustah base is blamed for starting the outbreak, which has claimed more than 8,000 lives and infected nearly 700,000 one out of every 16 Haitians. UN peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is endemic, brought a south Asian strain of the disease to Haiti, which had remained free of it for 200 years. The claim was led at the federal district court in Manhattan by an activist group of US-based lawyers: the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), its Haitian partner Bureaux des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and a prominent Florida civil rights law rm. IJDH lawyer Beatrice Lindstrom said a case of this scale against the UN was unprecedented in the US and that she hoped the court would set aside the UNs traditional immunity. Lindstrom compared the case with a ruling by the Dutch supreme court last month that Holland should compensate the deaths of Bosnian Muslims expelled by Dutch soldiers from a UN compound during the Balkans conict. The UN argues it has legal immunity from such compensation claims and has formally rejected claims from Haitians aected. But last week the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, made a rare case for compensation for the victims. I still stand by the call that victims of those who suered as a result of that cholera be provided with compensation, she said. The case is the latest in a string of bad publicity for Minustah, which is preparing to scale back one of the UNs biggest peacekeeping missions in the world to its lowest level in 10 years.

Indigenous tribe plagued by suicides

Jonathan Watts Rio de Janeiro
The discovery of an indigenous girls body hanging from a tree in Boror de Dourados last week was as grim as it was familiar for Brazils GuaraniKaiow tribe. It has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to a report. Figures from Survival International suggest that the Guarani-Kaiow are 34 times more likely to kill themselves than Brazils national average. This has prompted warnings that a silent genocide is under way. The community of 31,000 people, mostly based in the south-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul, is plagued by alcoholism, depression, poverty and violence after losing its ancestral lands to ranchers and biofuel farmers. The problem is decades-old, but Survival says the rate has increased in recent years. Since the start of the century, one suicide has been reported on average almost every week. Almost all are hangings. Most are young. The latest victim, whose name has yet to be released, was a 17-yearold girl. In the previous week, a 16-year-old in Dourados reserve and a 19-year-old in Amambai reserve killed themselves. The principle reason is their lack of land, said Mary Nolan, a US nun and human rights lawyer. The Guarani people think their relationship with the universe is broken when they are separated from their land. They feel they are a broken people. Many in the community interpret their situation cosmologically as a symptom of the destruction of the world. As well undermining their spiritual base, the seizure of their land by farmers has disrupted the social structure of the community. Traditionally, disputes between families were settled by one side moving away and starting again in a new territory. But this is no longer possible now that thousands of Guarani are crammed together in camps. One camp in Dourados has a murder rate that is more than 50% higher than that of Iraq. The stressful, violent environment is worsened by beatings and assassinations of indigenous leaders who try to reclaim their land from wealthy farmers. The authorities have recognised the community is in the midst of suicide epidemic, but the government is being criticised for not doing enough to deal with the cause.

Brazilian Japanese get apology for abuse

Jonathan Watts Rio de Janeiro
Brazils truth commission has apologised for the governments racist maltreatment and detention of its large Japanese community during the second world war in a step that could open the way to compensation claims. Twenty-five years after similar steps by the US and Canada, the move to make amends has been welcomed by groups representing the 1.5 million migrants and second- and thirdgeneration descendants in Brazil who now make up the biggest ethnically Japanese population outside of Japan. After Brazil declared war on Japan in 1942, thousands of families from this community were arrested or deported as potential spies or collaborators. The government also closed hundreds of Japanese schools, seized communications equipment and forced the relocation of Japanese who lived close to the coastline. A Japanese community in the northern Par state was restricted from travel. Survivors have testied about the use of torture, and the degrading loyalty test in which Brazilian Japanese were forced to step on an image of Emperor Hirohito, who was then considered a deity in his country. The truth commission saw video testimony of survivors and their children, including Akira Yamachio, who said his father was arrested and tortured in Anchieta along with other prisoners. A bit of the truth is better than silence, he said. There inside [the penitentiary] there was persecution and torture. They ordered people Brazilian history. I apologise and ask forgiveness on behalf of all Brazilian citizens because the background of this episode is racism. The Brazilian elite have always been racist, Rosa Cardoso, a lawyer with the national truth commission, said. After the Japanese imperial armys attack on the US eet in Pearl Harbor, Brazil which aligned with the allies prohibited this community from reading or writing their own language. Several other countries interred or maltreated large numbers of their citizens with Japanese heritage. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the US moved about 110,000 people into war relocation camps, while Canada held 27,000 without charge and auctioned o many of their belongings. Redress came far earlier in those cases. The US government apologised in 1988 and paid out $1.6bn in compensation. A month later, Canada followed suit and subsequently gave $21,000 to each of the survivors as well as $36m to racerelations groups. In Brazil, Fernando Morais, the author of a book about the detention, torture and killing of Japanese, German and Italian migrants during that era, said the next step should be compensation because the government had conscated the money and property of people in those groups. Brazil should not only apologise. It owes money, a lot of money, to the Japanese community, he told the Globo newspaper. The conscation of assets is well documented in the central banks archives. Nobody ever got anything back.

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Past tense during the war, Brazilian Japanese were forced to step on an image of Emperor Hirohito to take off their clothes and pass through a corridor of death, he said. The commission made a formal apology and will include their ndings in a nal report to the government, which will also include other infringements of human rights in modern

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 9

International news

Mini-maligned? Kicker here like this Then a short Frances child description beauty queens hereprotest like this Review, Then Section page and 32 Page XX

Police play for hearts and minds as Rios favelas are taken back by force
irst came troops with assault ries and ak jackets, then street cleaners with brooms and buckets of whitewash, and nally satellite TV salesmen with a special oer to rst-time subscribers. Rio de Janeiros 35th favela pacication operation to clear drug gangs from 12 shantytowns in the Lins favela complex was over within hours without a shot being red. But the commercial barrage has only just begun for the latest communities all within 5km of the Maracan World Cup nal stadium to be brought into the fold of government authority and consumer culture. Following a series of scandals relating to excessive use of force by the police, the latest battle was as much for hearts and minds as the city streets. On the heels of the military came street cleaners to sweep the roadsides and pick rubbish from the lthy stream below Lins. The Rio state governor, Sergio Cabral, said $223m had been allocated to improve living conditions. Next, grati was whitewashed over and the Policia Militar insignia a dagger through a skull was draped over the walls. Local children were invited to ride on police horses, a PR team displayed the bags of cocaine, blocks of cannabis and the gun clips they said had been found in the search operations. A van repeatedly broadcast an appeal for support: People of Rio de Janeiro: as part of the ongoing pacication of our city, your community is being occupied. We rely on your co-operation to maintain stability. The new era begins now. The change of power was marked with a ceremony in which marines and police presented arms as the ags of Brazil and Rio state were raised to mark the recovery of the territory by the authorities. I dont know if this will be an improvement yet, said a local resident, Diane de la Rosa, looking out across an open sewer at the agraising ceremony. But I hope so. We all hope so. There have long been questions

Brazil diary Jonathan Watts

New era residents of Lins watch as police on horseback patrol the favela Mario Tama/Getty about the pacication programme and whether it is a cosmetic exercise before the World Cup and Olympics. The authorities, however, insist it represents a long-term shift in priorities. The results so far have been impressive. Ocial statistics show a sharp fall in murders, gunrelated incidents and other crimes. But concerns about excessive police violence have been revived in recent months. In June, police killed nine residents, including seven suspected drug trackers, after an ofcer was murdered at the Mar complex, forcing the authorities to delay the planned pacication of that vast community. At the beginning of the month, 10 ocers from the UPP lightly armed units were charged with the torture and killing of Amarildo de Souza, a resident of Rocinha, Rios biggest favela. There is a lack of condence in the police. The Amarildo case showed that. Its not the rst time, said Rodrigo Martins, an observer of the Lins pacication operation from the public defenders oce. Some people were a little afraid because there were so many police here, but we saw no arrests or incursions today. People are afraid to change. The transformation, however, has been dramatic. The Guardian had visited one of the seven Lins communities, Bairro Preto, six months ago when it was controlled by Rios most powerful gang, the Red Command. Back then, armed trackers guarded the favela entrance, a drug factory had been set up in a back alley and zombielike crack addicts lolled around. They were still there last night when I got home, said their neighbour Michelle Xavier. But it is very quiet now. Thats an improvement already. It was noisy all the time before. The crack users never sleep. Her neighbours expressed amazement at the sight of a rst taxi on their street, which drivers had previously deemed too dangerous to drive into. Another eye-popping change was the arrival of two satellite salesmen. I just came today. We always do this after a pacication operation, said Renate Isahu, who said he had already signed up 10 customers. Its a good time to pick up business. Most residents were hopeful that pacication would bring an improvement in their lives. We wont have to be so fearful. The community will be more peaceful, said Antonia Pereira, who has lived in the Gamba community of Lins for 30 years. Itll also be good for property values. But some were sceptical. Milena Moura had come to Lins from Alemo, a favela that had been the headquarters of the Red Command until it was taken over by police last year. Ive seen how it works. The police did bad things, she said. Ive no condence that they will be any better here. Additional reporting by Sam Cowie

Some people were alittle afraid because there were so many police here, but we saw no arrests today

10 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

International news

Africa asks: dont target sitting leaders

African Union urges ICCto defer trial of theKenyan president
Shane Hickey and agencies
The African Union has called for cases against sitting leaders in the international criminal court (ICC) to be deferred until the politicians leave oce. Foreign ministers in the 54-member African Union called for the cases of the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, and his deputy, William Ruto, to be delayed amid claims that the court unfairly targets African countries. A proposal for African nations to withdraw from the ICC which has been criticised by the former UN secretary general Ko Annan did not gain support at a summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Sitting heads of state and government should not be prosecuted while in oce. We have resolved to speak with one voice to make sure that our concerns are heard loud and clear, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian foreign minister, said. He said the AU would ask for the trials of the Kenyan president and his deputy as well as Sudans president, Omar al-Bashir, to be deferred. The two Kenyan politicians deny charges that they orchestrated a killing spree after a disputed 2007 election. Frustration with the ICC has been growing in Africa because the court has convicted only one man, an African warlord, and all others it has charged are also Africans. It is indeed very unfortunate that the court has continued to operate in complete disregard of the concerns that we have expressed, the Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, said. Ministers called for the use of video links in the Kenyan trials to ensure leaders could carry on official duties. The court has yet to rule on whether Kenyatta and Ruto can be excused from parts of their trials or whether they can participate by a video link. Proceedings, though not trials, against the two were under way before their election victory in March this year. Tedros said the ICC was condescending towards Africa. The court has transformed itself into a political instrument targeting Africa and Africans. This unfair and unjust treatment is totally unacceptable, he said. Ko Annan has said withdrawing from the court would be a badge of shame, while Archbishop Desmond Tutu voiced support for the court. Amnesty International urged African nations not to cut ties with the court, saying victims of crimes deserved justice. The ICC should expand its work outside Africa, but it does not mean that its eight current investigations in African countries are without basis, Amnestys deputy director of law and policy, Tawanda Hondora, said. Lawyers for Kenyatta asked last week that his trial on charges of crimes against humanity be abandoned, saying that defence witnesses had been intimidated.

Accused Kenyan leader Kenyatta

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 11

International news

Clinton: we need to talk about spying

Former US secretary ofstate calls for sensible debate on surveillance
Guardian reporters
Hillary Clinton has called for a sensible adult conversation to be held in a transparent way, about the boundaries of state surveillance highlighted by the leaking of secret NSA les by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. In a boost to Nick Clegg, the British deputy prime minister, who is planning to start conversations within government about the oversight of Britains intelligence agencies, the former US secretary of state said it would be wrong to shut down a debate. Clinton, who is seen as a frontrunner for the 2016 US presidential election, said at Chatham House in London: This is a very important question. On the intelligence issue, we are democracies, thank goodness: both the US and the UK. We need to have a sensible adult conversation about what is necessary to be done, and how to do it, in a way that is as transparent as it can be, with as much oversight and citizens understanding as there can be. Her words were echoed by the British shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, who repeated her call in a speech in July for reform of the oversight of the intelligence agencies. Cooper, a former member of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee that oversees the agencies, said: I have long argued that checks and balances need to be stronger this would benet and maintain condence in the vital work of our security and intelligence agencies as well as being in the interests of democracy.

Key to security? NSA les leaked by Edward Snowden have highlighted international concerns Felix Clay The conciliatory language of Clinton and Cooper contrasted with that of the British security service MI5, whose director general, Andrew Parker, warned last week that the leaked documents by Snowden had provided a gift to terrorists. The former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw reinforced that message last Friday, criticising the Guardian for publishing articles based on the leaked documents. Straw, who was British foreign secretary during the Iraq war in 2003, told the BBC: Theyre blinding themselves about the consequence and also showing an extraordinary naivety and arrogance in implying that they are in a position to judge whether or not particular secrets which they have published are not likely to damage the national interest, and theyre not in any position at all to do that. Clegg, who agrees with Straw that in some cases the Guardian was wrong to publish details from the NSA les, believes the leaks show the need to consider updating the legal oversight of Britains security services. Aides said he would be calling in experts from inside and outside Whitehall amid concerns that the leaked files show that powerful new technologies appear to have outstripped the current system of legislative and political oversight. The agencies are overseen in three ways in Britain: they are answerable to their relevant secretary of state, accountable to parliaments intelligence and security committee, and answerable to the intelligence commissioners. David Bickford, a former legal director of MI5 and MI6, said that the current oversight regime for Britains intelligence agencies was obviously inadequate. Clinton did not comment on the UKs oversight arrangements, but she indicated that she was wholly supportive of the approach adopted by President Barack Obama who in contrast to the British prime minister has said he welcomes a debate on surveillance in the wake of the NSA leaks. Answering a question from the Guardian at Chatham House, the former secretary of state said the discussion had to take place within a framework that addressed issues of privacy and protection of citizens because some surveillance programmes remained a really critical ingredient in our homeland security. Clinton, who is considering whether to make her second challenge for the Democratic presidential nomination, added: It would be going down a wrong path if we were to reject the importance of the debate, and the kinds of intelligence activities that genuinely keep us safe. So how do we sort all of this out? This is a problem that is well over a decade old, where these capacities have corresponded with increasing outreach to consumers on the business side and increasing concern about security on the government side. People need to be better informed.

MI5s criticism of Guardian revelations has a hollow ring to it

Comment Richard Norton-Taylor
Britains spooks are striking back. Weeks, months, after the Guardian, Washington Post and German magazine Der Spiegel published documents about the massive surveillance operations of GCHQ and the NSA, they are saying the leaks have done more damage than the infamous Cambridge spy ring. Sir David Omand, a former GCHQ director, told the Times newspaper last week that the leaks by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden were the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever, much worse than [Guy] Burgess and [Donald] MacLean in the 50s. Yet the business secretary, Vince Cable, told BBC Radio that the Guardian had performed a very considerable public service. He called for proper political oversight of the security and intelligence agencies. Then Nigel Inkster, a former deputy chief of MI6, told BBC Radio that the Snowden leaks were comparable to those by the Cambridge spies, only worse. Yet last month he described the leaks as very embarrassing, uncomfortable and unfortunate. He added, clearly referring to al-Qaida-inspired terrorists: I sense that those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didnt know already or could have inferred. It is unclear whether, as those who make the dramatic comparison with the Cambridge spies suggest, the spooks are concerned more about information getting into the hands of the Russians and Chinese than the gift the leaks gave to terrorists, as the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, put it in a speech. And it is perhaps ironic, given the dramatic comparison made by some, that the real damage done by the Cambridge spy ring as opposed to the embarrassment it caused British ministers and spooks has almost certainly been grossly exaggerated.

12 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

International news

Italy to step up migrant safety patrols

PM triples air and sea watch to halt the ow of Mediterranean disasters
Lizzy Davies Rome and agencies
Italy is to triple its air and sea presence in the Mediterranean between north Africa and Sicily in a bid to make it as safe as possible for migrants making the perilous journey in overcrowded and rickety boats, the prime minister, Enrico Letta, has said. Speaking after a fortnight during which at least 390 people lost their lives in disasters involving capsized vessels, Letta announced that Italy would this week launch a military and humanitarian mission in the part of the Mediterranean he said had been turned into a tomb in recent days. We will spend a lot of money. We will triple the naval and air units that are currently working in the Strait of Sicily, he was quoted by La Repubblica as saying last Saturday. Italy has repeatedly called for coordinated action by the European Union to tackle the crisis on its doorstep, and the issue is likely to feature prominently at a summit on 24 October. But, he said, the issue needed to be tackled immediately and we cannot wait for European decisions to be taken and acted on. The Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported that unmanned Predator drones were being considered for use in surveillance. The interventions came after refugees agency, UNHCR. In all, 4,619 people left Libya for southern Europe in September on a total of 32 boats. In September 2012 the gure was 775. The numbers are unprecedented, said Emmanuel Gignac, UNHCR mission chief in Libya. Why it is happening is a good question. Lack of border controls, lack of capacity, and war. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called for action to prevent future tragedies that places the vulnerability and human rights of migrants at the centre, while Pope Francis lamented that too often we are blinded by our comfortable lives, and refuse to see those dying at our doorstep. At least 70,000 Syrians are registered in Egypt as refugees. Many, including thousands of Palestinians who fled the war in Syria, are not registered, and use the country as a stopover before making a perilous sea trip to Europe. Maltas prime minister, Joseph Muscat, called on fellow EU leaders to prove they are committed to ending migrant boat tragedies, warning that we will be reporting more deaths next year unless concrete action is taken soon. He said Europe was turning the Mediterranean into a cemetery by its failure to act. I dont know how many more people need to die at sea before something gets done. Muscat said that when there was a nancial crisis, all Europe pulled together to ensure other countries did not go down. Right now, we have a humanitarian crisis and I hope that, for Europe, money is not worth more than peoples lives.

Mourning an Italian ag at half mast marks the recent deaths at sea Getty another 34 bodies were recovered from the latest stricken vessel that sank south of Sicily last Friday. More than 200 passengers were rescued. Some of the survivors say they were shot at by another vessel soon after they left Libya. Meanwhile, a further 19 bodies were found in a boat that sank last week, bringing the death toll from that incident to 358. An Italian naval spokesman, Commander Marco Maccaroni, said his units also rescued 180 people from other boats in the same area overnight in a further indication of the relentless ows of migrants braving the Mediterranean. More than 30,000 migrants arrived in Italy and Malta in the first nine months of 2013, compared with 15,000 in all of 2012, according to the UN refugee agency. The majority leave from Libya, which has emerged as a funnel for migrants from as far aeld as Senegal, Somalia and Syria. The number who left Libya rose sharply in September, according to the UN

France shows its support for independent booksellers

Hlne Bekmezian Alain Beuve-Mry Le Monde
Supporting bookshops is one of the few issues on which both sides of the French parliament more or less agree. On 3 October they passed a bill to update a 1981 law that set a xed-price system for books. The original aim of the revision was to stop sellers including postage in the price of books, but in its nal draft the amendment stipulates that retailers cannot combine the currently allowed 5% discount on new books with free post and packaging. At present only two online companies Amazon and Fnac apply this two-tier reduction. Online booksellers now represent the third-largest trading network in France, behind independent bookshops and big cultural chains (such as Fnac), both of which have 23% market share. In 2012 the internet accounted for 17% of sales of general literature. E-trade now holds a 20% share of the market for printed books and is putting increasing pressure on bookshops, says Vincent Chabault, a researcher at Paris Descartes University. French bookshops have been slow to respond to the internet. Despite being represented by a single body, the French Booksellers Association (SLF), they have focused their efforts on maintaining their independence, and have failed to agree on a common website for online sales. The only venture of this sort, 1001libraires.com, was a commercial disaster that cost the trade almost 2m ($2.6m). All bookshops are losing money at present, even if

Grant to aid booksellers

A new head is to be appointed for Frances National Book Centre. On taking oce his or her top priority will be to convene a board meeting and release funds allocated by the government to help retail booksellers. The 11m ($14.5m) package, announced in March, will double support (rising to 2m) for online trading. The Institute for Funding Films and Cultural Industries will receive 5m to help bookshops manage cashow, with a further 4m given to the Association for the Development of Creative Booksellers to assist the transfer of bookselling businesses. Le Monde

they have an internet outlet, but at the same time they cannot aord not to be represented online, says Guillaume Husson, the head of SLF. The new amendment should reduce Amazons competitive advantage and ease the nancial pressure on Fnac. Free postage, which is a key feature of Amazons strategy, costs the company an estimated $5.1bn worldwide, SLF alleges, condemning the practice as a form of dumping. In response, Amazon France said that it makes more than 70% of its sales with remainders and that it is more complementary rather than in competition with French booksellers, who sell mainly new books. It also suggested that, by raising the price of books, the amendment would be bad news for consumers.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 13

International news

Kicker here like this Then a short description here like this Then Section and Page XX

Wealth gap in Spain is EUs biggest

Paul Hamilos Madrid
Spain is the most unequal society in Europe, according to a report that nds 3 million Spaniards now live in conditions of extreme poverty, and another study that shows the number of millionaires has increased. A report by the Catholic charity Caritas says more than 6% of Spains population of 47 million lived on 307 ($417) a month or less in 2012, double the proportion in 2008 before Spain was hit by the recession, which has left 26% of its workforce unemployed. A study by Credit Suisse nds that the number of millionaires in Spain rose to 402,000 last year, an increase of 13% on 2011, emphasising the widening gap between rich and poor. Announcing the findings of the Caritas report at a press conference in Madrid, Sebastin Mora, general secretary of the charitys Spanish arm, warned of a situation of neglect, injustice and the dispossession of peoples most basic rights. He said that while poverty was widespread in Spain, it mainly aected the most vulnerable. The economic crisis had produced a weakening of family ties and other safety nets, particularly in the public sector. The top 20% of Spanish society is now seven-and-a-half times richer than the bottom fth, which reects the biggest divide in Europe, says Caritas. The report paints a picture of a more fractured, more divided society, where the middle class is disappearing and a minority has access to wealth, goods and services while the majority sits outside, Mora said. The ruling rightwing Peoples party has introduced austerity measures to deal with public debt that is nearly 100% of GDP, but many fear that these are hitting the poorest sectors of society disproportionately hard. Last week the Council of Europes commissioner for human rights, Nils Muinieks, issued a report warning that cuts in social, health and educational budgets had led to a worrying growth of family poverty in Spain. This has had a particularly negative impact on the enjoyment of human rights by children and persons with disabilities. The OECDs first global study of adult skills has revealed that Spain came bottom for levels of literacy and numeracy in a list of 24 countries, raising concerns about its ability to emerge quickly from the crisis.

Crisis a Red Cross critique of the response to the EU debt crisis highlights a rising demand for food parcels AP

Despair in austerity Europe

Red Cross report focuses on joblessness, social unrest and poverty
Ian Traynor Brussels
Europe is sinking into a protracted period of deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair as a result of austerity policies adopted in response to the debt and currency crisis of the past four years, according to an extensive study due to be published this week. Whilst other continents successfully reduce poverty, Europe adds to it, says the 68-page report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The long-term consequences of this crisis have yet to surface. The problems caused will be felt for decades even if the economy turns for the better in the near future We wonder if we as a continent really understand what has hit us. The damning critique, of the policy response to the debt crisis that surfaced in Greece in late 2009 and raised questions about the viability of the single currency, foresees gloomy prospects for tens of millions of Europeans. Mass unemployment, especially among the young, 120 million Europeans living in or at risk of poverty; increased waves of illegal immigration clashing with rising xenophobia in the host countries; growing risks of social unrest and political instability estimated to be two to three times higher than most other parts of the world; greater levels of insecurity among the traditional middle classes: all combine to make a European future more uncertain than at any time in the postwar era. We see quiet desperation spreading among Europeans, resulting in depression, resignation and loss of hope. Compared to 2009, millions more find themselves queueing for food, unable to buy medicine or access healthcare. Millions are without a job and many of those who still have work face diculties to sustain their families due to insucient wages and skyrocketing prices. Many from the middle class have spiralled down to poverty. The amount of people depending on Red Cross food distributions in 22 of the surveyed countries has increased by 75% between 2009 and 2012. More people are getting poor, the poor are getting poorer. Youth unemployment figures in a quarter of the countries surveyed ranged from 33% to more than 60%. But just as destructive to families, the report said, is the soaring jobless level among 50- to 64-year-olds that has risen from 2.8 million to 4.6 million in the EU between 2008 and 2012.
Leader comment, page 22

Russia takes brutal line against protesters

Kathy Lally Washington Post
Courts from Moscow to Murmansk sent out an uncompromising message last Tuesday: Russian authorities will not tolerate protest, from the weak or the powerful, on land or at sea. In a reminder of the Soviet era, a Moscow court ordered a 38-year-old disabled man to be conned to indefinite psychiatric treatment. Mikhail Kosenko was found guilty of rioting and assaulting police at a 6 May 2012 demonstration on the eve of Vladimir Putins inauguration as president. To the north in Murmansk, a ships doctor, a photojournalist on assignment and a former radio reporter who had been on a Greenpeace ship seized after a protest against Arctic drilling lost their appeal for bail. Accused of piracy along with 27 others, they will remain in jail until at least 24 November. Kosenko had been classified as disabled ever since he was beaten up as a young army draftee in a brutal initiation attack that left him with brain damage. No witnesses said they saw him hitting a police ocer. Amnesty International called him a prisoner of conscience. A psychiatrist from the Serbsky Institute, where many dissidents were conned in the Soviet era, said Kosenko was insane. An independent psychiatrist disagreed and pointed out that he had never displayed aggressive behaviour. In a tweet Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the opposition Yabloko party, declared: In fact, it is a restoration of the punitive psychiatry of Soviet times.

14 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Finance
Finance in brief

Green shoots in Irish economy

The White House named Janet Yellen as the rst woman to head the US Federal Reserve, arguably the most important job in world nance. The nomination ends a long and often bitter public debate about Barack Obamas choice for Fed chairman. Yellen has long been seen as the frontrunner to succeed Ben Bernanke, who is set to step down early next year. Chinese authorities have arrested and charged the chairman of the worlds largest producer of rened tin, Yunnan Tin Co, over allegedly accepting bribes, a provincial government said, in the latest example of the countrys crackdown on graft. Lei Yi, Yunnan Tins chairman, is charged with taking $3.3m in bribes from four people, the Yunnan government said on an ocial website. The 2013 Nobel prize in economics was awarded to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller. The awarding committee said the trios separate pieces of work had laid the foundation for the current understanding of asset prices. Americas biggest bank, JP Morgan, made a loss in the third quarter of 2013 after legal expenses of $9.2bn caused by a wave of regulatory investigations and potential lawsuits. The bank, thought until recently to have weathered the nancial crisis well, has put aside $23bn for potential litigation since 2010 and said its legal bills could be $6.8bn more. Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive, described the loss his rst since taking charge in December 2005 as painful, though also said underlying performance is really good.

Looking ahead an activist warns against possible welfare and health cuts in Irelands 2014 budget Corbis

After years of austerity, Ireland tipped to grow by more than 2% next year
Henry McDonald Observer
Five years after the Irish government decided to stand behind its crippled banks in a bailout that cost 70bn ($95bn) and forced the country to go to the EU and International Monetary Fund for its own rescue package Ireland is ocially out of recession. Growth is projected at 2.7% next year. This week nance minister Michael Noonan will deliver the seventh consecutive austerity budget, with deep cuts to social welfare spending and other controversial measures expected. But three sectors of the economy that suered gravely construction, small businesses and tourism all report signs of recovery. Each is arguing against any VAT or indirect tax rises, and for the government to create a more favourable environment to boost private business, big and small. Two people working in some of the sectors hit hardest by the economic collapse, small business and tourism,

here look ahead to their own and their nations prospects. The cafe owner A possible increase in VAT is the thing Garrett McMahon and his partner Triona fear in the budget. A few months ago the couple took an enormous gamble by setting up a coee shop in Glasnevin, close to Dublins Botanical Gardens and the river Tolka. Having invested their life savings, McMahon worries that any rise in VAT in the hospitality industry from its current 9% would severely dent prots and put their dream in danger. The government cut VAT in the sector from 13% to 9% to boost consumer demand. If they were to put it back up to 13%, that would mean 4% o every euro we make, McMahon says. We dont want to be passing on higher prices to our customers. While still upbeat, he says the climate for small businesses needs to be less restrictive: We pay 2,500 rates to the city council. We pay for our water, we pay for our bins and we still have to sweep our own footpath every day. The marketing man Paul OKane, public affairs director at Dublin airport, notes that between

January and July this year there was a 14% increase in traveller numbers. He puts down the rise to several factors, including a spike in transatlantic trafc and the presence on Irish soil of the US customs and immigration service, which means passengers dont have to go through heavy security checks after landing in the US. We have more routes across the Atlantic than many British and European cities: there are now 224 ights per week from Dublin to north American destinations. Aer Lingus is opening up new routes to San Francisco and Toronto in spring next year. Cynics say the 700,000-plus passenger gures are boosted by young emigrants seeking jobs abroad. OKane disagrees and cites the extra tourists coming to Ireland and additional numbers from Northern Ireland, Britain and further aeld using Dublin as a link to North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Others claim that a recent tourist campaign aimed at the worldwide Irish diaspora has contributed to the surge. The one thing OKane doesnt want to see is any increase in the 3 atrate tax imposed on all ights, longor short-haul. Given tourism is a big invisible export, that seems unlikely.

Foreign exchanges
Sterling rates (at close) 11 Oct 1.69 1.66 8.77 1.18 12.37 156.76 1.92 9.56 1.99 10.32 1.45 1.59 4 Oct 1.70 1.66 8.82 1.18 12.46 156.13 1.93 9.57 2.00 10.29 1.45 1.61

Icelands deance of overseas creditors was a bold stroke Dublin dare not emulate
Iceland and Ireland were facing parallel nancial meltdowns in autumn 2008, with their banks over-extended but the two nations took dramatically dierent paths. Ireland, locked into the eurozone, was unable to rely on the cushioning eect of a weakening currency. In contrast, the Icelandic krona lost much of its value, greatly helping export businesses. While Ireland insisted it would use taxpayer funds to bail out its banks, Iceland said it could not afford to bail out any of its big three banks and let them collapse into administration. Foreign creditors could go hang. Economists were soon declaring it a masterstroke. But the contrasting reactions owed a great deal to necessity. Iceland, a tiny country of 317,000 people with an output of less than $15bn, could never have mustered the nancing to bail out its biggest banks. That said, it did have rich natural resources. Ireland had no such resources to fall back on. Its economy is built on housing the European headquarters of US multinationals. Looking after overseas investors is a central tenet of Irish economic policy. Simon Bowers
Australia Canada Denmark Euro Hong Kong Japan New Zealand Norway Singapore Sweden Switzerland USA

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 15

UK news

University Kicker here challenge like this Then The UK a short must description nd a new way here of like funding this Will Then Hutton, Section page and Page 21 XX

Welcome to Britain ministers including George Osborne were alarmed to hear of Chinese tourists buying more designer goods in France PA

Osborne opens doors to rich Chinese with new visa system

Chancellor moves to improve relations with Beijing after rift over Dalai Lama
Nicholas Watt
George Osborne has heralded the next big step in Britains relationship with Beijing, unveiling a new visa system to make it easier for Chinese business leaders and rich tourists to visit the UK. In a sign of Downing Streets determination to reset relations with Beijing, which unocially downgraded Britains status after David Cameron met the Dalai Lama last year, the chancellor told an audience in the Chinese capital that no country in the west is more keen to attract Chinese investment than Britain. Osborne, who began a five-day trade mission to China last weekend, told students at Beijing University: I dont want us to try to resist your economic progress, I want Britain to share in it. And I want us all to take the next big step in the relationship between Britain and China. Because more jobs and investment in China mean more jobs and investment in Britain. And that equals better lives for all. As a first step the chancellor announced that Britain will make it easier for Chinese business leaders to visit the UK by introducing a 24-hour super priority visa service. In the biggest step, a separate pilot scheme will allow selected Chinese travel agents to apply for UK visas simply by submitting the application form used for the EU Schengen visa. The scheme is aimed specically at the high-end tourism market, after gures showed that wealthy Chinese tourists are not bothering to apply for a UK visa after applying for a Schengen visa, which allows them to visit 22 out of the 28 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Ministers were understood to be alarmed when one study found that Chinese tourists were buying vastly higher numbers of expensive designer handbags in Paris than in London. The chancellor said: These changes will streamline and simplify the visa application process for Chinese visitors, while ensuring the system is strong and secure. This is good news for British business and tourism. The Foreign Oce has no diculty with the relaxed visa system, which will be administered through its embassy in Beijing and consulates in Shanghai and other high-growth cities. But concerns have been voiced to the chancellor and the prime minister from within the Foreign Office that Britain needs to tread with care in the light of Chinas human rights record and its aggressive cyber-attacks. Cameron is understood to have heard the Foreign Oces concerns with sympathy. But he is determined to open a new chapter in Britains relations with China after declaring that the Bric countries Brazil, Russia, India and China would be a priority. He has led two trade missions to India but has visited China only once as prime minister, three years ago. Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, who has recently returned from Beijing, spoke of a massive Chinese investment worth tens of billions of pounds in nuclear power and other sources of energy in Britain. Davey told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show that there would also be big energy investments from Japan and South Korea. The China General Nuclear Power Group has been in talks with EDF Energy about taking a stake of up to 49% in the deal to build a nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point. Osbornes trip in which he is being accompanied in part by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, and four other government ministers is designed to pave the way for a long-awaited trade mission to China by the prime minister. Cameron was forced to abandon a visit to China earlier this year when Beijing punished him for meeting the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, in London in May 2012 with Nick Clegg. The prime minister abandoned tentative plans for a trip to China in April after Beijing indicated that he was unlikely to be granted meetings with senior figures. The UK government said no plans had been nalised and the new Chinese leadership, which only took over in March, needed time to bed down. The Osborne and Cameron trips, which have been pencilled in for the autumn for some months, were the subject of intense negotiations in Whitehall.
John Pilger, page 18

16 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

UK news

Young worse-o than parents

Middle-class children face debt and job fears, concludes inquiry
Daniel Boey Observer
Todays middle-class children are on track to be the rst in more than a century to be materially less well-o in adulthood than their parents, the leaked ndings of a government commission reveal. The ndings show the existence of a national trend not experienced since the early 20th century, with children from families with above-average incomes as well as the most deprived set to enjoy a worse standard of living than their mothers and fathers. The social mobility and child poverty commission, established by David Cameron, was expected to warn this week that government initiatives have all too often been aimed at the poorest 10%. Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children, and they are in dire need of attention. A Whitehall source said: This will be controversial, but for the rst time in over a century there is a real risk that the next generation of adults ends up worse o than todays generation. This is a problem for the children of parents with above-average incomes, not just a problem for those at the bottom. The ndings will electrify the political debate over the squeezed middle, who have done so badly in the economic downturn. Such was the expected political impact that the planned publication date for the commissions report was delayed so that it did not clash with the autumn

Big switch after energy price rise

Terry Macalister
More than 50,000 energy consumers have switched their suppliers and many more were expected to follow in the aftermath of the 8.2% price increase levied by SSE last week, experts say. Other big six energy firms are believed to be temporarily holding back their plans to raise bills in the hope they soak up customers opting to leave SSE. The mass switching will be welcomed by the government, which had urged consumers hit by the price rise to nd cheaper options. Paul Green, the marketing manager at Energyhelpline, said that at the end of last week his switching company had had six times the activity seen on normal days. I would think that around 50,000 people overall have switched their energy providers not necessarily all from SSE following the price rise, he said. The SSE price rise the rst to be announced by one of the big six this winter will take eect from 15 November and force up the cost of living for more than 7 million customers. SSE blamed government policy charges and green levies for the increase. Michael Fallon, the energy minister, encouraged people to consider switching to one of the companys rivals. The best answer here is more competition. I would encourage customers to look at the taris they are on, and see if they can switch, he argued. But the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, made an impassioned attack on SSE, accusing it of ripping o customers and said the latest scandal showed why the government needed to act.

On your marks poor students arent the only ones at risk Frank Baron party conference season and become a political football, according to one government source. Among its conclusions, the commission was expected to say that those at particular risk are lowattaining children who are not poor enough to enjoy additional help from the system, but whose parents are not wealthy enough to insulate them from failure. Pupils on free school meals benet from an additional 14,300 ($22,900) to improve their chances in life through the pupil premium. Yet nearly two-thirds of those who fail to attain an A to C grade in English and maths are from backgrounds not considered to be deprived. The cross-party commission describes this group as the missing piece in the jigsaw of the governments education policies. The commission was also expected to warn that children in the southeast but outside London are being let down. Children in the capital on free school meals do 50% better in their GCSEs than those in other regions. A major cause of this geographical shift, the commission is expected to say, is that a higher proportion of high-quality heads and teachers live in disadvantaged areas in London, in part because of the London weighting wage lift for those in the capital. Some of the weakest schools, it is set to point out, are located in bastions of middle England, such as Peterborough, west Berkshire, Herefordshire and satellite areas around London.

Labour to end ideological experiment of free schools

Nicholas Watt
A new generation of academies, to be led by parents and social entrepreneurs, will be established by the next Labour government as it seeks to press ahead with reforms while ending the Tories ideological experiment with free schools, the new shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, said last weekend. Hunt pledged to support parents and teachers who want to set up new schools. But they would only be able to open in areas where there is a shortage of places and would be subject to greater oversight than the free schools championed by the education secretary, Michael Gove. Hunt, who was promoted to the shadow cabinet in this months Labour reshue, told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show: I am in favour of parentled academies which are going to be good parent-led academies. And we will keep the good free schools when we get into government. But have no doubt, what we have seen recently is an ideological experiment with our young people. Hunt, 39, spoke in favour of reform as Rachel Reeves, 34, another member of the 2010 intake of MPs promoted in last weeks reshue, highlighted further fresh thinking when she said Labour would be tougher than the Tories on cutting the welfare budget. The new shadow work and pensions secretary said Labours job guarantee scheme means the long-term unemployed would not be allowed to linger on benets. Under the guarantee, to be funded by reinstating the tax on bankers bonuses, those aged under 25 will be oered a job after one year out of work. Those aged over 25 will be offered a job after two years out of work. The interventions by Hunt and Reeves show that they are following inthe policy footsteps of their predecessors, Stephen Twigg and Liam Byrne, who were demoted in the reshues. Twigg had outlined plans for parents to be allowed to set up academies subject to more stringent oversight than Goves free schools in his No School Left Behind speech in June. Hunt and Reeves appear able to speak more freely and openly than Twigg and Byrne, who supporters believe were constrained by more senior members of the shadow cabinet.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 17

UK news

Kicker here like this Then a short description here like this Then Section and page Page XX
The leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, last week quit the extreme rightwing group and apologised for causing fear among British Muslims. Robinson said he was sorry for helping to create a culture of us and them and for frightening the UK Islamic community, and would now talk to police to help them investigate dangerous racists in the organisation. Britains newspaper industry has been given a blunt warning by the government that it risks being subject to full statutory regulation if it refuses to accept a royal charter designed to place the system on a lighter footing. The charter introduces a small fee for complainants wishing to use the new arbitration scheme and includes changes to the committee that draws up the newspaper code of practice, abolishing a previous quota system. Police ocers across the country supplied information on workers to a blacklist operation run by Britains biggest construction companies, the Independent Police Complaints Commission told lawyers representing victims. The admission was welcomed by campaigners for the 3,200 workers whose names were on the blacklist as absolute evidence of a conspiracy between the state and industry that lasted for decades. Scotland Yards counterterrorism command arrested four suspects in London last Sunday in connection with a suspected terrorist plot to launch a Mumbai-style attack. Police said the arrests were made on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000. Inquiries into allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile could be extended to more hospitals after police uncovered information relating to the BBC star, the health secretary said. Investigations are under way at 13 hospital trusts, but Jeremy Hunt said new inquiries could be launched after police found relevant information. Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, is believed to have abused hundreds of children.

Police seek man who was seen carrying child away from crime scene
Sandra Laville
The face of a suspect in the investigation of the disappearance of the British three-year-old Madeleine McCann in Portugal six years ago has been released to the public by detectives. Police have issued two efits that they believe are descriptions of the same man, who is now being sought as a priority by the British detectives leading the new McCann inquiry. In what police are calling a new understanding of events on the night of 3 May 2007, witnesses described seeing the brown-haired man carrying an infant from the direction of the Ocean Club complex in Praia da Luz towards either the centre of town or the beach, said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading a Metropolitan police review of the case. Descriptions of the suspect were given to the Portuguese inquiry by two witnesses after Madeleine disappeared. It is only now, after Met detectives cross-referenced information gathered by Portuguese detectives, private investigators and mobile phone data, that the signicance of the witness statements has been fully understood. A new, 25-minute

Face to face British police ets of the man they want to talk to Getty reconstruction of the events of 3 May 2007, with a child actor playing Madeleine, was screened on the BBCs Crimewatch programme in the UK this week, resulting in several hundred new phone calls and emails to police. The ets are clear and I would ask the public to look very carefully at them, Redwood said. If you know who this person is, please come forward. Whilst this man may or may not be the key to unlocking this investigation, tracing and speaking to him is of vital importance to us. Redwood is leading the 5m ($8m) British investigation into the suspected abduction of Madeleine in May 2007 while her family were on holiday in Praia da Luz. The inquiry is focusing on 41 suspects and requests for assistance have been issued to 30 countries in a bid to identify and eliminate these people, 15 of whom are British. The sighting took place at about 10pm, notably later than polices previous assumption of when Madeleine, three, was taken from the familys apartment. The man is described as white and aged in his 30s, with short brown hair, of medium build and clean-shaven. The child he was carrying was aged three to four, blonde, and may have been wearing pyjamas.

Royal Mail shares soar 38% on debut

Rupert Neate
The government has been accused of shortchanging taxpayers by selling o Royal Mail at a knockdown price after shares in the privatised postal service rose by 38% on their debut last Friday. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the jump in the share price which made an immediate 284 ($455) paper prot for almost 700,000 Royal Mail investors showed that the privatisation was a re sale of a great British institution. Royal Mail stock, which the government sold at 330p, leapt to 455p on the rst day of trading the biggest oneday rise in a privatisation since British Airways in 1987. They were expected to rise higher in the following days. Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said the steep share price rise showed that the government had massively shortchanged taxpayers by signicantly undervaluing the institution. Royal Mails initial market value rose by 1bn to 4.3bn confirming that it will join the FTSE 100 list of Britains biggest companies. The government had valued Royal Mail at a maximum of 3.3bn, and had attacked analysts valuation of 4.5bn as way out. If the government had sold the shares at 450p, rather than 330p, it would have made an extra 600m for the taxpayer on top of the 1.7bn it made from the 52% stake in Royal Mail. But sources close to the transaction said institutions would not have bid at that price. Billy Hayes, the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, which represents more than 100,000 postal workers, said: Privatisation is about greed. I think [business secretary] Vince Cable made one of the stupidest mistakes in politics on privatising Royal Mail. The public applied for more than seven times the number of shares available to them, which meant nearly everyone did not get as many shares as they had asked for. Meanwhile, Royal Mail staff are pushing ahead with plans for strikes in opposition to privatisation in the runup to Christmas.

330p

The price put on the shares. If they had been sold at 450p, the taxpayer would have made an extra 600m

News in brief

British detectives release new ets of McCann suspect

18 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Comment&Debate

Chinas role in Africa is Obamas obsession

John Pilger

Where America brings drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. Al-Shabaab and co march in lockstep with this imperialism

ountries are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world, wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game. The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. When they are made to hate each other, wrote a British colonial ocial, good governance is assured. Today Somalia is a theme park of brutal, articial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programmes, and saturated with modern weapons notably President Obamas personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was well received by the people in the areas it controlled, reported the US Congressional Research Service, [but] received negative press coverage, especially in the west. Obama crushed it; and last January Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government, eused President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Thank you, America. The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this just as the Twin Towers attack and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism. Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity, report Ministry of Defence planners. As high numbers of civilian casualties are predicted, perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success. Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth BAE Systems, together with Barclays Capital and BP, warns that the government should dene its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens. The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.

With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games a soldier to soldier doctrine embeds US ocers at every level of command from general to warrant ofcer. The British did this in India. It is as if Africas proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new masters black colonial elite whose historic mission, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of a capitalism rampant though camouaged. The reference also ts the son of Africa in the White House. For Obama, there is a more pressing cause China. Africa is Chinas success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. Natos bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is Washingtons obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a policy known as the pivot to Asia, whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era. Last weeks meeting in Tokyo between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, and their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war. Sixty per cent of US naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a new, strong military and circumvent the peace constitution. US-Japanese anti-ballistic-missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones, the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Both countries now deploy advanced vertical take-o aircraft in Japan in preparation for a blitzkrieg. On the Pacic island of Guam, from where B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US marines. In Australia last week an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying; it is also critical to Obamas worldwide assassinations by drone. We have to inform the British to keep them on side, McGeorge Bundy, an assistant US secretary of state, once said. You in Australia are with us, come what may. Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, China is Australias biggest trading partner and largely responsible for its evasion of the 2008 recession. The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where Rupert Murdoch, the patron of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, controls 70% of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the choice that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve blinding Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability. In his address to the nation last month, Obama said: What makes America dierent, what makes us exceptional, is that we are dedicated to act.

The threat of a world war stemming from the US pivot to Asia policy may be as greatas any in themodern era
Matt Kenyon

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 19

Comment&Debate

The key to Buddhisms western ourish

Madeleine Bunting

Tibetan monk Choje Akong Rinpoche, who was murdered in China last week, fought against the odds to preserve an entire cultural tradition
uddhisms popularity over the past halfcentury in the west has surprised and dismayed in almost equal measure. Alongside the fad for Buddhist statues in garden centres, there has been a much more serious engagement with hundreds of centres opening, many of the most dynamic founded by Tibetan Buddhists. Given that Tibet had limited contact with modernity until the 20th century, its been an extraordinary story of cultural export. The vivid colour and spectacle of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and the warmth and humour of their teachers, have contributed to making Buddhism into a rare religious success in a deepening secularism. Central to this history was the remarkable life of Choje Akong Rinpoche, co-founder of the rst Tibetan monastery in the west, who was murdered in Chengdu in China last week. As a small child he was taken from his nomadic family to a monastery as an important reincarnation. Throughout his childhood he was honoured as a great teacher. At the age of 19, as the Chinese arrived in Tibet and destroyed thousands of monasteries, he set o on foot for India, a journey of indescribable suering in which hundreds of fellow refugees died of starvation, exhaustion and attacks. Four years later in 1963 he arrived in England and worked as a hospital orderly in Oxford supporting a fellow Tibetan monk who was studying. Within a few years he had gone from a life of immense monastic prestige to scrubbing toilets. Anyone visiting Samye Ling, the monastery Akong Rinpoche co-founded in the Scottish Borders in 1963, or the London centre in Bermondsey, cannot fail to be impressed by the sheer scale of the ambition they represent. This kind of institution-building by a refugee community and the volunteer eort it has inspired are hard to match. The temples are lavishly decorated with paintings and statues according to Tibetan practice, and the rituals and ceremonies are an extraordinary spectacle of drums, bells and chanting by Tibetan monks, as well as dozens of western counterparts an experience of Tibet in the rainy hills of the Scottish Borders. Some found the Tibetan inuence immensely appealing; others were bemused at the deeply ritualistic approach. Akong Rinpoche was a traditionalist and one of his driving motivations was the preservation of Tibetan Buddhism, in particular his Kagyu lineage (one of four lineages or sects in Tibetan Buddhism), in the face of a concerted Chinese eort to obliterate Tibetan culture. In recent years he and a team gathered thousands of single-copy manuscripts and took copies of them out of Tibet to be saved. What was at stake was an entire cultural tradition. Ken Holmes, a Buddhist teacher and close associate for over 40 years, believes this was a task of immense value. Tibetan Buddhism, when it is properly understood, has the most profound and complete understanding of the human mind and its possibilities. An immense treasure has been stored in Tibet all these years. Hundreds of devoted followers would agree. On

Andrzej Krauze

one occasion I found myself in the London centre for an empowerment ritual. The entire compound, newly refurbished by volunteers, looked resplendent and was heaving with thirty- and fortysomethings gathered to welcome Akong Rinpoche. It was the kind of reception that his neighbour, the archbishop of Canterbury, would have relished. Other Buddhist teachers are more critical. John Peacock, once himself a Tibetan Buddhist monk, argues that western followers romanticise the Tibetan association and fail to distinguish between what is Tibetan cultural practice and Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is deeply sectarian, he says. ut what Peacock and Holmes agree on is that Akong Rinpoche developed over the last decade a remarkable programme of humanitarian work in Tibet and among Tibetan refugees in Nepal and India. He set up schools, clinics and reforestation projects, and supported monasteries and student monks in universities in China and India. It is a pioneering model of socially engaged Buddhism in a faith sometimes criticised for its preoccupation with spiritual development to the neglect of material wellbeing. Akong Rinpoche supervised dozens of other projects. What lay behind all of them was Akong Rinpoches remarkable skills as a diplomat and a manager. He was a modest, quiet man but he was brilliant at organising. He walked a diplomatic tightrope to safeguard his development projects in Tibet, withdrawing from any public meetings with the Dalai Lama for fear of giving oence to the Chinese. Peacock sees his success as symptomatic of a remarkable refugee community that has managed to re-establish itself and set up ourishing monasteries in several parts of the world. He points to the history of Tibetans as one of traders and entrepreneurs between the two great civilisations of India and China. Holmes sees something else in Akong Rinpoche an extraordinary ability to inspire others to live out the compassion on which he based all his teachings. The fundraising was never about soliciting big donations but about dozens of dogged initiatives, many of which lasted decades without losing a clear vision of the ultimate goal.

Within a few years, Akong Rinpoche hadgone from a life ofimmense monastic prestige to cleaning toilets

20 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Comment&Debate

The future for Egypt looks grim indeed

Jonathan Steele

The US decision to stop military aid will not prevent General Sisi andhis followers from plunging the country deeper into violence

he Obama administrations decision to suspend some military aid to Egypt is a clear case of better late than never. Although an announcement was originally planned for August, its timing now is a warning to Cairos military coup-makers that their repressive treatment of the opposition risks plunging Egypt into uncontrollable violence. It was predictable that General Abdul Fatah al-Sisis refusal to relax the clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood would provoke violence. In what other country is an elected president held for three months with no access to his family or lawyers? In what other country are demonstrators routinely shot without warning? Egypt has not seen such brutal repression for decades. The last few years of Hosni Mubaraks rule now seem almost benevolent: in spite of tight overall control, demonstrations were more or less tolerated and the Brotherhood was allowed to run candidates for parliament as independents. Egypts regime-inuenced courts have started proceedings not just to ban the political party that the Brotherhood set up after 2011 but to outlaw the organisation and its social welfare network altogether. The Brotherhoods own record on human rights, during the year it had partial power in Egypt, was not good. It made little eort to rein in the police, whose abuses were one of the main complaints that led to the demonstrations in January 2011. Indeed, there were times when the Brotherhood was willing to encourage police

thuggery against its opponents. Yet Mohamed Morsis many failings cannot match, let alone justify, what has happened since the coup of 3 July this year. Equally grim is the virtual absence of public criticism or peaceful protest from other sectors of Egyptian society other than the Brotherhoods supporters. The Twittersphere is still free for dissent and there have not yet been reprisals or arrests for posting anti-army comments there or on Facebook. The regime sees this as a useful safety valve. More signicant is its ooding of the ocial press, the TV stations and the talkshows with grotesque smears of the Brotherhood and all its works, as well as of the few prominent non-Brotherhood gures who have spoken out, such as Mohamed ElBaradei. Primitive though the propaganda is, it has convinced an astonishing number of otherwise sensible Egyptians. As a result, politics have become almost completely polarised. The chances of eventual reconciliation look imsy. Some Salas have joined the Brotherhoods protests but the al-Nour party, which represented them in the last election, still wavers between support for the coup and silence. A few secular liberals mutter behind a comforting intellectual stance of neither the Brotherhood nor the army, but unless this fence-sitting is abandoned in favour of open condemnation of todays main threat to civil liberties which comes from the army it is politically vacuous. The business community hunkers down and hopes for a few crumbs, even though the economy is in tatters and cannot live for ever o loans from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Tourism is dead and last weeks attacks near the Red Sea resorts, the rst violence there for several years, will further delay its recovery. Yet, far from contributing to stability, what General Sisi and his civilian followers are doing will only condemn Egypt to greater turmoil. If Iraq is any guide, the next stage will be terrorist violence against civilians. General Sisi will probably put himself forward for the presidency, claiming Egypt needs a new strongman. But what it really needs is a gradually recovering economy; social justice; a properly managed, non-abusive police force; a politically engaged citizenry; and the enabling environment of media pluralism, multi-party options and civic tolerance that are the true pillars of stability. More at theguardian.com/commentisfree

Comment is free In brief

If you must lie on your CV, at least go all out

Everyone lies on their CV dont they (guys? Guys?). Im not talking massive great lies like top barrister Dennis ORiordans, who was suspended for having claimed to have two rstclass degrees and a doctorate from Oxford and a masters from Harvard, but little lies, like I am a highly motivated and enthusiastic employee. Or bumping up your A-levels a grade or two. Or saying you have A-Levels. You know, minor stu. In ORiordans case, thems were some big, big lies, but the fact that he felt he needed them tells us something about the way things still work in the UK. He chose the most prestigious institutions that he could, those that are prized by his profession above all others, rather than admit who he really was. While colleagues, one of whom anonymously posted on a forum for lawyers (Had Gordon Brown-style eruptions when challenged now at least we know why. Had plenty to hide) were unsympathetic, I have to admit that I felt a pang. Many of us fall prey to status anxiety, especially when we come into contact with those coming from lives of unimaginable privilege. It makes me wonder how many other people are up to their necks in high-status careers, having decided that the truth that they went to schools like mine was less appealing than a fantasy. Now that jobs are vanishing overnight, there must be even more of a temptation to lie. If Oxford does indeed raise its fees to $25,000 a year, as it proposed last week, Ill hazard that ORiordan wont be the only one opting for a phoney degree. After all, its free, and it works. Until you get caught. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Andrzej Krauze

I must be sick. All my symptoms are on the web

Ever sat at your laptop, doggedly convinced that you could prove your tiredness after a day at the oce was something way trendier than stress, like anaemia? Then congratulations: I diagnose you with cyberchondria. Thats hypochondria for the digital age, FYI, and according to a study in the Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking journal, its on the rise. And you thought you only had brain cancer to worry about. Im going to safely assume that most people reading this have indulged in a bit of disease tourism at some point in their lives. Paraneoplastic pemphigus? Sure, Ill take that. Oppositional deant disorder? Sounds plausible. Sars? Juvenile arthritis? Aspergers? Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deciency? All realistic contenders for whats incubating in your sinuses, once the internets involved: its a veritable sweetshop of syndromes out there on the worldwide web. Why exactly do we nd cyberchondria so seductive? Partly, of course, because lying in bed with your laptop is a hell of a lot less strenuous than making a doctors appointment. Partly because of embarrassment about conditions one might not feel comfortable bringing up with another human being. Even though most of us might readily admit to Googling our sore throats, the cyberpsychology study points out that some so-called cyberchondriacs get trapped in a cycle of anxiety. In America, where the study was conducted, a number of people who had diagnosed themselves ended up obsessing about medical bills and job loss to the point where they became too worried to see a real doctor at all. Holly Baxter

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 21

Comment&Debate
In praise of ... Talea de Castro
There was no need for the NSA in Talea de Castro, since there was no privacy to breach. A remote coeegrowing village in the Mexican mountains, its repeated requests for a mobile mast were declined by telecom giants, which thought it would yield small beans. Costly calls had to be made from borrowed landlines in the middle of shops, while urgent communications were bellowed through a PA system for the whole village to hear. Undaunted and desperate, the 2,500 citizens created their own phone company, using radio receivers, a laptop and opensource software, with signed paper receipts serving as pre-pay credit. The cut-price system supports only 11 calls atonce, but thats a huge advance for a community that is unused to making Im on the bus type calls. If the millions who live in parts of the world without modern communications follow this selfstarting lead, big corporates will one day regret refusing to answer Talea de Castros call.

Universities in UK face funds crisis

Will Hutton Observer

Unless student nance is changed, the graduates will be mainly children of the very wealthy

nglands universities have been humming as another wave of near 340,000 undergraduates begin their rite of passage into adulthood. University is their gateway to knowledge, a career and a future. But, above all, it is about learning to think for themselves, becoming themselves, even. The university sector is one of the few parts of the English institutional structure that still works. Over the decades ahead, as new technologies, unleashed by digitisation, transform our economic base, the universities should be an important asset to the country, both as a fountainhead of knowledge and as a unique space for bringing together people, society, business and ideas. Instead, the unsustainable system of student nance could so fragment the sector that not only will the standard university be endangered, but so will the character of the elite. The facile belief that market structures are the solution could undermine a great system. Complacency surrounds the new regime of 9,000 ($14,000) tuition fees. So far, admissions to university have held up. The eort to persuade students that the repayment of up to 45,000 of debt works more like a graduate tax, aordable because your degree makes you more valuable, has plainly worked. Yet take a closer look and the picture is more disturbing. Although the proposition was that there would be a range of fees, few universities charge less than 9,000 a year. Indeed, average fees are about 8,400. Accommodation and living costs have to be paid for on top, so that almost whatever university a student attends or whatever the degree taken, he or she will end up with about 45,000 of debt. Even so, universities such as Oxford, warned its vicechancellor last week, may have to charge more, given that government support for teaching has been emasculated (I am principal of an Oxford college, Hertford, and also chair the Independent Commission on Fees). This is a fragile system that is going to break. One fatal weakness is that English student debt (Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish students have not been

plunged into the maelstrom) comes with interest attached. At the very least, graduates are charged an interest rate equal to the retail price index, scaling up to the RPI plus 3% once their incomes exceed 41,000. Today, this implies an eective top interest rate of a whopping 6.3%. Only the US has the same cavalier approach, but the average graduate debt there is a mere 15,700, with much lower interest rates, and a good third of American students leave with no debt. The English combination of high interest rates and sky-high debt is a unique double whammy. The impact of compound interest on debt that is only repaid slowly is deadly; only those students who earn very high salaries early in their careers can escape being locked into a debt trap. There are insucient jobs that pay enough to allow even a fraction of each years 340,000 students to escape the trap. The average salary is 26,500. Only about 10% of the population earn more than 41,000. Even allowing for the fact that wages usually rise faster than prices, it follows that many, perhaps even the majority of students will struggle to fully pay back their debt. Unless there is some bold political leadership, the future is becoming clearer. Oxford, Cambridge and a handful of other top English universities will want to charge more than 9,000 to support their expensive teaching, while oering even more generous fee rebates and scholarships to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. They would preserve themselves in the short term as premier institutions. But they would have caused a university system to fragment, leaving less strong universities in an impossible position, and further entrenching the noxious class stratications in English society. What is needed is a mixed economy of student nance. Universities create the public good of knowledge and thus more wealth; they should be paid for in part by general taxation and in part from moderate student fees with negligible interest. But loading the burden for university nancing on to the shoulders of the innocent young, while their elders are washing their hands of responsibility, is a disgrace. England will pay a high price for such arrant selshness.

22 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

theguardianweekly
Europes recession 18 October 1967

Sick roots beneath green shoots

Since the economic crisis began in 2007-08, the ubiquitous image has been a financial storm. But today, as well as producing a battery of depressing statistics about the fallout from Europes long recent recession, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies talks of the roots of the crisis having been planted, roots that it insists will yield bitter growth for many years yet. The Red Cross is particularly well placed to tally up the developing penury at the bottom of the heap hungry bellies have forced a 75% rise in recourse to food assistance. Beyond this intense hardship, there are the insecure terms and conditions that are such a feature of hard times in Britain and America, too. What marks Europe out is unemployment. Although conditions remain, in European Central Bank president Mario Draghis phrase, weak, fragile, uneven, the eurozone is technically in recovery. Joblessness, however, remains stubborn at over 12% ve points more than in Britain, and twice as high as it ever got during Japans 20-year, on-and-o slump. The Red Cross charts problems with mental and physical health, which connect back to this reality. Even more chilling is the concentration of worklessness on the youth, at a stage in life when enforced idleness incurs an economic penalty that endures for decades. With youth unemployment running at 30%, 50% or even 60% in the worst-hit countries, the wages and opportunities of a generation are going to be set back long into any recovery. Sick roots will long lurk beneath proclaimed green shoots. For purposes of both immediate cure and future prevention, the most important thing is to grasp the cause. The orthodox analysis, of course, is all about social protections making the continent a cripplingly costly place to hire a hand. But the conventional wisdom is awry. For this is not fundamentally a story about minimum wages or maximum hours. The real explanation here is macroeconomic, just as it was in the entirely pre-regulated American economy of the 1930s, where unemployment soared to double the dreadful levels of contemporary Europe. German neurosis about ination has precluded the same liberal use of the electronic printing presses in Britain and America, so the monetary stance remains tighter. The long years of European muddling through, from crisis to crisis, have never addressed any of this. The single currency got out of the emergency room in 2012 when Mr Draghi promised to do whatever it took to shore up stricken banks, part of an implicit bargain that also involved the south swallowing interminable austerity. Todays messy politics in Greece and Italy, which ow from popular rage about unending retrenchment, suggest that it should not be assumed that the souths acquiescence will last for ever. The people of Europe will be paying the price for the last few years for many more to come.

Anything left to rebel against?

YESTERDAY: The passing of the deadline for this article has sharpened my speculations concerning Permissiveness versus Authority. Let us take, for example, a hypothetical situation in which (say) the Guardian represents Authority, faced with a contributor who wishes to assert his individuality failing to present his copy on time. Any reasonable persons sympathy will in this case go to the writer. However, it may be that several writers have made a similar assertion; who now is required to display permissiveness? FOR NEW READERS THE STORY SO FAR: John has been asked by the Guardian to write an article called Is There Anything Left to Rebel Against? but is nding it dicult because his own former Swiftian savagery, corrupted by money and showbiz life, has gone by the board. Suddenly a paper is pushed through his letterbox. The old sensations of rage come ooding back. What is it that he has found, and why does it make him run screaming round the room? NOW READ ON. WARNING! Dangers of Complacency Yes, Id been lulled into thinking there was nothing left to rebel against; after all, Miss Quant announced Next spring I have a complete body-stocking with plasticsoled feet coming on to the market, and Id been worrying like hell about that. Sometimes you arent allowed into a restaurant in a trouser suit. Mary said she was wearing a velvet suit, but they still wouldnt let her in. What sort of a country are we living in? There are too many conformists around. John Bird

Nobel prizes

Curiouser and curiouser

Physics and chemistry Nobels often reward endeavours that began as pure curiosity. The shorthand is blue skies research, work with no obvious practical application. When the new physics laureates Peter Higgs and Franois Englert rst proposed a particle now called the Higgs boson, the skies could not have been bluer. In 1964 there was a proposal that matter, space and time may have pecked out of some kind of cosmic egg, and a counter-proposal that the universe was eternal. For most people, both arguments had no more substance than fairytales. Almost 50 years on, Cerns Large Hadron Collider has more or less produced an answer to the question about why matter has mass. But the Higgs boson represents no practical gain. Big deal? Yes. Because Higgss and Englerts questions were seemingly impossible to answer, thousands of scientists had to devise once-unimaginable ways of answering them. Along the way, they achieved superconducting magnets of astonishing power, detectors of exquisite sensitivity and computer systems that could sift the fragments of 200m collisions a second. Technological advances pioneered at Cern which include the world wide web are all byproducts of curiosity, yet they later enriched industry. So many advances that enhance our lives and line our pockets start the same way with a nagging question. Do heavy things fall faster? Why do things fall at all? What is heat? Is light a wave, or a particle? Why is the sky blue? Newtons optics and mechanics, Davys electrolysis experiments and Faradays games with electromagnetism were all attempts simply to answer fundamental questions about the nature of our world. Governments always try to devise mechanisms that will turn fresh discovery into new business, but the best investment of all could be in science driven by pure curiosity. Visible matter makes up only 4% of the universe. So the next thrilling blue skies question is: what is the rest of the universe made of?

Corrections and Clarifications

The letter in Reply, 4 October, was from the Tony Taylor in Sydney, Australia, not the one in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The 4 October Shortcuts piece headed Ghanas ghosts in the machine actually described conditions in Gabon. The Guardian Weeklys policy is to correct signicant errors as soon as possible. Please give the date, page or web link: reader@theguardian. com The readers editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, United Kingdom.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 23

Reply
Climate change and calamity
The latest IPCC report summarises the work of many scientists who have focused their research on the issue of climate change (Scientists say only 30 years to calamity unless we act, 4 October). Yet they have not been very successful in convincing us that climate change is a major issue. Recent elections in Australia, Norway and even Germany have shown that voters did not have a major concern for the earth warming up. In my country, people still buy more gas-guzzling pick-up trucks than cars. Why is that? The main reason may be that people have been warned of too many dangers during the last half-century. In addition to the climate warming danger, we have the increase in violence danger, the terrorist threat, the antibiotic overdose danger, the genetically modied food danger and so on. All these dangers have apparently major potential catastrophic consequences. People know that most of these have to be taken with a grain of salt. We would all be suering from anxiety disorders if we were to respond to all these potential dangers. The climate issue is obviously serious. Scientists face strong criticism from some businessmen and conservative politicians. In addition, people are more concerned by the economic situation. More importantly, one has the impression that some of the scientists concerned or at least their loudest supporters want to use this potential danger to change our consumerist way of life. This will not work in developing countries and is proving a challenge in western countries. At best such an approach may only slow the rise in demand for energy. Instead, the focus should be to encourage more research to make nonpolluting energies pricecompetitive and to develop inexpensive ways to considerably reduce the impact of polluting energies. When this goal will be achieved, the problem will solve itself. Francois P Jeanjean Ottawa, Canada The trouble is that we are up against our social limits in coming up with a timely response to the dire predictions in the recent IPCC report. The dilemma remains: how to meet the challenge in time by benign, democratic means without resorting to authoritarian, dictatorial approaches. If we continue in the delayed reaction the report complains of, we run a high risk of suddenly panicking when apocalyptic disaster is almost upon us and abruptly switching to a desperate, knee-jerk

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tan, thus putting themselves at risk of skin cancer, or pay money to get fake tans or sit in expensive booths that give them an articial tan, at great risk to their health. It seems that wherever you are, the grass is greener on the other side. Is it just a human trait for so many of us to wish we look dierent from what we are? Peter D Jones Lenah Valley, Tasmania, Australia
Gary Kempston

Unitarian tolerance
When I read Esther Addleys article about atheist congregations (27 September), I wondered whether these people had ever heard of Unitarianism. When we lived in England, my late husband and I found no place to go on a Sunday. But in Canada, a tip-o led us to the Unitarians. You can believe in whatever your idea of God is, or not. Somehow, we are all nice people, we have progressive opinions, we get along, and the sense of fellowship is overwhelming. We have no nal answers, just enquiring minds, tolerance, kindness and a sense of being part of the wonderful web of life on this planet. Jenny Carter Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

approach aimed at reversing the trend only to nd that it is too late anyway. Terry Hewton Adelaide, South Australia

for greenhouse gases. Any crop represents carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. Indeed, photosynthesis is the only process that can remove this greenhouse gas in anything like the quantities required (the eect is clearly visible in the seasonal variation of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere). Allowing this stu to rot simply returns the carbon to the atmosphere, making a large and generally unacknowledged contribution to our carbon footprint. What is needed are technologies to recover the carbon in a useful form, and the obvious candidate for waste food is anaerobic digestion, which generates a gas that is about onehalf methane. Graham Andrews Spokane, Washington, US

Briey
My interpretation of Angela Merkels comment What we have done, everyone else can do diers from that of Timothy Garton Ash (4October). It strikes me that Merkel is telling the other European countries that Germanys success is due to the fact that it lives within its means. Which is why the German people seem increasingly reluctant to continue handing over their hard-earned euros to countries like Greece, Spain and Italy. Frankly, it is wishful thinking to believe that these countries will be willing to give up a long-held culture in exchange for a high degree of selfcontrol and discipline. Shmaiel Nona Burradoo, NSW, Australia What the Republicans are doing in the US senate is deliberate destructive behaviour for the sake of scoring party points, regardless of the consequences to ordinary citizens (11 October). Their stance is aimed at closing down the government by making it impossible to function in the way expected of it, regardless of the damage done to ordinary people. I hope it rebounds on these soulless, self-seeking, merciless barbarians. Keith Short Fortaleza-Ce, Brazil So we elect a government to represent the people (4 October). The government pays civil servants in the UK to work out how to change public opinion so they can spend our money invading other peoples countries. Is this how democracy works? Mike Kearney La Mouche, France

Terrorism has a cause

Jason Burke, in his article How much should we fear jihadist terrorism (4October), misses the point. So-called terrorism does not appear from nowhere. People in the Middle East have tried in vain for decades to have their grievances addressed: for example, the most important issue of illegal occupation and annexation of their lands with illegal referring to the taking of land without the owners consent. It is no wonder that some of these people thus made powerless have eventually found that they had no choice but to use the last resort open to them: armed struggle. The solution, of course, is to acknowledge and deal with their legitimate concerns instead of just assassinating them. Who is the terrorist here? Karola Mostafanejad Geraldton, Western Australia

University place is wasted

Anders Breivik may have a legal right to education, but he has already attended the 16 mandatory years of schooling in Norway (Why Breivik is welcome at our university, September 20). This means that he should already have learned about things such as democracy and free will. Though he may have a poor understanding of the matter, there are plenty of other people who could take Breiviks spot in the political science course that could make better use of that education later on in life, rather than wasting the knowledge in a prison cell. Soa Holmquist Oberwil, Switzerland

The irony of skin colour

VV Brown, in her article on black models (27 September), might have also considered the human paradox that, all over the world, women view pale skin as more attractive than dark skin, and sadly spend a lot of money on trying to achieve this. On the other side, women with a fair skin sit out in the sun to get a Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Editorial Editor: Abby Deveney Guardian Weekly Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, United Kingdom To contact the editor directly: weekly.feedback@theguardian.com

Food wastes other problem

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24 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Eyewitnessed

Schoolgirls wave Vietnamese and Chinese ags to welcome the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, to Hanois presidential palace at the start of an o cial three-day visit Kham/Getty

A sheep awaits judging at the 15th Russian Agricultural Golden Autumn Exhibition in Moscow. Exhibitors from 70 regions of Russia and 30 countries attended Kirill Kudryavtsev/Getty

Evacuees cram into an auto-rickshaw as Typhoon Phailin battered villages near Gopalpur, onthe Odisha coast of eastern India. At least six people died as winds reached 200km/h Ge

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 25

Weapons of choice at the World Conker Championships in Northamptonshire, England, where women were this year allowed to compete against men for the rst time Mary Turner/Getty

An anti-independence Catalan man bedecked in the colours of the Spanish ag shows his support for a unied Spain during a rally at Catalunya square in Barcelona Josep Lago/Getty

Muslims gather on Mount Mercy, near Mecca, at the start of the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Numbers of pilgrims are down 20% this year due to health and safety concerns Reuters

26 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Behind the black market dog trade

Rising demand for dogmeat inVietnam has forced suppliers to look outside the country. Kate Hodal investigates a brutal but highly protable business

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 27

Nobel cause Honour for the elusive Mr Higgs Discovery, page 34

guyen Tien Tung is the sort of man youd expect to run a Hanoi slaughterhouse: wiry, frenetic and filthy, his white T-shirt collaged with bloodstains, his jean shorts loose around taut, scratched-up legs, his feet squelching in plastic sandals. Hunched over his metal stall, between two hanging carcasses and an oversized tobacco pipe, the 42-year-old is surveying his killing station an open-air concrete patio leading on to a busy road lined with industrial supply shops. Two skinless carcasses, glistening pure white in the hot morning sun, are being rinsed down by one of Nguyens cousins. Just two steps away are holding pens containing ve dogs each, all roughly the same size, some still sporting collars. Nguyen reaches into one cage and caresses the dog closest to the door. As it starts wagging its tail, he grabs a heavy metal pipe, hits the dog across the head, then, laughing loudly, slams the cage door closed. Down the leafy streets of north Hanois Cau Giay district, not far from Nguyens family business, sits one of the citys most famous restaurants, Quan Thit Cho Chieu Hoa, which has only one thing on the menu. Theres dog stew, served in a soup of blood; barbecued dog with lemongrass and ginger; steamed dog with shrimp-paste sauce; dog entrails sliced thin like sausage; and skewered dog, marinated in chilli and coriander. This is just one of several dogmeat restaurants in Cau Giay, but it is arguably the most revered, oering traditional dishes in a quiet setting beside a canal. I know it seems weird for me to eat here when I have my own dogs at home and would never consider eating them, says Duc Cuong, a 29-year-old doctor, as he wraps a sliver of entrails in a basil leaf and takes a bite. But I dont mind eating other peoples dogs. He swallows and clears his throat. Dog tastes good and its good for you. No one knows when the Vietnamese started eating dog, but its consumption primarily in the north underlines a long tradition. And it is increasingly popular: activists claim up to 5 million of the animals are now eaten every year. Dog is the go-to dish for parties, family reunions and special occasions. It is said to increase virility, warm the blood and help provide medicinal cures, and is considered a healthy alternative to the pork, chicken and beef that the Vietnamese consume every day. Some diners believe the more an animal suers before it dies, the tastier its meat, which may explain the brutal way dogs are killed in Vietnam usually by being bludgeoned to death with a heavy metal pipe, having their throats slit, being stabbed in the chest or being burned alive. Ive got footage of dogs being force-fed when they get to Vietnam, a bit like foie gras, says John Dalley, a lanky British retiree who heads the Thailand-based Soi Dog Foundation, which works to stop the dogmeat trade in southeast Asia. They shove a tube into their stomach and pump solid rice and water in them to increase their weight for sale. Nguyen has a simpler method for bumping prots: When we want to increase the weight, we just put a stone in the dogs mouth. He shrugs, before opening up his cage for another kill. The government estimates that there are 10 million dogs in Vietnam, where dogmeat is more expensive than pork and can be sold for up to $48 a dish in high-end restaurants. Increasing demand has forced suppliers to look beyond the villages where dogs have traditionally been farmed and out to towns and cities all over Vietnam. Dogsnatching of strays and pets is so common now that thieves are increasingly beaten, sometimes to death, by enraged citizens. Demand has also spread

beyond the country, sparking a multimillion-dollar trade that sees 300,000 dogs packed every year into tight metal cages in Thailand, oated across the Mekong to Laos, then shuttled for hundreds of kilometres through porous jungle borders, without food or water, before being killed in Vietnamese slaughterhouses. This is a black-market industry, managed by an international maa and facilitated by corrupt ocials, so it is little wonder activists have struggled to curb it. At rst it was just a handful of small traders wanting to make a small prot, says Roger Lohanan of the Bangkok-based Thai Animal Guardians Association, which has been investigating the dogmeat trade since 1995. But now this business has become a fundamental export. The trade is tax-free and the prot 300-500%, so everybody wants a piece of the cake. Tha Rae is a sleepy town in Thailands paddyfilled north-eastern state of Sakon Nakhon. But Butcher Village, as it is known, earned its name trading dogs 150 years ago, when a group of Vietnamese Catholics ed persecution at home. Today, locals say at least 5,000 people one-third of the population supplement their farming incomes by snatching, selling or killing dogs. Its a protable sideline that can fetch over $9 a mutt. Transporting dogs without vaccination papers is illegal in Thailand, as is smuggling them into Laos without customs and tax documents. Eating them is not illegal, but it is not popular with locals. Yet here in Tha Rae, roadside stalls close to the towns main government building proer sesame-cured, maroon-coloured slabs of sinewy dogmeat at $9.50 a kilo. Inside the large blue coolers that separate the stalls are the pale white carcasses of frozen dog parts: heads, torsos, haunches. People use the heads and legs in tom yum soup, explains a stallkeeper, nursing her baby, but you could make any kind of dish you want with it. Despite the large numbers of dogs they smuggle out of the country every year, only a handful of people run the Thai operation, claims Edwin Wiek, cofounder of the Animal Activist Alliance, a Thai-based charity pushing to stop the trade. We know these people: we know where they live, we know their names, we even have photographs, says Wiek, whose alliance relies on full-time informants in Thailand and Laos. Some of the photographs show their cars their number plates could be easily traced but they get away with it because they pay a lot of money [in bribes]. And as long as they keep paying, there will be people in the system who accept it and turn a blind eye. Crackdowns have increased, however, thanks to a large network of informants working primarily with the Royal Thai Navy, which intercepted a shipment of nearly 2,000 dogs in April and another 3,000 in May, as they were being stacked on to boats and shipped to Laos. Leading the busts was Captain Surasak Suwanakesa, 45, naval commander of the regional Mekong Riverine Patrol Unit, who oversees 250km of the Thai-Laos river border crossing. His desire is to end the dogmeat trade once and for all. It really is a point of shame for this country, he says. But Surasak, who has been in his post for only nine months, has larger and more pressing illegal substances to contend with on his waterways, such as yaba (crystal meth), cannabis and rosewood. On his iPad, he runs through images of previous raids, in which naval ocers pose in front of their bounty, then outlines a map to highlight the dog smugglers route. There are two major strategic crossings, he says. The dogs are collected from village households, or stolen, sold for [$6] each, then sent to Tha Rae. From Continued on page 28

28 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Weekly review
Continued from page 27 there, the bigger dogs are sent to a northern district, Baan Pheng, to go to China, while the smaller ones go to Vietnam. Five minutes across the river and the price of the dogs can go up 10 times. Thats why the incentive is so high. The naval team depends on tipos, but arrests are few and far between, activists say, with most smugglers paying only small nes and going back into business within days. Those orchestrating the deals are never pursued, and the men truly at risk are those trying to stop the trade: in an industry that Wiek claims could earn the Thai maa more than $2m every year, people such as Surasak are costing the smugglers a big drop in prot. The commander before me had a price of [$128,000] on his head. I dont know what mine is. He smiles. The thing is, theyre the same people, in the same cars, who do this again and again. When I catch them, I get them on as many counts of the law as I can: customs tax, vaccination and transportation permits, and so on. This is unusual. It hasnt been done before. Normally every relevant government oce would get [$32,000 in bribes]. Its a good thing this job is only three years long: you can make millions on this border if you want to. The route the smugglers take to reach Vietnam is Highway 8, a two-lane ribbon of road that cuts through Laoss limestone mountain passes, past wooden shacks and the large, modern mansions of the wealthy elite. While still in Thailand, the dogs will have been crammed into poultry carriers or heavy metal cages, 12 to 15 dogs in each, six to eight cages per truck, every convoy worth around 160,000 baht ($5,000). They are driven, at night, to the border, before being oated across the Mekong and loaded on to other trucks. Once they hit Laos, theres no stopping them, one Thai informant says with a sigh. Theyre home free. The smugglers, if they stop for a break, generally do so in Lak Sao, the last city in Laos before the Vietnamese border. The crossing is a remote mountain post manned by ocers who ask for dollars in exchange for a passport stamp. It would be easy to get anything through here, it seems: the road is full of logging trucks carrying what looks like protected rosewood, and the ocials who arent asleep are openly demanding bribes. The road continues down towards the central city of Vinh. The number of dog-laden trucks passing through is endless, says Zuong Nguyen, 38, a bus driver who makes the sixhour journey from Vinh to Hanoi every other night. Those trucks, they always have dogs, but lately Ive seen cats, too. In Hanoi, dog restaurants generally huddle together, with signs bearing a dogs head, or a roasted dogs torso hanging from a hook. Along Tam Trinh, a stretch of road south of the city, dozens of roadside stalls sell roasted dog, with lines sometimes 10 deep. Teenagers in basketball shorts chop up the dogmeat, sprinkling on a potent seasoning of curry powder, chilli, coriander, dill and shrimp paste, before skewering the meat to be barbecued. In the shop run by Hoa Mo a 63-year-old woman who has spent her entire life selling dogmeat a man is handed a plastic bag containing 12 dog paws. My wife just gave birth but shes having trouble lactating, he explains. Theres an old recipe that calls for boiling the paws in a soup; well use that to help get her going again. None of the stallholders knows where or how the dogs are sourced. Only one worker, Sy Le Vanh, an 18-year-old slicing up carcasses at a family-run stall, says the dogs must be Vietnamese. Im pretty sure our supplier used to get dogs from Thailand and Laos, he says, but they were always so scrawny. Pet ownership is still relatively new in Vietnam dogs here have traditionally been reared for either food or security purposes so campaigners have chosen to scrap the cruelty argument in favour of emphasising dogmeats eect on peoples health. It has been linked to regional outbreaks of trichinosis, cholera and rabies, a point activists underscore as the region looks to eradicate rabies by 2020. At the rst international meeting on the dogmeat trade in Hanoi in August, lawmakers and campaigners from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam agreed on a ve-point plan, including a ve-year moratorium on the cross-border transportation of dogs for commercial purposes, in order to research the impact on rabies transmission. The agreement might represent a signicant policy shift, Dalley says, but may do little to wipe out the trade. Through undercover investigators, we know the smugglers are already looking at alternative measures, including slaughtering dogs in Thailand and shipping carcasses as opposed to live animals. His foundation will be employing a full-time agent to monitor the border between Laos and Vietnam, he adds. There will be a follow-up meeting in Bangkok, probably in the new year, and it will be embarrassing if they are still allowing dogs in. Of the nations involved in the dogmeat trade, it is Thailand that is taking most action to curtail it. Once shipments are intercepted by Surasaks team, the dogs are sent to a government-run shelter in Nakhon Phanom, an hour north of the naval base, to be numbered, treated for infectious diseases and sent to one of the nations four other shelters. Nearly 5,000 dogs, most rescued from the dogmeat trade, now live in these centres, according to Thailands livestock department. Yet only a very small percentage will ever be rehomed, and around 30 dogs die every day from infection or disease. Alarmed by this high death rate, Dalley has been working with the Thai government to supplement the shelters supplies with injections of food, medicine and volunteer western vets. But the going is tough, in large part because these dogs will now end up being shuttled from cage to cage, waiting out the rest of their lives in a concrete pen, ghting for food, water and space. The majority of these dogs will never get adopted, Dalley says as we tour the shelter that houses 1,800 dogs crowded into cages separated by sex and medical status. We stop by the largest and healthiest pen, A, and a group of dogs rushes over, tails wagging. Some are still wearing their collars, underscoring theories that 90% are most likely pets. There are some beautiful dogs in there, but the Thais want the pedigree ones. A couple of golden retrievers were recently adopted, but nding homes for 1,000-odd dogs that are basically Thai mutts is just not going to happen. It is impossible to imagine any of these animals as a potential food source, not because they are dogs, but because they are abysmally thin and desperately unhealthy. There are bony puppies with broken legs; mutts oozing mucus from their eyes and noses; dogs covered in their own vomit and faeces; and the carcasses of those that have already died, in plastic bags, waiting to be buried. With only 12 sta, survival here is a gamble, and as the shelters Buddhist vets do not believe in playing God, sta might administer medicine to a dying dog for months on end, until nally it is no longer able to move. Many of those rescued from the dogmeat trade never even make it to Nakhon Phanom, Dalley says. Of 1,965 dogs intercepted in January 2012 from a holding centre in Tha Rae and documented as being sent to [a shelter in] Buriram, 600 never arrived. We were told theyd died or run away, but theyd been sold back into the trade.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 29

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Hard to stomach a supplier takes his wares toadogmeat restaurant in Hanoi. Previous page, slaughtered dogs for sale in front of a shop on astreet in Hanoi Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty The navys success in intercepting the traders has had the unintended eect of pushing the trade farther aeld and underground, says Wiek, whose activist alliance has turned to alternative methods of surveillance including drones and jet skis the better to audit the business. In the past few years, since the navy and other units have started to arrest more and more dog traders, and carry out raids on slaughterhouses, the trade has spread like a cancer, he says. It now extends from Tha Rae all across the north-east of Thailand. Activists in Thailand are pushing for a new animal welfare law that would protect pets such as dogs and cats from being consumed or traded for consumption. But the law has little chance of making a real dierence, Lohanan says. What may work instead is the opposite approach. Few in the Thai government openly oppose the trade, but one MP, Bhumiphat Phacharasap, has suggested that regulating dogmeat would stave o corruption and ensure that animals traded are t for food. We could treat dogs the same way we treat cows and pigs, by ensuring they were free of disease, had been vaccinated and had export licences, and hadnt been tortured or harmed in transportation, he says. In Vietnam, they farm dogs just like they farm pigs and cows. I could accept that: you do it right, you eat it right. The problem is, we would be perceived as a culture that tortures animals because dogs are not for consumption. We would be criticised. Wed be boycotted. Wed lose our trade rights [with the rest of the world]. His worry is legitimate, at least for a culture dealing with the west, where researchers stress the historical human-dog bond and point to dogs intelligence. But apologists say it is hypocritical for a culture that eats sheep, cows, pigs and chickens to draw the line at dogs. Pigs, for instance, do as well as primates in certain tests and are said by some scientists to be more advanced than dogs, yet many of us eat bacon without a second thought. This is circuitous reasoning, as Jonathan Safran Foer has argued in his book Eating Animals. He points to dogs as a plentiful and protein-rich food source, and asks: Cant we get over our sentimentality? He continues: Unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. If we let dogs be dogs, and breed without interference, we would create a sustainable, local meat supply with low energy inputs that would put even the most ecient grass-based farming to shame. It is a confounding issue, in part because it involves comparing cross-cultural mores with no clear answer. As the Australian philosopher Peter Singer put it in his 1975 work Animal Liberation: To protest about bullghting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbours not to sell their houses to blacks. Curious as to how this philosophy might play in Vietnam, I ask Duc Cuong, the doctor eating at the dogmeat restaurant, if it makes any dierence to him that his meal could be someones pet. No, he says. Its not my pet, so I dont really care.

Letter from Hungary

Cemeteries provide a link for the living

Melinda Soos
ungarian cemeteries are living, breathing places of rest. Shaded by rows of oak and poplar trees, they form not only the place of peaceful interment for hundreds, but one of contemplation and reection for anyone seeking solace and solitude. At Debrecens Kztemeto cemetery, graves are dutifully tended. Should the neighbouring one be unkempt, it will be weeded and a fresh or plastic ower or two placed in the empty vase. Sometimes, the dead can inuence the lives of the living. Anna had spent much of her childhood in the L-shaped house built by her grandfather on a nearby street. She lived with her adoptive parents in one half, and the other was home to her uncle, his wife and their children. A single child, Anna felt bored and lonely. Yet paranoia and arguments had led to a brick wall being built across the communal garden to separate the families. Anna never stopped admiring her older cousin, Kata, to whom shed been forbidden to talk. She dreamed of playing together. Instead, they glanced furtively at each other in silence. When Anna was 12 years old, Kata married and moved away. Decades later, Anna returned to the cemetery to pay her respects at her relatives graves. She was surprised to see fresh owers had been laid on her grandparents gravestone. Who could be doing this? Anna wondered if it was Kata. Anna scribbled a note and left it on the gravestone. Perhaps it ew away, because it went unanswered. A second note in a plastic bag secured with string proved more robust. A short time later, Anna received a short handwritten letter from Kata. We grew up on either side of the wall, Anna read. The 40 years since her marriage had turned Katas hair white. She recognised Anna straight away. As the two women hugged and kissed, they realised their friendship had really begun long ago, in silence. Hand in hand, they bought chrysanthemums at Kztemetos gates and walked peacefully beneath the oaks and poplars. Marigolds and bonre salvia waved; the bell tolled. They stopped at their grandparents grave adorned with two pigeons facing each other. Companionably, they set about weeding, washing gravestones and lling vases.

30 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Weekly review

I believe in peace. Ibelieve in mercy

The girl shot by the Taliban is very lively indeed. Malala Yousafzai talks with Kamila Shamsie

alala Yousafzai says shes lost herself. In Swat [district], I studied in the same school for 10 years and there I was just considered to be Malala. Here Im famous, here people think of me as the girl who was shot by the Taliban. The real Malala is gone somewhere, and I cant nd her. We are sitting in a boardroom on the seventh floor of the new Birmingham library, the glass walls allowing us a view of a city draped in mist, a sharp contrast to the paradise of Swat, with its tall mountains and clear rivers that Malala recalls wistfully. It should be desperately sad but the worlds most famous 16-year-old makes it dicult for you to feel sorry for her. In part, it is because she is so poised, in a way that suggests an enviable self-assurance rather than an overconstructed persona. But more than that, it is to do with how much of her conversation is punctuated by laughter. The laughter takes many forms: self-deprecating when I ask her why she thinks the Taliban feel threatened by her; delighted when she talks of Skyping her best friend, Muniba, to get the latest gossip from her old school; wry when she recalls a Taliban commanders advice that she return to Pakistan and enter a madrassa; giggly when she talks about her favourite cricketers. And its at its most full-throated when she is teasing her father, who is present for part of our interview. It happens during a conversation about her mother: She loves my father, Malala says. Then, lowering her voice, she adds: They had a love marriage. Hmmm? Are you sure? he says, mock-stern. Learn from your parents! Malala says to me, and bursts into laughter. Learning from her parents is something Malala knows a great deal about. Her mother was never formally educated and an awareness of the constraints this placed on her life have made her a great supporter of Malala and her father in their campaign against the Talibans attempts to stop female education. One of the more moving details in I Am Malala, the memoir Malala has written with the journalist Christina Lamb, is that her mother was due to start learning to read and write on the day Malala was shot 9 October 2012. When I suggest that Malalas campaign for female education may have played a role in encouraging her mother, she says: That might be. But she is much happier giving credit to her mothers determined character, and the example provided by her father, Ziauddin, who long ago set up a school where girls could study as well as boys, in a part of the world where the gender gap in education is vast. It is hard to refrain from asking Ziauddin Yousafzai the do you wish you hadnt ? question about his daughter, whose passion for reform owes a lot to the desire to emulate her education-activist father. But its a cruel question, and unfair, too, given my own

inability to work out what constitutes responsible parenting in a world where girls are told that the safest way to live is to stay away from school, and preferably disappear entirely. It is perhaps because of criticism levelled at her father that Malala mentions more than once in her book that no one believed the Taliban would target a schoolgirl, even if that schoolgirl had been speaking and writing against the Talibans ban on female education since the age of 12. If any member of the family was believed to be in danger, it was Ziauddin Yousafzai, as much a part of the campaign as his daughter. And it was the daughter who urged the father to keep on when he suggested they both go into hibernation after receiving particularly worrisome threats. The most interesting detail to emerge about Ziauddin from his daughters book is his own early irtation with militancy. He was only 12 years old when Su Mohammad, who would later be a leading gure among the extremists in Swat, came to his village to recruit young boys to join the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Although Ziauddin was too young to ght then, within a few years he was preparing to become a jihadi, and praying for martyrdom. He later came to recognise what he experienced as brainwashing and was saved from it by his questioning mind and the inuence of his future brother-in-law, a secular nationalist. The information about her fathers semi-brainwashing forms an interesting backdrop to Malalas comments when I ask if she ever wonders about the man who tried to kill her on her way back from school that day in October last year, and why his hands were shaking as he held the gun a detail she has picked up from the girls in the school bus with her at the time; she herself has no memory of the shooting. There is no trace of rancour in her voice when she says: He was young, in his 20s he was quite young, we may call him a boy. And its hard to have a gun and kill people. Maybe thats why his hand was shaking. Maybe he didnt know if he could do it. But people are brainwashed. Thats why they do things like suicide attacks and killing people. I cant imagine it that boy who shot me, I cant imagine hurting him even with a needle. I believe in peace. I believe in mercy. Well, I believe in these things, too, but if someone put a bullet in my head I suspect I would be more than a little irate. Doesnt she feel at all angry? I only get angry at my brothers, and at my father, she says. Particularly her brother Khushal, who is two years younger than her. I cant be good to him, its impossible. We cant ever be friends, she says, sounding like the teenager she is. Perhaps meditating on the value of peace and mercy is an entirely sane way of coping with bullets and invective. But, all the same, it must hurt to nd yourself reviled and not only by the Taliban. In her book she writes of how her speech at

Christopher Thomond

the UN received plaudits around the world, but in Pakistan people accused her of seeking fame and the luxury of a life abroad. When I ask her about this, it is one of the only times in the conversation that she turns to Urdu to express herself: Dukh to insaan ko hota hai jab daikhta hai kay uss ka bhai uss kay khilaf hai. (Naturally its hurtful when you see your brothers turn against you.) Her voice is pained, but she quickly switches to English and the more philosophical tone emerges again. Pakistanis cant trust, she says. Theyve seen in history that

He was young ... Its hard to have a gun andkill people. Maybe thats why his hand was shaking.
people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And theyre misguided by people in the name of Islam. Theyre told: Malala is not a Muslim, shes not in purdah, shes working for America. They say maybe shes with the CIA or ISI [Pakistans intelligence service]. Its ne; they say it about every politician too, and I want to become a politician. That line is a joke, insofar as she sees the humour in it; but it is nonetheless a statement of intent. She really does believe she will go back to Pakistan

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 31

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inshallah, soon and replies like a seasoned politician when I ask which political party shell join. I havent chosen any party yet because people choose parties when they get older. When its time Ill look and if I cant nd one to join, Ill make another party. She is, at rst, similarly noncommittal about what she thinks of conversations around the burqa in the UK. I dont have a specific idea about that, she says. But quickly, its clear she does. I believe its a womans right to decide what she wants to wear and if a woman can go to the beach and wear nothing, then why cant she also wear everything? Having said that, she doesnt think a woman should cover her face in court or in other places where its necessary to show your identity. I dont cover my face because I want to show my identity. I try to draw her on the question of how she nds life in the UK, and what an average day is like. There is clearly something of culture shock quite other than the fact that the girls in school dont see the real Malala. She says the environment here is dierent to everything she knew before the way the girls interact, their manner of gossip and play, are all unfamiliar. And everyone takes education for granted; school isnt the Aladdins lamp the doorway to a magical world as it was for the girls in Swat. For the moment, it seems her main concern is how many A grades she will get in her GCSEs next year, but the hard thing is now my life is very busy and I have so many responsibilities and duties that I need to full.

Unlikely as a 16-year-old with a burning passion for reform and education might be, there is no doubt she is entirely genuine. In fact, the points at which I found myself raising an eyebrow at her book had nothing to do with extraordinary maturity or resolve but, rather, references to Justin Bieber and Twilight that seem forced in by someone trying to point out that in some ways she is a normal teenager. It isnt that she doesnt have any interests beyond her education campaign; its just that a normal teenager in Swat isnt dened by Bieber and Twilight. If you really want to get her animated, talk about the one subject that can make almost any Pakistani turn into a bit of a teenager: cricket. She follows it closely on TV (which isnt unusual for girls in Pakistan), and also plays (which is). When she sees that I am interested in talking to her about the game everything in her poised manner changes. Within seconds shes calling out Howzat! and Siiiiiix! and showing me the deciencies of her bowling action. She is so entirely sparkling and alive, with no sign of the Taliban or education or responsibilities intruding on her memories of playing cricket on the rooftop of her house with the mountains as backdrop, that I wish I could take her to Lords instead of plying her with questions. Does it get lonely, knowing there is no one else in the world who has had the same experience as her? I dont just mean

being shot by the Taliban, which is a tragically common experience, but the attention that followed. Its the only time she doesnt understand what I am asking her. I explain and she says: When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban thats my denition for her I dont think shes me. Now I dont even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live. The interview ends soon after and the photographer is in the middle of taking pictures when the door opens and her father, who had left halfway through the interview, walks in with a group made up mostly of men. At their head is Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Photographs are taken, everyone sits down and the prime minister starts talking. He is still talking when I leave the room, and still talking when I turn around for my last glimpse of Malala: she is sitting silently, stoically, being talked at. The girl who shouted Howzat! has disappeared and in her place is Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot By The Taliban by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, is published by Wiedenfeld & Nicolson

32 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Weekly review

Little princess a contestant in this years Mini-Miss beauty contest. It could be the last held in France if proposals are made law Thibault Camus/AP

Frances mini beauty queens ght back

Organisers and contestants tellGalle Dupont why they areghting a proposed ban
there it costs 5 to 6 [$6.50 to $8], here its 39. Including the petrol, it is quite an outlay. But the dresses are home-made and the girls are pleased. They are the ones who started the whole thing, to keep up with their friends. The mothers enjoy it too. I work nights in a drug factory, Myriam explains. With a day out at a contest we get to see friends, have a laugh and a chat. The kids get gifts and we all end up at McDonalds. It makes a good outing. Caroline, a housekeeper, agrees: Here, I get to see people. In the auditorium the mothers have turned into dressers, and their daughters into princesses. A few fathers and brothers are hanging around on the sidelines. We are treated to a rework display of brightly coloured robes, tulle, feathers, fake gems, fabric owers and glittering hairdos. This is what Camille, Marie and Laura love: playing at being a princess, making new friends. Were not only judged on appearances, but also the way we walk, Laura says. The organisers endorse this claim. Laura is also a motocross enthusiast and wants to be a lawyer. Their mothers add: If their marks arent good [at school] theres no contest. But surely they are a bit young to be courting failure? Its tough when you lose, but thats life. Its not all rosy, says Caroline. After a song to launch the proceedings, compere Michel Le Parmentier urges the media covering the event to check behind the scenes that there is no make-up and no high heels, in keeping with our ethical charter. Barbara, 13, last years Miss Junior Teen, steps up with a message for MPs who are due to debate a bill on gender equality at the end of November and decide whether the Mini-Miss amendment, tabled by senator Chantal Jouanno, is voted into law. Please leave us alone to live out our dreams, Barbara pleads. Ms Jouanno makes out well turn into prostitutes. Its degrading, she said earlier. The show proper begins. In the stiing heat the young girls stalk up and down the catwalk. Some strike poses, for a laugh; others are more serious. The atmosphere changes when the 12- to 17-yearolds take the stage. Dresses are darker, shorter, more body-hugging. High heels replace the ballet pumps and faces are clearly made up. At that age, theyre almost adults, Le Parmentier claims without batting an eyelid. Stacy, 13, already has her sights on better things. With her stilettos, prim black dress and curled hair pulled back in a bun, she could be ve or 10 years older. She wants to be a model or an actress. Her mother, Karine, sees no point in waiting. At that age, they know what they want, she says. Better start a career early. Id have liked to but I never really got going. What I didnt do for myself, Id readily do for her. Id be so proud if she became a star. Karine is completely against the possible ban on such contests, much the same as everyone else at the event. In the same breath they allow gay marriage but ban Mini-Miss contests. It makes no sense, says another parent. The organisers, all volunteers belonging to a non-prot, according to Le Parmentier, intend to ght the amendment. Neither Camille, Marie nor Laura won the sash, bouquet and crown awarded to winners. Im a bit disappointed, you know, says Laura. She is holding one of the diadems given to all the participants, but it is already broken. Le Monde

yriams seven-year-old daughter is leaning against the wall, at the risk of crushing her blonde locks, curled and lacquered this morning. Camille, mind your hair! her mother cautions. They left home in northern France at 8.30am on a Saturday with Marie, 10, the elder sister, their friend Laura, 11, and her mother Caroline. In their cases they have three long red and black amencostyle dresses with frills and sequins. Now the girls are waiting in an alley in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, along with about 100 other competitors, for the start of the Mini-Miss Model France 2013 contest (ve to 11 years) and its counterpart, the Miss Junior Teen France (12 to 17 years). Myriam and Caroline are wondering what got into the upper house of the French parliament last month when it passed an amendment banning beauty contests for under-16s. Such events allegedly encourage the hypersexualisation of young girls, making them attach too much importance to their appearance. The people who did that have never been to a contest, Caroline protests. This isnt America. The girls average one contest a month, generally in the north of France where they are commonplace. The price isnt the same, Myriam points out. Up

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 33

International development

Kicker here like this Then a short description here like this Then Section and page XX

Land rights to the fore in Cambodia

Fragile new government allows environmental campaigners to push for change, says Kate Hodal
n Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from the prime minister, Hun Sen, who has promised reforms after his party suered a signicant blow in recent elections, but from environmental campaigners, who say there has never been such an opportunity to lobby a government that has long ruled with an iron st. Despite alleged illegal logging, land grabs, harassment and threats by police and government thugs, activists claim the ruling partys win in July of just 68 seats to the oppositions 55 means that Hun Sen, who has governed Cambodia for the past 28 years, may be softening, out of necessity, to the will of the people, in turn allowing environmental groups to gain strategic ground. This is due, in part, to the increasing awareness of human rights and social justice issues, activists say, such as the death of one of Cambodias most prominent environmental activists, Chut Wutty, in April 2012. He was investigating illegal logging and land seizures with two journalists when he was shot dead by Cambodian military police ocers. Though a provincial court dropped charges against his alleged murderer and the government failed to conduct an adequate investigation, Wuttys death has resonated far beyond Cambodia. Last month in London, Wutty was given a posthumous award extraordinary achievement in environmental and human rights activism by the Alexander Soros Foundation, which promotes global social justice. The accolade was accepted on his behalf by the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN), which is campaigning to protect the largest remaining primary forest in mainland south-east Asia. The cause Wutty died fighting for has never been more important or more deadly, Soros said. Cambodian activists and citizens remain on the frontline of the countrys land-grabbing crisis, as Cambodias elites sell o community land and forests without their consent. In Cambodia, the award was welcomed by local campaigners, who say it proves [Wuttys] death is not forgotten. Community networks are more advanced now, said conservationist Marcus Hardtke, a close friend of Wuttys who has lived in Cambodia for the past 17 years. Wuttys death has arguably been the highest-prole killing in Cambodia, where activists routinely face harassment and threats while campaigning for land justice. Not long after Wuttys death, a 14-yearold girl was killed by military police during a land dispute and, later, a journalist investigating timber companies was discovered dead in a car boot. A report into the number of deaths arising from land and forest disputes worldwide, published in June 2012 by the activist group Global Witness, found that two people were killed a week in 2011 nearly twice the number recorded in 2009. It stated that in Cambodia there was strong evidence that the killings were perpetrated with company or government involvement. According to the human rights group Licadho, 2012 was the most violent year ever [for Cambodians] in terms of the authorities using lethal force against activists, with 232 arrests recorded a 144% increase from 2011, according to Adhoc, a local NGO. Land rights were an issue in this years election. More than 2m hectares of land equivalent to nearly three-quarters of Cambodias arable land have been granted to investors since 2008, aecting an estimated 700,000 people, according to Global Witness. Protesters have been vocal and their complaints were taken on by the opposition Cambodian National Rescue party (CNRP), which has called for an end to all concessions and greater land justice. This may explain why Hun Sen declared a moratorium on economic land concessions (ELCs) in May 2012, yet inserted a key loophole that allowed those already approved, but not yet started, to move ahead. As a result, nearly 400,000 hectares of land were granted as concessions last year, nearly threequarters of which had been wildlife sanctuaries and protected forest. The CNRP is boycotting parliament to highlight the need for reform. The party has called for an independent inquiry into alleged voting irregularities and an end to land, mining and forestry concessions. Although the call last month for a full moratorium on ELCs and an inquiry into those being processed was seem by many as unlikely to happen, they see Cambodias political landscape as a chance to gain strategic ground in lobbying for change. If we dont focus on saving our forests [now], this will be the last chance we have to save them, said Seng Sokheng, of the Community Peace-Building Network, which works closely with the PLCN. We are all speaking up to protect the forests and prevent illegal logging, all around the country now, and I do believe that the government will listen.

We are speaking up to protect the forests ... and I do believe the government will listen

Protecting the trees a recent election has put pressure on Cambodias prime minister to prevent illegal logging Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty

34 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Discovery

Panel links sonar to whale stranding

Scientists say sea-mapping technology pretty likely the cause, reports Lenny Bernstein
he mysterious stranding of about 100 melon-headed whales in a shallow Madagascar lagoon in 2008 set o a rapid international response a few of the 2.5- to three-metre marine mammals were rescued, necropsies conducted, a review panel formed. Did they follow prey into the lagoon? Were they sick? Was it the weather, or chemical toxins? The panel recently gave its best answer, and it is causing ripples of concern. For the rst time, a rigorous scientic investigation has associated a mass whale stranding with a kind of sonar that is widely used to map the ocean oor, a nding that has set o alarms among energy companies and others who say the technology is critical to safe navigation of the planets waters. The independent review panel appointed by the International Whaling Commission concluded in September that a high-powered, multi-beam echosounder system (MBES) was the most plausible and likely behavioural trigger for the stranding. About 75 of the animals, which normally inhabit deep ocean waters, died. A contractor for Exxon Mobil was using the sonar system which sends ping sounds from a vessel toward the ocean floor in a channel between Mozambique and Madagascar to determine where an oil and gas exploration rig might be safely constructed. Computers use the returning echo from the pulses of sound to map the ocean oor. The panel of five scientists systematically excluded or deemed highly unlikely nearly every other possibility before settling on the use of the MBES, which previously was considered relatively benign, according to the groups report. The evidence seems clear to us that [the MBES] was pretty likely the cause, said Brandon Southall, the panels chairman and a marine biologist at the

University of California at Santa Cruz. He said d he hopes the report will cause governments, regulagulatory agencies and private companies to realise lise that some of the types of mapping sonars have the mals potential to cause reactions in marine mammals that can be detrimental. Exxon Mobil, which helped select the panel nel and partly funded the rescue of some of the whales in 2008, rejects the conclusion, contendending that the evidence is too imsy for a determinamination that could have a far-reaching impact. While Exxon Mobil is not accepting responsibilnsibility for the stranding in light of the uncertainties ies in the report, we did co-operate and provide funding nding for the response eort in 2008 and the review panel because we are working in Madagascar, spokesman sman Patrick McGinn said. Another sceptic is Larry Mayer, a professor at the University of New Hampshires Centre for Coastal oastal and Ocean Mapping. From my reading of f that report, its not clear how they could have come me to that conclusion, Mayer said. Any of the other r possible conclusions are just as likely. The report could have signicant consequences ences for US government agencies and others around nd the world that use the MBES to map ocean oors. . If it endangers the ability to use these sort of systems ems it could lead to all kinds of dangerous downstream tream consequences. Mayer said. And Joseph Geraci, an adjunct professor f of comparative medicine at the University of Maryland yland who has studied cetacean strandings for 40 years, said he was troubled by the strength of the language in the panel report. Im not sure on the basis of a single event where there are two activities that the words most plausible cause are the right ones, he said. Its only those three words that made me pay attention. But Howard Rosenbaum, director of the Ocean

Giants programme of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, hailed the panel for pushing the envelope on possible factors in the strandings and deaths of marine mammals. I think what we would like to see is the most eective regulations that will minimise the risk [of mass strandings] to sensitive whales and dolphins, Rosenbaum said. US navy sonar has been implicated in harm to whales and dolphins, environmental groups contend. A federal judge last month ordered federal biologists to reconsider permits that could allow the

Higgs proves as elusive as his boson after Nobel success

Ian Sample
The media spotlight has often been too harsh for Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh physicist, who disappeared o on holiday without a mobile phone two weeks ago to escape the inevitable rush of journalists that bears down on every winner of a Nobel prize. The move was carefully calculated and profoundly successful. The Royal Swedish Academy made calls to the scientists phone but failed to make contact before or after announcing the winners of the 2013 prize in physics last week. He didnt tell even me, said Alan Walker, a close friend and fellow physicist at Edinburgh University, who was among a crowd of scientists who celebrated at the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics after watching the announcement from Stockholm online. Hes not available, and good for him. Higgs, 84, shares the $1.2m with the Belgian theorist, Franois Englert. Higgs had been favourite to win the award since researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva declared last July that they had discovered the particle he predicted, the elusive Higgs boson. The particle was the smoking gun that scientists had hunted for decades on both sides of the Atlantic in the hope of proving the theory drawn up by Higgs, Englert and several other physicists in 1964. Written in pencil on a pad of paper, Higgss theory described an invisible eld that is all around us and even within us. The eld gives mass to the basic constituents of atoms and, in doing so, ensures that the universe is not an ocean of massless particles hurtling around at the speed of light. Peter Higgs is portrayed as the reclusive genius but that is as awed as any stereotype. He can be hard to get hold of, but a busy life and an aversion to modern technology are mostly to blame for that. He has no computer, and no email. He answers the phone only when he knows who is calling. To arrange an interview some years back took a written letter to his apartment in Edinburghs New Town

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 35

Dispatches

The deep . ... eorts to map the seabed may be causing pr problems for whales CVI Textures/Alamy industrialindustrial-sized version of the sh-nders widely recreational anglers, Southall said. That is used by rec part of the reason his panels nding is so controversound is used so widely around the sial: the pinging pin globe, in so s many forms, that most involved have considered it relatively harmless. be time to adjust that thinking, But it may m said. He acknowledged that no study of Southall sa strandings will achieve the kind of certainty whale stra Exxon Mobil and others would like, but said that Exx this one provided a rare opportunity to consider a wide range of possibilities and disprove them. Because the Wildlife Conservation Society Be has a presence in Madagascar, it was able to quickly respond to the stranding, rescuing quic some som of the whales and conducting necropsies on the dead, Rosenbaum said. And because cau regulators, conservation groups and energy companies were together at a conferene ence enc in Chile at the time, they were able to put together a co-ordinated rescue response and later work together to form the review panel. pane It I seemed to be a very uncommon event, Southall said, and we were able to go through South almost almos all the factors that we looked at and rule almost everything else out. A 2009 200 coup and later unrest in Madagascar, an island nation in the Indian Ocean that is o south-eastern coast of Africa, delayed the the south study, which whi was resumed in 2012 and released late lastmonth. lastmonth contends, among its other objecExxon Mobil M tions, that the stranding began before its contract o the shores of north-west Madavessel arrived arri gascar. The company has provided satellite photoon other nearby beaches before graphs of objects o melon-headed whales ed into Loza Lagoon, the melon but panel concluded they most likely were small b ut the pan boats. shing boa Nevertheless, Exxon Mobil already has changed Neverth practices to prohibit the use of an MBES near an its practice underwater cli face, because the panel raised the underwate possibility that the sound pulses echoed o one in and had an unusual eect on the whales, this case an McGinn said. Southall said the whales already were in unusually shallow water for unknown reasons. The bottom line for the company, McGinn said, is that our contract vessel happened to be there in that time frame, but there are so many uncertainties in the area that were not sure its us. Washington Post

Airport noise linked torisk of heart disease

People who live close to an airport and are exposed to constant loud aircraft noise may face an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, according to studies from the UK and the US published last week. A study published online by the British Medical Journal looking at the health of people living near Heathrow airport found those with the highest exposure were 10-20% more likely to be admitted to hospital for stroke, coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease. There was also an increased risk of death from those diseases. A linked study of the health of more than 6 million Americans over the age of 65 living around 89 US airports found that, on average, their risk went up 3.5% for every extra 10 decibels of noise.

Trac fumes harm bees

Trac fumes render the scent of owers barely recognisable to honeybees and could have a serious impact on their ability to nd food, research has found. Scientists discovered that reactive pollutants in diesel destroyed key chemicals in oilseed owers making them smell dierent to the bees. Honeybees have a sensitive sense of smell and an exceptional ability to learn and memorise new odours, said Tracey Newman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southampton. The [eect of diesel fumes on ower scent] could have serious detrimental eects on the number of honeybee colonies and pollination activity.

navy to kill or disrupt marine mammals during antisubmarine warfare exercises o the coast of the Pacic Northwest. But in 2008, the supreme court allowed similar drills o southern California to be held without protections for marine mammals. Other environmental groups are skirmishing with energy companies over the use of seismic air guns, devices that send much louder blasts of compressed air toward the ocean oor to help nd oil and gas trapped below. The noise from an MBES is better compared to an

Big volcanoes on Mars

Ancient Mars was home to giant volcanoes capable of eruptions 1,000 times more powerful than at Mount St Helens in 1980, scientists have said. Major volcanic eruptions may well have triggered climate shifts that toggled Martian temperatures between cold spells when ash blocked out the sunlight and heatwaves when greenhouse gases lled the skies, according to scientists. The discovery comes from analysis of images from a quartet of Mars orbiters over the past 15 years.

Elusive Nobel laureate ... Peter Higgs

followed by a wait of several months, after which a reply arrived handwritten in ink in an envelope sporting a stamp of the Crab Nebula. The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine went to James E Rothman (US), Randy W Schekman (US) and Thomas C Sdhof (Germany) for their exquisite work on how cells organise and transport molecules such as hormones, enzymes and neurotransmitters. The Nobel prize in chemistry was won by Martin Karplus, Strasbourg and Harvard universities; Michael Levitt, Stanford University; and Arieh Warshel, University of Southern California, for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

More help for cholesterol

People with high cholesterol could get an alternative to statins after research raised the possibility of a new drug that would reduce risk of a heart attack. A study published in The Lancet found that British and US participants in an early-stage clinical trial saw their level of LDL, or bad cholesterol, fall by up to 57% as a result of taking ALN-PCS. It works by stopping the bodys production of a protein known as PCSK9, which helps reduce cholesterol.

36 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Books

Normality but not as we know it

The really shivery moments in Stephen Kings world depend onreal devils, says Steven Poole
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King Hodder 485pp 19.99
For several months, when I was 10 or 11, I avoided windows at night, because I didnt want to see a hideous child vampire staring back at me. I had read Stephen Kings 1975 Salems Lot, and it had really screwed with my tiny mind. (Theres another horrible moment to do with reections in this new novel.) At that age I was reading all the Stephen King I could get my hands on, a fact that might have worried my parents more had I not also been reading anything else I could get my hands on too. In those days, Kings reputation was that of a pulp master. Good for cheap thrills, but not literarily improving. Two things have happened since then: rst, in the wake of nonsupernatural and so more culturally acceptable novels such as the claustrophobic masterpiece Misery, King has grudgingly been admitted by lit-crit folk into the ranks of actually good writers as opposed to mere mega-selling artists. It happened to Elmore Leonard, and it looks as though it is also happening, with justice, to Lee Child. Second, an entirely new literary genre, or at least trick of demographic marketing, has been invented: that of young adult ction. There is something terribly condescending in this industrial discovery or invention of the young adult, but you cant argue with the sales gures. Presumably teenagers loading up on this stu are not reading as many books by old hands such as King. One doubts a writer of Kings success is too worried about this, but there are some ironic swipes at YA ction in his latest book. At one point a character thinks: It was sort of like being in one of those love-and-horror supernatural novels, the kind Mrs Robinson in the school library snily called tweenager porn. There are also allusions to Twilight, Game of Thrones and the Bruce Willis movie The Sixth Sense all of which is strangely reassuring, since in most genre ction the characters have never read or seen any genre ction. This is a shame because it might help them deal with the creatures they have to contend with. Instead, the anxiety of inuence here works inwardly. This novel is a sequel to one of Kings most famous works, The Shining. After an expertly compressed previously on The Shining prologue, we discover in Doctor Sleep that Dan Torrance, the little boy in The Shining who sees dead people, is now all grown up. Unfortunately he has become a boozehound and drifter who gets into bar ghts and steals from women he sleeps with. The moral torpor is leavened with some amusingly disgusting hangover descriptions and plangent existential comedy. Dan eventually decides to stick around after getting o the bus in a small town in New Hampshire, and starts going to AA meetings and working as a night porter in the local hospice. Its a building with self-conscious character: There was a turret at the top of the mansion on the left side, but none on the right, giving the place a queerly unbalanced look that Dan sort of liked. It was as if the big old girl were saying Yeah, part of me fell o. What the fuck. Someday itll happen to you. Dans supernatural talents, long suppressed by the drink, now enable him to help people die peacefully, which leads to him being nicknamed Doctor Sleep. Meanwhile, Dan also starts to receive telepathic messages from a girl, whose psychic abilities are much stronger than his in the lingo, her shining is far brighter. When the girl, Abra whose gifts include Carrie-style telekinesis reaches the age of 13, it is discovered that she is on the tasting menu of a group of very bad people. The bad people are the True Knot, who live in motorhomes and torture child psychics to death so they can eat their shining. (They call it steam; its their only nourishment.) Introducing them, King casually icks a technical switch, addressing the reader for the rst time: How many times have you found yourself behind a lumbering RV, eating exhaust and waiting impatiently for your chance to pass? You might have seen the Trues rolling motorhomes parked in that lot You hardly see them, right? Why would you? Theyre just the RV People, elderly retirees and a few younger compatriots living their rootless lives on the turnpikes and blue highways. Those RV people are actually evil supernatural beings, empty devils who are very long-lived if not actually immortal. Dan and Abra at one point explicitly discuss the generic taxonomy of these enemies: they are a bit like vampires, but not really. Such namechecking of generic reference points helps to add the dimension of popular art to Kings brilliantly simulated normality. At one point the leader of the True Knot, Rose the Hat, is able to suck Abra psychically into her own mind. Even when things are going completely nuts, King keeps the action logical, comprehensible and swift. He is even able to build dramatic tension in a scene in which people in a car are ghting telepathically for control of a gun. This is just the kind of thing that can happen in his world. This is also (or perhaps even rstly) a novel about alcoholic excess, and Kings tenderly sympathetic but no-bullshit approach to the subject is in a way more authentically disturbing than any pseudovampire. The characters in the novel exhibit gru scepticism about some parts of AA lore, but the book is prefaced by two epigraphs from The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, followed by an old AA saying on the next page: FEAR stands for Fuck Everything and Run. Its possible to interpret the True Knot as allegorical alcoholics, mirroring the novels merely human drinkers: after all, the villains too are substancedependent drifters, wrecking childrens lives. But while the surface story of supernatural derring-do is never less than a superbly well-engineered ride, the novels deepest shiverings depend on no madeup devils. At one point in his early desperation, Dan reects on how other peoples well-meaning advice to Give it time is misplaced: Time changed. That was something only drunks and junkies understood. When you couldnt sleep, when you were afraid to look around because of what you might see, time elongated and grew sharp teeth. Time with jaws: now that really is a scary monster. Logical, comprehensible, swift and always scary Stephen King Steve Schoeld

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 37

A very dirty game inthe house of cards

Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin by Damian McBride Biteback 320pp 20
Andrew Rawnsley This is a book you should judge by its title. Power trip says all that is warped about the author and his conception of politics. To him, it is an addiction and a game, Grand Theft Auto transplanted to Westminster. As the body count from his drive-by shootings piles up, right or wrong never comes into it. As for beliefs, they are always incidental to his only important cause engorging the inuence and notoriety of Damian McBride by making himself indispensable to Gordon Brown. It tells us something ghastly about his former boss or, rather, conrms long-held suspicions that McBride judged that the best way to bring happiness to his master was to engage in repeated character assassinations of Labour colleagues. McBride isnt an idiot and, when sober, he has a sophisticated mind and can turn a phrase. So in both the book and the interviews he has given to promote it, he has acknowledged how destructive he was. He seems to think that if he calls himself a nasty bastard often enough we will somehow nd that redeeming. Some commentators have fallen for it. At least hes honest, they have said of his confessions to practising the dark arts of political spin itself a dishonest euphemism that semi-glories what should be called lying and smearing. Damian, the sinner repentant? I am not buying it. What about penance? Forgiveness is not found by trousering a large cheque from a rightwing newspaper so that it can serialise your repellent activities to coincide with the Labour conference. Most disgusting of all is his attempt to gain our understanding for his amoral behaviour by insinuating that the fundamental fault lies not with him, but with the cut-throat world of politics into which he fell, sucked in like a concubine at a Roman orgy. Thus he seeks to present himself as some sort of victim. Pass the sickbag. Theres a further reason why his claimed regrets stink of insincerity. He still sounds terrically pleased with himself. It is with bragging relish that he details how ruthlessly he stitched up this minister or how artfully he manipulated that journalist. He tries to tempt us to admire him despite ourselves. I may have been a bad boy this is his line but youve got to admit I was terribly good at being wicked. Truth to tell, he wasnt. This book can be shocking without being in the least bit surprising because its authors reputation was already well-established. He acquired the sobriquet McPoison when he was still in post because he was a bungling assassin who left his grubby dabs all over his victims. McBride relates how he became the prime suspect of a leak inquiry. He is interviewed by two retired detectives from special branch, whom he attempts to gull by pointing the investigators in the direction of an entirely innocent party. When they cannot prove their suspicions, McBride pats himself on the head for lying-without-lying. Yet he has enough selfawareness to concede that everyone in government believed I was responsible and it didnt do Gordon any favours either, once people worked [it] out.

People ask: Why did no one blow the whistle? Here was the problem. The client group of journalists who swallowed his stu and regurgitated it into the public domain were not going to bite the hand feeding them. It was all done, says McBride, out of devotion to the greatest man I ever met. He tells us that there was an unspoken understanding with his master that Brown would not question my methods. Even if true, that is reprehensible in itself. Brown was famous for his attention to detail and his obsession with media coverage. It was Brown who created and presided over the gangland culture in which his hitman operated. Even McBride laughs at his former capos comically irrational outbursts and propensity to unleash a tremendous volley of abuse. Then there is Browns default response to things going wrong which is to blame someone else. Blair!, roars Brown about a self-inicted blunder. McBride was just the vicious little monkey. The organ grinder was Gordon Brown, the man who prated about his moral compass. In the end, the reputation it most fouled was his own. Which is a sort of justice.

Ever-present danger
Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Allen Lane 656pp 25 Nick Cohen Observer

In the 1980s I joined the crowds of anti-nuclear demonstrators, driven into a state of terror by the last years of the cold war. Ronald Reagan, a man we held to be a warmonger and a religious fanatic, had matched the deployment of short-range missiles in eastern Europe with short-range missiles in western Europe. We could imagine Armageddon coming by accident and design and describe how the world would die. Scientists did not warn of global warming 30 years ago, but of a nuclear winter falling as the debris from thermonuclear war blocked out the sun. Then Reagan pulled o a miraculous achievement. The Soviet Union realised that it could no longer compete in the arms race he was running. Gorbachev took power. The west seized the moment and a conict that had threatened to exterminate a large part of humanity stopped just like that. Worries about nuclear weapons have had a dusty feel to them since then for Europeans at any rate. And at rst glance, Eric Schlosser appears to have produced a history of the world we have lost. A brilliant history anyone who has read his Fast Food Nation will have admired his ability to combine the patience of the scholar with the vigour of the investigative journalist but a history nevertheless. His digging has already produced a scoop. The US news networks have followed up his discovery that the nearest America came to a nuclear catastrophe was not the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 but a hitherto unknown moment in January 1961, when a B-52 ying over North Carolina exploded. Every safety mechanism on the hydrogen bombs it was carrying failed, except a basic switch. If it had been set on the equivalent of on, most of the citizens of Washington, Philadelphia Continued on page 38

38 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Books
Continued from page 37 and New York would have been wiped out. If they had detonated, JFKs words in his inaugural address that Americans would pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty would have been more than stirring rhetoric. (And Kennedy would not have been in a position to deliver any more speeches.) Accounts of potential disasters, carefully reconstructed from the les and from interviews with old servicemen, punctuate Schlossers grand narrative of the United States attempts to manage nuclear weapons. The near misses are not a distraction from his account of high military strategy or an aside, however. They are all of a piece with the uncertainty the possession of nuclear weapons brings: an instability that the apparently rational phrase the balance of terror concealed. What to do with the brutes? After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Henry H Hap Arnold, commander of the US army air force, warned that nuclear weapons made destruction too cheap and easy. An air raid that had required hundreds of bombers now required one. Like many of his colleagues, he argued for a kind of world government that could stop their spread and use. But an international force with the power to disarm was as fanciful then as it is now, as the example of the worlds response to the Iranian nuclear programme shows. If they could not be abolished, could they be used in a winnable war? In the 1950s, the US organised vast civil defence exercises, which told credulous citizens that they might survive if only they learned to take cover. Americans would have been less cheered if they had known that President Eisenhower had watched the exercises and privately concluded that a nuclear war could never be won because there arent enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies o the streets. No stable balance of terror followed from the threat of mutually assured destruction. Instead, the fear grew that a rst strike by the Soviets could destroy the US command-and-control centres that would authorise a counter-strike and vice versa. The readers mind reels as we go through the dangers of political control breaking down in a conict, the illusion that tactical nuclear weapons could be used in a conventional war without sparking a conagration, the fallibility of computer systems, the risk of a rogue pilot or general starting a war on his own and the inability of American and Soviet leaders to talk to each other until well into the 1970s. We escaped the cold war without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion, said General George Lee Butler of the US strategic air command. In his conclusion, Schlosser emphasises that the catalogue of close calls he records happened in the US, the richest nation on Earth, with the best scientists money could train. Now, not only do the US and Russia still maintain huge arsenals but North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India have joined the old club; societies that may prove far less able to control demonic weapons. The speed of the arms race between India and Pakistan in particular is matched only by the absence of safeguards that might stop a cold war turning hot. Schlosser breaks from his neutral tone only in the nal sentences. Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, he says, as he allows himself one grim ourish. Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial and they work.

Hiding the bodies ... thrillers still abound Rob Wilkinson/Alamy

Crime roundup: time and place are crucial

Laura Wilson
For most people in Britain, the 1960s didnt swing at all. In 1968, the majority of us were more worried about the devalued pound in our pocket than whether we were getting enough free love and/ or psychedelic drugs. One group who wouldnt swing if you hung em are the Marylebone CID in A Song from Dead Lips, the first novel from journalist William Shaw (Quercus, 14.99). This excellent procedural begins with the discovery of a strangled girl in St Johns Wood, near the famous Abbey Road Studios where Beatles fans camp out. DS Cathal Breen is in bad odour for deserting a colleague during an armed robbery and sidekick WPC Helen Tozer, the rst woman in the unit apart from the secretary, nds herself treated with innuendoladen hostility by her bewildered male colleagues. Racism, too, is endemic. A gripping story, with two appealing protagonists and impeccably researched period detail well deployed throughout. Better known for science ction and fantasy, US author Elizabeth Hand also writes a mean thriller. The protagonist of Available Dark (C&R Crime, 7.99) is Cassandra Neary, first encountered in Hands 2007 novel Generation Loss. Neary is very much a middle-class girl gone wrong one cult photography book during the punk era, followed by 30-odd years of booze- and drug-fuelled burnout. Now in her 50s, and still happily hoovering up the crystal meth, shes lured to Helsinki by a fan who wants her to authenticate some photographs hes thinking of buying. There she meets Ilkka Kaltunnen, a fashion photographer who has graduated from snapping the half-starved to the actually dead, all arranged in postures based on a creepy Nordic folktale. When Kaltunnen and his assistant are found murdered, Neary ees to Iceland, where both her recent past and, in the form of an old lover, an-

Psychologist Diane Berg exhibits a penchant for creeping around a place chock-full of serial killers

cient history start to catch up with her. With Nearys wryly humorous narration, a virtual soundtrack of black metal and a cast of fans, fetishists and believers in ancient cults in a bleak and terrifying landscape, this is a dark and edgy read. Its pretty nippy up in the Pyrenees, too, the setting for The Frozen Dead (Mulholland Books, 13.99), the rst novel from Bernard Minier (translated by Alison Anderson), and a bestseller in his native France. Workers at a hydroelectric power plant find a decapitated horse partially skinned and suspended from the support tower of the cable car that aords the only access to the place. Its no ordinary nag but the property of industrialist and plant owner Eric Lombard, so Commandant Servaz is summoned from Toulouse to investigate. Servaz soon discovers DNA on the corpse from an inmate of the Wargnier Institute, a nearby secure unit for the criminally insane, and when a man is discovered hanging from a bridge and a connection is made to an epidemic of teenage suicides, things start to get very complicated indeed. Less convincing than Servazs narrative is that of psychologist Diane Berg, who, newly arrived at the institute, exhibits a credibility-stretching penchant for creeping around a place chock-full of deranged serial killers in the middle of the night. The latest novel from Northern Irish writer and Whitbread prize winner Maurice Leitch, Seeking Mr Hare (The Clerkenwell Press, 12.99), is a slice of intriguing speculation about what might have happened to the grave-robber who was granted immunity for turning kings evidence against his partner, William Burke, and who in 1829 disappeared from view. This version of Hare is considerably smarter than the brutish dullard described by contemporary observers. Unrepentant, unscrupulous and pragmatic, he returns to his native Ireland, where he goes to ground with a mute servant girl in tow. Hes being tailed by a former police detective, whose narrative takes the form of letters to his patron, a seeker after unholy relics who seems to be based on novelist and collector William Beckford. Its a picaresque story with rich characterisation and vivid depictions of life in 19th-century Ulster. Precious Thing (Headline, 14.99), the rst novel from Colette McBeth, is a superior example of the current trend for woman-centred psychological thrillers. Hotshot TV reporter Rachel nds herself covering childhood friend Claras disappearance, and gradually realises that their relationship was not quite what it seemed. An absorbing read, if rather overdependent on coincidence.

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 39

Books

Modesty gets its just deserts

Alice Munros Nobel rewards hermastery of the short story, writes Margaret Atwood
The art of portraying the everyday
AS Byatt This is the Nobel announcement that has made me happiest in the whole of my life. I remember reviewing Alice Munro in the Toronto Globe and Mail and saying she was as great as Chekhov, and the Canadians were surprised but happy. She has done more for the possibilities and the form of the short story than any other writer I know. You can never tell what she is going to say next or what you the reader are going to feel next from line to line. She appears to be in perfect control of her writing, but I interviewed her onstage once and she described how she writes enormously long versions of stories and then cuts them into shape. I admire this immensely. One of my favourite moments in her ction comes in a story where a woman thinks of her day and then of her life as a series of things that have got to be done and are done: not much to her credit to go through her life thinking, Well good, now thats over, thats over. What was she looking forward to, what bonus was she hoping to get, when this, and this, and this, was over? One of her great gifts is recognising these peculiar in some ways ludicrous rhythms of mental life. Anne Enright It is tempting, on reading her stories, to think that Alice Munro is a modest writer and a likable one, but how do we know? She might be steely, erce, ambitious as hell: she certainly, as ve decades of short stories demonstrate, knows how to stick to her guns. Besides, modest and likable are too pious and too small, as words go, to describe Munros humane presence on the page. She is, as a writer, constantly, thoughtfully there; able to see her characters in all their faults, and to forgive those faults, or wonder at the possibility of forgiveness. Short stories do not make any grandiose claims about truth and society. Munros work has always posed a larger question about reputation itself; about how we break and remake the literary canon. That question was triumphantly answered by the Nobel prize. If her lifes work proves anything, it is that the whole idea of importance means very little. Her stories do not ask for our praise, but for our attention. We feel, when we read them, less lonely than we were before. Colm Tibn Alice Munros genius is in the construction of the story. She has a way of suggesting, both in the cadences and the circumstances, that nothing much is going to happen, that her world is ordinary and her scope is small. I remember a few years ago arriving in Halifax and being told, as though it were hot news, that there was a new story by Munro in a magazine. A friend photocopied it for me and told me not to read it until I was in a comfort zone. This story was Childs Play, which is forensic in its tone, at ease with cruelty and guilt, and tough, tough, but yet written using sentences of the most ordinary kind, and constructed with slow Chekhovian care.

lice Munro has been awarded the Nobel prize in literature, thus becoming its 13th female recipient. Its a thrilling honour for a major writer: Munro has long been recognised in North America and the UK, but the Nobel will draw international attention, not only to womens writing and Canadian writing, but to the short story, Munros chosen metier and one often overlooked. Whenever the Nobel is conferred, a deluge of media descends like the pack of cards cascading on to that other Alice, she of Wonderland not only on the winner, illuminated in the sudden glare of international publicity like a burglar trapped in headlights, but on every other writer who has known the chosen one. A quote, a reminiscence, an evaluation! Account for it! Why her? they clamour. Munro herself is unlikely to say much along these lines: Canadians are discouraged from bragging see the Munro story, Who Do You Think You Are? so will probably spend much of her time hiding in the gurative tool shed. Were all slightly furtive, we writers; especially we Canadian writers, and even more especially we Canadian female writers of an earlier generation. Art is what you can get away with, said Canadian Marshall McLuhan, and I invite the reader to count how many of the murderers in Munros stories are ever caught. (Answer: none.) Munro understands the undercover heist that is ction writing, as well as its pleasures and fears: how delicious to have done it, but what if you get found out? Back in the 1950s and 60s, when Munro began, there was a feeling that not only female writers but Canadians were thought to be both trespassing and transgressing. Munro found herself referred to as some housewife, and was told that her subject matter, being too domestic, was boring. A male writer told her she wrote good stories, but he wouldnt want to sleep with her. Nobody invited him, said Munro tartly. When writers occur in Munro stories, they are pretentious, or exploitative of others; or theyre being asked by their relatives why they arent famous, or worse, if female why they arent better-looking. The road to the Nobel wasnt an easy one for Munro: the odds that a literary star would emerge from her time and place would once have been zero. She was born in 1931, and thus experienced the Depression as a child and the second world war as a teenager. This was in south-western Ontario, a region that also produced Robertson Davies, Graeme Gibson, James Reaney and Marian Engel, to name several. Its this small-town setting that features most often in her stories the busybodies, the snobberies, the eccentrics, the cutting of swelled heads down to size, and the jeering at ambitions, especially artistic ones. The pressure of cramped conditions may create the determination to break free, to gain some sort of mastery; but if you try this, youd better do it

Success for chronicling failure Alice Munro well. Otherwise those who have laughed at you will laugh even harder, since an ice dancer who tries a triple axel and falls on her behind is hilarious. Shame and embarrassment are driving forces for Munros characters, just as perfectionism in the writing has been a driving force for her: getting it down, getting it right, but also the impossibility of that. Munro chronicles failure much more often than she chronicles success, because the task of the writer has failure built in. In this she is a romantic: the visionary gleam exists, but it cant be grasped, and if you drivel on about it openly the folks in the grocery store will think youre a lunatic. As in much else, Munro is thus quintessentially Canadian. Faced with the Nobel she will be modest, she wont get a swelled head. The rest of us, on this magnificent occasion, will just have to do that forher.

Alice Munro understands the undercover heist that is fiction writing, as well as its pleasures and fears

40 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Culture

Time of revolution Jettchen (Antonia Bill, left) and Florinchen (Philine Lembeck) in Die Andere Heimat Concorde Filmverleih/Christian Ldeke

The rst Homeland shows how its done

Philip Oltermann hears why Edgar Reitz, creator of German epic Heimat, returned to the tale
hailed as a terric completion of his masterpiece by Der Spiegel. Set in the 1840s, it shows the village of Schabbach suering from food shortages, battered by a series of freezing winters and under the yoke of autocratic Prussian rule. The Portuguese emperor is recruiting young Germans to colonise Brazil, and throughout the lm the horizon is lled with caravans heading for the next port. Nowadays in Germany we nd it hard to understand what it really means to emigrate because we only know the other side of the problem: we have become a country that others emigrate to, Reitz says. A story of people leaving their home, he hopes, might help others to understand todays immigrants. As with the previous lms in the series, many actors were recruited from the Rhineland; one of the leads is played by a blacksmith from Lauterecken who had never stood in front of a camera in his life. Period costumes were sourced from Rhineland villages and actors had to get used to how their bodies moved in the rough fabric. Reitzs team spent almost a year rebuilding a 19th-century village. Die Andere Heimat partly owes its existence to two incidents in Reitzs life. The rst was a letter from a nurse in Porto Alegre, who told him that her boss had the same surname. Reitzs research revealed that the Brazilian doctors family could be traced back to the region of Germany he was born in. Then, in 2008, his brother Guido died, and when Reitz went through his possessions he discovered that his sibling had spent years studying South American indigenous languages without ever having left his home town in the Hunsrck. The new lm tells the story of two brothers, Jakob and Hugo Simon, the younger of whom immerses himself in the rituals of Amazonian tribes. The lm also features another brother gure of sorts: Werner Herzog, in a cameo as the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Alongside the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herzog is one of the two most inuential directors to emerge from the New German Cinema movement of the 1960s. To Reitz, the current appetite for series-length TV drama conrms the value of the lm-making he pioneered. The kind of epic storytelling we see in US dramas like The Wire or Breaking Bad is essentially a continuation of what I started doing 30 years ago. The classic theatrical story arc, which Hollywood lms continue to pursue, is increasingly out of touch with everyday life it assumes a certain bourgeois idea of morality. He has one problem with the makers of modern TV drama: They tell interesting stories and create interesting characters, but the images they create are not unforgettable. Its a question of intensity. As long as we are still in command of the images we create, they are not unforgettable. The images have to become stronger than their makers. Ironically, just as US lm-makers are turning to TV, Reitz is doing the opposite: Die Andere Heimat is the rst in the series to be lmed for cinema. Television has developed in a very negative way in Germany. Theres little room for artistic freedom, says Reitz, who turns 81 this year. I am at an age where I dont have a lot of patience with lack of freedom.

t 53 hours and 25 minutes, it was already the longest series of featurelength lms in cinema history. And now it is getting a four-hour prequel. The fourth instalment in Edgar Reitzs arthouse saga, Die Andere Heimat (Home Away from Home), has recently opened in German cinemas. Heimat, which loosely translates as home or homeland, premiered on German television in 1984 and followed the life of the Simon family in the ctional village of Schabbach in the Hunsrck area of the Rhineland. Having set out to write one feature-length lm, Reitz produced 11 interlocking screenplays, depicting village life from the end of the rst world war to 1982. When the BBC screened the original series over 11 consecutive nights in 1987 it became a cult hit. Then came the sequels: a second part, released in 1992, zoomed in on one of the Simon sons, part of Munichs avant garde art scene in the 1960s; the third series went from the fall of the Berlin wall to the new millennium. Die Andere Heimat goes back 150 years to the years leading up to the 1848 revolutions. I feel as if I wandered into a forest and came across a path I thought would take me back home, said Reitz, speaking in Mainz, close to where Heimat was lmed. But instead I wandered deeper and deeper into the forest and came across new places I hadnt known before. In Germany Die Andere Heimat has already been

We find it hard to know what it means to emigrate because we only know the other side of the problem

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 41

Culture

Kicker here like this Then a short description here like this Then Section and page XX

Easy chair is hard to make

Mlina Gazsi investigates thegenesis of the best-selling, award-winning Tip Ton chair
t some point most designers try their hand at chairs. Some of them, such as the British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby winners of this years Crateur de lAnne award at the Maison&Objet show in Paris with their Tip Ton chair have shaken up seat technology. But few people invent a new type of chair, even if many, in their search for novelty, employ unusual materials, such as carbon or ax bre, or innovative techniques, including 3D printing. Designers do seem to have a special relationship with chairs. They are an essential step in anyones career, both an exercise in style and a key product for the general public, designers and their manufacturer, on account of the revenue they can yield, says designer Christian Ghion. Chairs are of course the quintessential item of furniture associated with thought, because they are not just for sitting on, but also express the idea of power and social status, he adds. Its often the rst type of object a designer works on, says artist Ora Ito. Technically, it may also serve as inspiration for an architectural project, an over arching principle, or some other creative work. Designers are obsessed with chairs. I havent done many, because you really ally need a good reason and loads of motivation. otivation. Particularly as it can take a long time: six years at the most, and at least three. The average person has no idea how complex this familiar object can be. Ora Ito, who started work several years ago on a seating project for an Italian n furniture manufacturer, cites ergonomic gonomic issues that must be taken n seriously. But, he adds, the reward d is masterly when [the seat] answers rs the story you want it to tell. The Tip Ton by Barber ber and Osgerby is certainly of that hat mettle. There is nothing really y new about a chair that tips. But what hat makes the Tip Ton dierent is that it tips forward, moving naturally rally from resting position a conventional ventional seated position to working position, with a slight forward incline. It makes all the e dierence. Sucient to switch ch from resting to an active, working orking position, with the body y leaning forwards to meet the e table or desk. Its a breakthrough, ough, a whole new type of chair, hair, says Eckart Maise, head d of Vitras design department. nt. But what sparked the he Movement for the people ... the Tip Ton is a new type of chair revolutionary Tip Ton? It started in 2008, when Barber and Osgerby were asked to advise on furniture for a secondary school. The Royal College of Art in London commissioned a study. We started by making a list of all the problems to be solved to meet demands for an indestructible chair with no screws, the two designers explain. Then we observed that, although the way we sit is constantly evolving, there have been few changes in the design of chairs themselves. Drawing on our research into ergonomics, medicine, movement and posture, we discovered that children in particular feel the need to move on a chair, but also that the forward-tilt position, until now the preserve of mechanical oce chairs, straightens the pelvis and spine and thus improves circulation to the abdominal and back muscles. Having found an idea, dened guiding principles and made some digital sketches, all that remained was to nd a manufacturer. They settled on the Swiss rm Vitra, on account of its acute understanding of oce supplies, its high-quality products and its distribution network, Barber and Osgerby explain. We worked a lot together on the technology and on tipping. You mustnt imagine that designers turn up with a drawing, saying: Here you are, this is what I want. We adjusted the original idea through a succession of meetings, tests and studies. Then we produced a whole load of technical drawings, simulations, resin moulds and lots of prototypes. The aim each time was to solve technical problems, to get rid of mistakes and defects, then produce more prototypes. It took about 10 prototypes for the model made with steel-tubing, and more than 20 for the plastic version. In the end it was decided to manufacture just the plastic one. It weighs 4.5kg. From start to nish it took two and a half years. Thats very quick, say Barber and Osgerby. Great care was taken with the choice of its name, too. Tip Ton of course refers to the tipping movement. But, Maise adds, its also the name of a suburb of Manchester, home to the Royal Society of Arts Academy, renowned for the quality of its teaching. Le Monde

On theatre

Drama critics need a new way of working

Lyn Gardner
s theatre criticism in meltdown, as some commentators are increasingly suggesting? Im not so sure. Many newspapers remain committed to arts writing and theatre criticism, even at a time when huge cultural shifts mean that the economic models on which they were founded are breaking down. But the crisis is how to pay for great journalism and that includes theatre criticism. In the past, if you wanted to write about theatre you needed a platform. That is no longer the case. Anyone can set up a blog and write about theatre; anyone can join in the debate. At the recent Critics Circles conference on theatre criticism, the actor Hattie Morahan remarked that she frequently turned to blogs rather than newspaper reviews. Shes not alone. More voices and dierent voices create a buzz around theatre that can only be good for theatre itself. But just as we need many dierent kinds of theatre, so we need many different kinds of criticism. Mainstream critics and bloggers are not in competition; they are all part of a lively conversation in which artists frequently write like critics, and critics sometimes curate and think and write about work more like artists. The possibilities for co-creation are exciting. Thats not a crisis; its an enormous bonus. Of course the crisis for a rising generation of writers about theatre is: how can they get paid for what they do? Thats always been the problem for would-be critics, where over the last 30 years or so probably only around a dozen people at any time have been earning a living by writing about theatre. When I was starting out, you needed a day job to support your writing. Its always been the same for those who make theatre too. Many make work; historically very few get to a stage where they are funded to make it. But the fact that there is a chance that you might get paid is often what keeps people going. If we have a generation of artists and critics who believe there is no chance of that, then perhaps we really will have a crisis, because it means that only those from auent backgrounds will be able to afford to make theatre or write about it. The question is what can be done to ensure that the work continues to get made, and those voices continue to be heard.

42 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Diversions
Notes & Queries
Zowie, Batman! There are somany evildoers to battle!
When a hero is confronted by 10 opponents in a movie, why do they all only attack one or two at a time? For the same reason that when a bad guy in the movies is about to kill someone, he always talks long enough for someone to sneak up behind and get the drop on him. James Carroll, Geneva, Switzerland Etiquette. If they all attacked at once, the hero would quickly become a martyr and ruin the movie. David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
One villain at a time ... Batman and Joker

Nature watch Blackwater, Norfolk

You will get square eyes
What will be the ultimate consequence of our addiction to screens? For the growing number of people worldwide who are electromagnetically sensitive, for whom any contact with IT wizardry produces often dire consequences, a painting by Edvard Munch titled The Screen. Diana F Crumpler, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia As a child, my parents would often admonish me for being glued to the TV screen: If you watch too much TV, youll get square eyes. However, compared with the level of addiction nowadays to computers, smartphones etc, our viewing habits seem relatively harmless. And my eyes are still the normal shape! John Ryder, Kyoto, Japan We can live in hope that it will be no more sinister than a world of merely near-sighted people. The alternative is total blindness. Doreen Forney, Pownal, Vermont, US
More Notes & Queries See additional answers online bit.ly/notesandqueries

If all the opponents attacked the hero at the same time they would run into each other, knocking each other out, leaving the hero with nothing to do. Bernie Koenig, London, Ontario, Canada Because they have no more intelligence than the screenwriter. Alan Williams-Key, Madrid, Spain Union rules. Peter Vaughan, St Senoch, France

government always intended to do anyway. Noel Bird, Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia Ah, but more pertinently: when does a regiment become a government? Adrian Cooper, Queens Park, NSW, Australia As soon as it possibly can. Donna Samoylo, Toronto, Canada The government of another country becomes a regime when enough people in our country disapprove of it. Bernard Burgess, Tenterden, UK When it imposes food or petrol rationing. Raymond Hill, Gals, Switzerland Around the moment when the peoples fear of the government exceeds the governments fear of thepeople. Ian Stokes, Richmond, Vermont, US

The birdsong at this site has been stripped down by the onset of autumn to desultory monosyllables the wheep notes of chicha or the hard granular tac call of blackcaps and whitethroats. These fragments of sound are the only details to break the wider atmosphere of stillness. Even the light, which is soft and diuse in quality, appears to be held in a suspension over the sunlit marsh in minute droplets of liquid. Yet even this dreamy autumn quiet cannot blur the ineradicable life-force-lled green of the one oak on my plot. That single centurion tree looms over the slumped vegetation as a dome of erce colour. Yet as I home in on the lower branches I notice that the upper surface of some leaves is sprinkled with yellow, and centred within the discolouration are smaller brown pockmarks. Turn the leaves over and the patches correspond to the location

Governments and regiments

When does a government become aregime? When it cannot be replaced by peaceful means. Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada Here in Australia, as in most if not all so-called democracies, the transition generally begins the day after the election. The key marker is the increasingly strident use of the word mandate to justify what the

Any answers?
Cat people and dog people appear to be fundamentally dierent breeds. How and why? Terence Rowell, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada Why are ddles t? Clive Wilkinson, Rothbury, UK Send answers to weekly.nandq@ theguardian.com or Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK of hundreds of circular brown doughnut-like buttons xed to the leaf surface. They are, in truth, a kind of gall made by cynipid wasps, which are so small you could line up 10 of them within the space taken by the tongue-twisting name: Neuroterus numismalis. Once I am attuned to the presence of these parasitic insects, I discover they are only one of several invertebrates exploiting my oak. The leaves, for example, hold another kind of spangle gall formed by a second wasp called Neuroterus quercusbaccarum. The most beautiful and conspicuous are the so-called knopper galls that extrude from the developing acorns and are shaped like naked walnuts stained with purplish brown and green. As I look up across the whole canopy I realise there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of organisms that have all been oered shelter by this one organism. The oak may look like a bastion of the bitterest tannin green, but each one is a fan of outstretched arms wrapped round a whole metropolis of life. Mark Cocker Read More Nature watch online bit.ly/naturewatch

Good to meet you Anne Murray

For 30 years, and probably much longer, my students (and I) have been enlightened and informed by the facts and gures appearing in the Guardian Weekly. I live in Tunis, near the coast, within bullet range of Carthage (presidential palace) and La Goulette (a popular area). I rst read the Guardian as a young teacher and then started taking the Weekly when I moved to Algeria to teach. I have lived in north Africa for 40 years now, teaching history to university students in Algeria and Tunisia and watching the regimes struggle with preserving identity in an increasingly invasive world. The back numbers of the GW are a potent reminder, indeed, of how much that world haschanged. The appearance in my letter box of your newspaper is always welcome but never so delightful as in the early days of the Tunisian revolution when, conned by friends to my at lest I be shot by mistake, I found that its arrival prevented me from dying instead of boredom. What would I do without the crossword and Sudoku to steady mynerves in the whirlwind of todays passions? Or the news pages to present me with a dierent version of reality? I am still teaching but I also paint and restore oil paintingsthat sometimes have bullet holes in them, and have ended up, like so many of my generation, writing novels. If you would like to feature in thisspace, send a brief note to guardian.weekly@theguardian.com

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 43

Quick crossword
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Cryptic crossword by Picaroon

Across
1 Rats! Ones spurned for love, close to distraught state (7) 5 Conservative certainly not about to be socially aware (5-2) 9 24 down is found at the end of this puzzle (5) 10 Ecstasy and speed? Swallowing ipping LSD, get weed out (9) 11 Desperate housewives go wild, so excited about fellows clothing (4,6) 12 Old ladys going to walk (4) 14 Improvement in how sappers are deployed? (11) 18 Pervert tries high denition porn, but not you or I! (5,6) 21 Nerdy, dry, oddly repressed Christian Scientist (4) 22 He gets rid of lots of gold, tossing in ore etc (10) 25 Getting boundaries in early, English batsmans a revelation (3-6) 26 US tennis players return kicking right at rst (5) 27 Take a punt on this lake, with yen to catch aquatic creature (7) 28 Understanding 10 x 3 only partially (7)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

8 10 11

10

11 13 14 16 18 17 15

12

12 14 16 17 18 20 19 21 15

13

19 21 24 25 26 22 23

20

22

23

27

28

Across
1 3 8 9 11 14 15 17 Air passage (4) La-di-da (8) Bog (4) Tip (8) Dedication (10) Seed used for food (6) Achieve (6) Machine for cutting paper (or French aristocrats) down to size (10) Yob (8) Unemployment benet (4) Twaddle (8) Diplomacy (4)

7 Time period(s) (4) 10 Tiny (10) 12 Canadian province, capital Winnipeg (8) 13 Gain curiosity (8) 16 Continually (6) 18 Cold-shoulder (4) 19 Brought into existence (4)

20 21 22 23

Down
1 A persons principal home (8) 2 Ritual my encore (anag) (8) 4 Meeting places for open discussion (6) 5 Dying-out (10) 6 Catch ones foot (4)

S M A L L E S T R O O M

G A C O T U E A T V E A R I B S E I S

I N O T O N N P N L E R A S C U R R E

S B I D D M E N Y P G O S R E U P R

O R E A S I S S T W E D N A C T E S

O U G H N I H I N G T H E S U P R E P I E L S H A L S T U H O I R E O E N T

Down
1 Roman sex gurus a mug (6) 2 Search for food, turning to large caviar sandwiches (6) 3 Quaint styles back after odd Orwell novel (4,6) 4 Movement thats in time runs to a climax (5) 5 Back what the childrens guardian must do (9) 6 Carriage doors sound (4)

Last weeks solution, No 13,541 Puzzle No 13,547 published in the Guardian 9 October 2013

7 Time, an hour after midnight, to get music and liqueur (3,5) 8 Annoying lover of Heather may well! (8) 13 Most uncommon to cover news in tropical region (10) 15 The commonness of the fellow! Rule by the Prince of Waless no good, the Queen admitted (9) 16 Delayed returning to wrap present thats heavenly (8) 17 Stew for American frontiersmen? (4,4) 19 English runner always going in opposing directions (6) 20 Horse put in pen to struggle (6) 23 Picked up wrong cake (5) 24 Goalie stripped o and raised arm (4)
Puzzle No 26,073 published in the Guardian 8 October 2013

T H E W H O L E S H E B A N G

O M D I C K E M E X T R A V E H G P O S T I L E N R O C K E T S H H T R I K E R I O E A S E O F F T K U L I B I S A E A E N E R A L

A N D H A R R Y I O E O R T S N A F U R P D V I M I T A T E O D C P G E L E C T R O O E T S T A R D O M M U Q E C O U R A N T C A M H H O R T W A V E U I T R P R A C T I C E

Last weeks solution, No 26,067

Futoshiki Hard
Fill in the grid so that every row and column contains the numbers 1-5. The greater than or less than signs indicate where a number is larger or smaller than its neighbour.
2 < 4 5 1
CLARITY MEDIA LTD

Sudoku classic Hard

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2 9 8 5 5 1 3 9 6 9 3 6 5 4 2 8

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9. We will publish the solution next week.
Free puzzles at theguardian.com/sudoku

3 1 1 4 > 2 < 3 3 > 2 5 > 4 1 < 4 < 5 3 1 < 2

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3 > 2 4 < 5

2 <

4 7 1 7 2

Last weeks solution

3 7 4 2 8 6 1 5 9

9 5 8 3 1 7 6 4 2

2 6 1 9 4 5 8 3 7

6 4 2 5 9 1 3 7 8

5 3 9 8 7 4 2 6 1

1 8 7 6 2 3 5 9 4

4 9 5 1 6 2 7 8 3

7 1 6 4 3 8 9 2 5

8 2 3 7 5 9 4 1 6

Last weeks solution

44 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Section Mind &Relationships Subject Oliver Burkeman This column will change your life The real secret to motivating yourself: never say I cant (external restraint) when you can say I dont (autonomy)

ew topics have been more mangled and misunderstood in the world of popular psychology than that of self-talk, the chuntering monologue most of us conduct through the day in our heads, or out loud when were alone. (Dont pretend you dont.) Contrary to self-help lore, theres little evidence that positive self-talk works like magic. Telling yourself youre beautiful, a condent public speaker or a future billionaire wont make you any of those things; if anything, its liable to have the reverse eect. The true impact of self-talk is more subtle. For example, its been shown that if you want to accomplish a challenging task, youre better o phrasing it as a question (Will I talk to my boss about that promotion?) than simply declaring it (I will talk to my boss about that promotion!). The declaration sounds better, but its the question that generates more intrinsic motivation, calling to mind your deeply held reasons for wanting to act. And a similarly tiny linguistic tweak, it emerged, could make the dierence between resisting temptation and succumbing to it. Researchers at two US business schools wanted to examine the eects of self-talk employing the phrase I cant versus the phrase I dont, in the context of personal health goals. Suppose its time for your weekly kick-boxing class, but the sofa looks inviting, so you try

Adam Howling; below, Lo Cole

A tiny linguistic tweak could make the difference between resisting temptation and succumbing to it
or Downs syndrome. Its hard to remember that the increased risks are still small. My dads reaction when I said I was pregnant wasnt Congratulations! but I hope youre having an amniocentesis. I am, of course, but it isnt the main focus of my pregnancy.

to talk yourself into action. Does it really matter if you say, I cant miss my weekly class, or, I dont miss my weekly class? You wouldnt have thought so, but according to the experiments, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, it does. In one, students seeking to eat more healthily were instructed to use either I cant or I dont each

time they confronted a temptation. Upon leaving, they were oered a token of appreciation for taking part: a chocolate bar or a granola bar. Of those instructed to resist temptation using I cant, 39% went for the healthier choice; of those using I dont, the gure was 64%. Try repeating each of those to yourself, perhaps with a more personally relevant example in my case, I cant/dont check Twitter when Im meant to be working. Monitor your immediate emotional reactions and youll probably see whats going on. The cant framing implies an external restraint, which feels disempowering. You might even be tempted to disobey solely to assert your independence. To say that you dont do something, by contrast, suggests autonomy, as well as long-term commitment. Thats worth remembering when youre talking to others, too. Its often easiest to refuse some onerous request by claiming that you cant; sometimes, it might even be true. The trouble is that when you tell your overly demanding colleague/ friend/spouse that you cant, theres someone else listening: you. According to cliche, learning to say no is the key to seizing control of life. But how you say no matters, too: the subliminal result of all those I cants could just be to leave you feeling more powerless. The phrase youre looking for is I dont. Dont doubt it. oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com

What Im really thinking The older pregnant woman

Elderly primigravida: now theres a phrase to make you feel great. Firsttime mum over 35 is more palatable. I dont consider myself elderly. When I saw it on my medical notes, I felt ancient, but Im only 43. My expanding waistline isnt middle-age spread; its a baby. Being an older mum brings a spectre of doom: doctors seem to relish talking about miscarriage, stillbirth

Im trying to think about the positives: Im in a stable relationship, Im nancially secure, I want this baby, it wasnt an accident. Socially, I would be much more acceptable if I were a decade younger, but 10 years ago I was single and self-employed, too interested in the high life.

Id now have a 10-year-old whom I resented for taking away my freedom. The prurient curiosity surrounding pregnant women is icky, but when theyre in their 40s its positively aggressive. Why did I wait? Am I sure my eggs are still fresh? Im expected to be robust in the face of these criticisms, but I feel as insecure as any new mother. What I need is support, not judgment. I am still blooming, even if its a bit late. Tell us what youre really thinking email mind@theguardian.com

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 45

Shortcuts
London shows it has what it takes to shine
s Wordsworth almost said, Earth hath not anything to show more foul. London has won the coveted title, held for the last decade by Hull, of number one Crap Town in the UK. The Crap Towns Returns website reveals that the capital has soared ahead of hotly fancied contenders including Rhyl, Pontefract, Thetford, Jaywick (I could well have been in downtown Chernobyl) and even Chipping Norton, the pretty Cotswold town known for its set of acquaintances including Prime Minister David Cameron and Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson. London was catapulted to victory by nominations for its dismal suburbs, murder miles, high house prices, City bankers and a transport system that abandons late-night revellers to the mercy of rickshaws, minicabs or night buses, a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers. Sam Jordison, co-founder and editor of Crap Towns, said: People in London just have no idea whats happening in the rest of the country. They take a lot of what works in Britain, but you dont see much sign of them putting anything back. I think thats what lies behind the rage of a lot of the nominations. A lot of the entries for other places are what you might call aectionate hatred, as you might tease a member of the family but know you have to put up with them. Thats not the case with London the hatred is real. Maev Kennedy types of vessels to certain times of day and drug testing for boatmen and women. The new rules for gondolas will start next month, said the transport assessor, Ugo Bergamo. Identication numbers will help CCTV operators spot gondoliers breaking trac regulations, while the GPS trackers will indicate if they are where they should be. The gondolas will also have reective patches, said Bergamo, but nothing big, just like the ones you would put on the wheels of abike. The patches mark a break with a strict tradition of painting gondolas all black, which dates from 1562. Fed up with the competition between nobles to paint their eets of gondolas with ever more garish colours as well as adding gilded prows, carvings and ashy cushions the citys then doge said the boats had to be all black a rule that has lasted until now. Tom Kington

Kicker here like this Then a short description here like this Then Section and Page XX
have had to close due to damage while others such as Tutankhamuns are under threat. The attempt to x the tombs to make them visitable is itself now the largest long-term risk to the tombs, said Adam Lowe, whose Spanishbased rm Factum Arte funded the creation of the tombs replica under the supervision of Egypts supreme council of antiquities. The project aims to divert visitors away from the threatened original while still giving them the chance to experience what it is like inside. Patrick Kingsley

Crosstown trac ... a Venetian gondola

Blue Jasmine, except in India

Gondolas to get safety facelift

hey have cruised the canals for centuries, elegantly painted in black. But a fatal crash means Venices gondolas now face a makeover, complete with reective patches, registration plates and GPS tracking. The initiative is part of the citys response to the death in August of a German tourist, who was fatally injured when the gondola he and his family were in was crushed against a dock by a reversing water bus. The accident highlighted the constant trac jams on the Grand Canal as gondolas, water taxis and water buses ght for space, with a study showing that on busy days 1,600 vessels pass under the Rialto bridge every 10 hours. Scrambling for solutions, the citys mayor has come up with 26 suggestions for reducing congestion and collisions, including restricting

Tuts tomb, or at least close

n exact replica of the tomb of Tutankhamun is set to be installed near the 3,000-year-old original, in what one of the worlds leading Egyptologists has called a revolutionary development in Egyptian archaeological conservation. Ocials hope the $677,000 project will prolong the life of the original while promoting a new model of sustainable tourism and research in a country where many pharaonic sites are under severe threat. Tutankhamuns tomb is one of 63 burial sites in Luxors Valley of the Kings. After years of visitors, some

oody Allen has withdrawn his latest lm Blue Jasmine from Indian release after it emerged that anti-smoking ads would be inserted into the lm during scenes where characters are seen pung on a cigarette. According to DNA newspaper, a regulation requires that a warning scroll is added to any scene containing smoking, as well the addition of anti-tobacco spots, to lms that screen in Indian cinemas. The rule came into force in 2012. Blue Jasmine contains two scenes that would have triggered the warning spots. Deepak Sharma, COO of PVR Pictures, said: Allen has the creative control as per the agreement. He wasnt comfortable with the disclaimer that we are required to run when some smoking scene is shown in lms. He feels that when the scroll comes, attention goes to it rather than the scene. Andrew Pulver

Maslanka puzzles
1 Seamus Heaney, quoth someone on our favourite agship radio station, became a living legend in his own lifetime. Why did that breaker of napkin rings, the great Lord Pedanticus lay aside his panino and quiet and angry like the sea that encircles these isles bang his head gently and rhythmically on the table? 2 A certain surveillance agency sent out its stupidest agent to spy on a politicians daily jog. In his report it states that whichever 10minutes he timed, the runner always ran 2kilometres. Can his line manager conclude that the politico ran at constant speed? 3 How many ways are there of labeling 10 places around a circular table in such a way that no two adjacent digits are the same if every digit is a 0, 1 or 2? 4 Two identical thin and square napkins lie on a square table top of area 4 square feet. The area of the table doubly covered equals the area uncovered. What is the size of a napkin? email: guardian@puzzlemaster.co.uk a) brand of intelligent insecticide b) Danubian stork c) written edict of Muslim authority d) an outburst without beginning JASSID a) dreggy b) leaf-hopper c) hereditary civil servant in Byzantine empire d) projectile

Cryptic
Circular about a spherical bird? (5, 5) Amphibian real sad, man! (10)

Missing Links
Find a word that follows the rst word in the clue and precedes the second, in each case making a fresh word or phrase. Eg the answer to sh mix could be cake (shcake & cake mix)... a) mobile box b) super forces c) answering lift d) midnight well e) sliced fruit f) chewing tree
CMM2013 For solutions see page 47

Wordplay
Wordpool
In each case nd the correct denition: IRADE

Same Dierence
Identify these words that dier only in the letters shown: *I**** (like...) ***** (say cheese)

46 The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13

Sport

OSullivan: Its like youre a magician

The ve-times world snooker champion tells Simon Hattenstone how he has tamed his demons
onnie OSullivan, regarded as the most gifted man to have picked up a snooker cue, is a fascinating character. Tortured, self-destructive, depressive, obsessive, gentle, funny, contrary, vulnerable, pathologically honest. He has just written a memoir called Running, with my help. Running because this is what has replaced his addiction to drugs and drink. And Running because he has spent so much of his life running away from stuff relationships, personal issues, snooker. For years he was regarded as an under-achieving genius. Now, at 37, hes ve-time world champion, closing in on Stephen Hendrys record seven victories, and yet rarely does a day pass when he doesnt consider walking away. Even by OSullivans standards, the past 18 months have been crazy. For three years he won nothing he suered glandular fever, depression, a painful breakup with the mother of his youngest two children, and for six months he lost every rst-round match he played. In short, he was on his way out. Then he won a tournament in Germany not a famous one, but for OSullivan, the turning point. From there, he went on to win his fourth world championship, playing the best snooker of his career. Then he topped it all by announcing his retirement he was involved in a fraught custody ght for his children, was desperate to see them, didnt have time to play, thank you and good night. A year after his retirement, he said he was returning for the world championship he had to make some money and pay the kids school bills. Astonishingly, he won it. Nobody dominates a sport like OSullivan. And yet, he says, his real ambition is to run for Essex. Before he found running, he spent his spare time at addiction clinics Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, even Sex Addicts Anonymous. Perhaps more than anything, his new book shows how dicult it is for sports stars to achieve a work-life balance. The life of a sportsman is selfish. To achieve your potential you have to put your sport before your kids. OSullivan says that unless you have a partner willing to play second ddle

Portrait by Tom Jenkins

and make sacrices, your relationship is probably doomed. You need people around you to understand. I would imagine Roger Federers missus puts his needs before her own. And as a single dad, he says, its virtually impossible to make things work. Often he couldnt make his contact time at weekends because he would be playing snooker, and the courts used that against him to say he was unreliable. In the end, he decided the only solution was to stop playing, and rebuild his relationship with seven-year-old Lily and six-year-old little Ronnie. But as a sportsman, he says he probably made the wrong decision. In my position, the thing I should do is never see the kids again. Then I could probably have another 10 years at the top. But morally, I cant do that. I tell him I dont think he could do it emotionally (he adores his children). He disagrees. I could. Emotionally I could cut o like that. I could go, Its too much hassle, its too much heartache. Theyre OK, theyll grow up, theyll be ne. If I was determined to stay at the top, and wanted to be a true professional, thats

what Id have to do. OSullivan has a daughter in her late teens, Taylor, and says thats what he did with her. But he regrets it. Family has always been at the heart of his life, for good and bad. He has a loving, if claustrophobic, relationship with his parents. Home life revolves round a section of Chigwell, Essex. Spend any time there and you will come across an OSullivan. One day when we were running, we bumped into his younger sister Danielle also running. Another day wed see his mother Maria at the bagel shop. His father, Ronnie Sr, would often pop round for a bite and a chat. They all live in separate houses, round the corner from one another. Three years ago, Ronnie Sr was released from prison after serving 18 years for murder. While OSullivan was always threatening to quit snooker, he never did while his father was inside because he knew that his success was what kept him going. So it was no surprise that he waited until his father was out to announce his retirement.

He wanted to spend more time with Ronnie Sr for starters, watching sport, chilling out. But as always with OSullivan, its not as simple as it sounds. While he would do anything for his parents, give them everything he has, at times he nds them overbearing and needs his space. OSullivan says snooker makes people dysfunctional those thousands of hours in dingy clubs, sitting in silence waiting for the opponent to nish a break, no natural light. Its a cruel sport, a horrible sport, he says, why couldnt he have been a golfer or

With snooker, I know that Im probably theonlyman on theplanet who can dowhat Im doing

The Guardian Weekly 18.10.13 47

Roundup Jacob Steinberg

India watches as Tendulkar readies to rest his bat
tennis player? Its like kids who grow up on PlayStations. They dont learn socialising skills. Thats what I mean about snooker players being boring. Im not the most social person. One of the most positive inuences on him has been sports psychiatrist Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox. Peters helped him come to terms with his chimp the voice on his shoulder telling him to give in or run away. His self-destructiveness has expressed itself in many ways drink and drugs; a skinhead haircut midcompetition because I didnt have the courage to kill myself; walking out mid-match against Hendry, his hero; wearing a annel over his head playing Mark King. OSullivan compiled a diary while working with Peters one minute the chimp will tell him hes getting fat, the next his technique is rubbish and hes going to have a panic attack. Peters taught him the chimp will always be there, and he had to learn how to talk to it. The results have been remarkable. When he won the world title in 2012, he played near-perfect snooker. That was the best feeling Ive ever had in snooker, he says. Thered be 15 reds on the table, one loose, 14 in the pack, and Im already thinking game over. Its like youre a magician. Its the most empowering thing Ive ever felt. As good as running? Yeah. Better. Because I know Im probably the only man on the planet who can do what Im doing, whereas running Im just running around. After that I felt I was done. Perfection. He briey enjoyed the peace of retirement before he began to hate the pointlessness of it all. He became lazy couldnt see the point in getting up, or running, or anything. Thats why he did voluntary work on a pig farm to give himself a kick up the arse. Did he enjoy it? It just got me out of the house. OSullivan has come back at a time when snooker is in disrepute, after Stephen Lees 12-year ban for xing matches. As ever, OSullivan has had plenty to say about it. He got into trouble with the authorities for suggesting many players were throwing matches, but now says he was misinterpreted. I was referring to the past. I dont know anyone whos doing itnow. He isnt surprised so many players have cheated unless youre at the very top, theres no money in snooker. Hes been lucky, he says, hes made a good living, won plenty, been adored. Running: The Autobiography by Ronnie OSullivan is published by Orion India ground to a halt last week as Sachin Tendulkar announced that he is to retire from Test cricket after playing his 200th Test against West Indies next month. The 40-year-old made his Test debut at 16 and is the most prolic batsman in international cricket history, with 15,837 runs in 198 Tests and 18,426 runs in 463 one-day internationals over a 23year career. Its hard for me to imagine a life without cricket because its all I have ever done since I was 11 years old, Tendulkar said. Theres always reality television, Sachin. The Red Bull pair of Vettel and Mark Webber didnt have it all their own way from the start as Lotuss Romain Grosjean gave them a run for their money. I really tried to manage the gaps in the beginning of the stint and then close the gap, which worked brilliantly, especially with Romain, Vettel said. Great strategy. If he does say so himself.

Djokovics Chinese thriller

The only person who enjoys visiting south-east Asia more than gap-year students is Novak Djokovic, who followed winning the China Open last week with retaining his Shanghai Masters title. He might have lost his place at the top of the rankings to Rafael Nadal, but he remains in supreme form. In a surprise turn of events, his opponent in the nal wasnt Nadal but the hulking Juan Martin del Potro, who beat the Spaniard in their semi-nal and was then desperately unlucky to lose 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 to the enduringly stubborn Djokovic. It was a great experience again in Shanghai with a thrilling performance from both my opponent and myself, said Djokovic, so thrilled that he found himself simultaneously ruing Del Potros hair and patting himself on the back.

Revered in India Tendulkar

Belgians head for World Cup

Watch out, world: the Belgians are coming. Their 2-1 victory away to Croatia, with Romelu Lukaku scoring twice, sparked wild celebrations in Brussels and secured their rst appearance in the World Cup since 2002. It made people in England wonder how to replicate Belgiums ourishing youth system. Expect the FAs special new commission to announce a diet of waes and beer for young footballers any day now. Elsewhere in Europe, Germany and Switzerland also qualied, while

in South America, Colombia came back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 with Chile and book their spot at their rst World Cup since 1998. In that competition they lost to England. Its an omen.

Here we go again, Sebastian

Its ve consecutive Grand Prix wins and counting for Sebastian Vettel after Japan but he still hasnt got his hands on the world title. Fernando Alonso had to go and nish fourth, thus prolonging the wait. Honestly, Fernando, was it really worth it?

Chess
Leonard Barden
The nal leg of the world Grand Prix in Paris ended in anticlimax as the top players from Italy and the US missed out on their ambitions. Fabiano Caruana, 21, was within half a point of the outright victory that would have made him second in the overall Grand Prix and so qualied him for the 2014 candidates, while Hikaru Nakamura was within one game of becoming the rst American to reach world No 2 since the legendary BobbyFischer. But each of them spoilt his chance at the end, Caruana by allowing his nal-round opponent an early draw by repeated moves and Nakamura by taking on the wily Israeli veteran Boris Gelfand in a tactical ght in the penultimate round. Final scores at Paris were Caruana and Gelfand 7/11, Nakamura and Etienne Bacrot (France) 6.5. The overall top two in the Grand Prix, who took the candidates places, were Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and the Azeri Shak Mamedyarov, neither of whom competed in Paris. Given pessimism that some Grand Prix events would have to be aborted, the global chess body Fide will be satised with the outcome.

Maslanka solutions
1 Those who say a little pleonasm never hurt anyone havent seen Pedanticus blow his top like a supervolcano. Perhaps the speaker considered that the meaning of the word living in the foot-draggingly dull clich living legend was suciently dead for it to need reviving by thephrase in his lifetime. Such are the perilsof clich. The jarring of the two meanings is not pretty, and the logic grates. Could one be a living legend after ones lifetime? What is the relation between the boundaries of these two sorts of living? Thanksto Martin Robiette from Loches, France, for sending this in. Loches is nearTours. 2 No. We can deduce at most that any variations in running speed are periodic withaperiod of 10 minutes or some period that divides a whole number of times into 10minutes. He could, for example, always run2km in 5 minutes and then rest for 5 minutes. To get at the issue of constancy ofspeed one needs to measure the distance travelled not just at dierent intervals of constant length, but dierent intervals ofdierent length. 3 This is similar to the Numberberg puzzle(4 Oct) Start with 0. Replace 0 with12, 1 with 20 and 2 with 01 and continue.We get the sequence 0, 12, 0210, 12102012 Thenumber of appearances of each digit inthenth string counts a possible seat numbering up to the nth seat. The penultimateseat number cannot be 0 as westarted with 0. The 10th string has 29 digits, ofwhich 170 will be zeroes and 342arenon-zeroes. We could have started with 1or 2 instead of 0, so the total number ofwaysis 3 X 342 = 1026. 4 Imagine removing an amount of area fromthe part doubly covered and use it to cover the uncovered part. Then the two napkins suce to cover the table once. Thearea of one napkinis thus 2 square feet, and it has a side of 2 feet. Wordpool c), b) Same Dierence SIMILE, SMILE Cryptic ROUND ROBIN, SALAMANDER Missing Links a) mobile/phone/box b) super/market/forces c) answering/service/lift d)midnight/ oil/well e)sliced/bread/fruit f)chewing/gum/tree

Hikaru Nakamura v Fabiano Caruana 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 f3 d5 4 cxd5 Nxd5 5 e4 Nb6 6 Nc3 Bg7 7 Be3 0-0 8 Qd2 Nc6 9 0-0-0 Qd6 10 h4 Rd8 11Nb5 Qd7 12 h5 a6 13 Nc3 Nxd4 14hxg6 hxg6?? 15 Bxd4 Qxd4 16 Qe1 Qxd1+ 17 Nxd1 and wins (1-0, 34 moves).
3326 White mates in three moves, against any defence (by Fritz Giegold). Black has no legal moves available and therein lies the problem

3326 1 Qa2 bxa2 2 Bf5 Kxf5 3 Ng7 mate

Guardian News and Media Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Guardian News & Media Ltd., Centurion House, 129 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3WR, UK. Editor: Abby Deveney. Le Monde translation: Harry Forster. Printed by GPC. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Oce. Annual subscription rates (in local currencies): UK 109; Europe 180; Rest of World 140; US $181; Canada $200; Australia $285; NZ $360 Quarterly subscription rates: UK K 28; Europe 45; Rest of World 35; US $46; Canada $50; Australia $72; NZ $90

A fair cop The best crime writing, roundedup and reviewed

Books, page 38

Charlotte Higgins While drama and ction help us to confront the real world, art fairs like Londons Frieze remain a symbol ofsocietys grotesque inequalities

very October comes a week known in the art world as Frieze week. In London, art openings abound, in the grand public museums and in the commercial sphere. VIP breakfasts and dinners proliferate, where collectors are courted as buyers and donors. The super-rich of the world alight on the London art world like so many exotic butteries. The centre of all this s is Frieze itself: a pair of art fairs in Regents Park. The larger, Frieze London, features 150 galleries dealing in contemporary art; the other, Frieze Masters, ers, elds 120 galleries selling antiquities and art made before 2000. As you walk down the aisles of these fairs the feel is of giant supermarkets: supermarkets upermarkets that happen to be selling luxury objects cts of unimaginable price. It is a fantasy world, , a parallel universe. Inside: the jet set, the hedge funders, unders, the oligarchs ospring, the industrialists alists some, no doubt, crooks, some chancers, s, and some serious collectors, who spend months and years acquiring knowledge as well as art and whom the art world reveres. Outside, normality: mality: mothers wondering how to feed their kids, the bedroom tax, child poverty, youth unemployment ployment and housing prices. Its no wonder that so many upscale artists arent really tackling kling the actual concerns of the world in their work, in the way that theatre e and ction are. They would mean nothing to most buyers. If I sound disenchanted nted it is because I am. Its not Friezes fault ault you could say the same of any commercial mmercial art world gathering in Paris, s, Miami orSo Paulo. Its just that hat if you want to see the evidence ce of the grotesque and growwing inequalities in our society,then stepping inside the Emerald City y

that isFrieze is a really good way to do it. Except itll cost you 50 ($80) to see both fairs, beyond thepocket of most. The art market had a moment of what they call correction after the economic crisis of 2008. It has now bounced back, certainly at the top end. Thats because art buying has matured as a hobby for the super-rich. It could be cars or yachts, and its its also contemporary art. probably that too, but it sa those who work as For t creat creators in other art forms plays, poetry, ction, pl choreography, composing cho art is about creat making m ing a work that has little value as an object in itself, valu but has h life because a number of people peop are willing to pay a small amount to experience it. For visual erent. Unless they choose to artists it is dieren commissions or in forms work on public art c performanceor video, the individual such as performance object hasprimacy. Thats precious obj a simple fact of the art form. But art prices have becomes when a stratospheric, that fact of so stra becomes a distortion and life be distraction. I have heard of a dis artists joking about making arti work before lunch so they wo can buy a designer suit ca in the afternoon. I have heard of artists wryly talkhe about painting money. ing ab artists will set aside Many a price as they make their thoughts of pri uncompromising rigour. work with unc will unconsciously or But many w

Will Rymans Icon 2011, 11, exhibited at Frieze Tony Kyriacou/Rex

Visua arts Visual proble problem is that themar themarket is becomin becoming rarefied

consciously make work for the market.Of course there has always been a close relationship between art and patrons, and no one can or should insulate themselves from their audience. Visual arts problem is that the market is becoming so rareed. Even in the days when the Medicis were commissioning, masterpieces entered the public realm by way of grand civic spaces and the church. These days they are more likely to disappear for ever into the security-patrolled palaces of the super-rich. You might argue that prices dont matter. But we all know that money is power, and it is the private, not the public, sphere that increasingly wields power over art. This thought will be touched on in the artist Grayson Perrys Reith lectures for the BBC this year, the aim of which are to advance public understanding and debate about signicant issues of contemporary interest. In a context of dwindling state funding, public institutions are increasingly pushed into courting private individuals for loans and bequests and gifts but the irony is that private individuals seem less willing to bestow their wealth on the public realm than in the 19th century and the immediate postwar period, when the civic, educational value of art for the masses was a given. The power that public institutions still wield is that they can confer curatorial validation on the art that they show, which in turn increases its standing and price. When the Daskalopoulos private collection of contemporary art was lent to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, for example, it was not a one-way favour; I cant help feeling discomted by this exchange of goods for kudos. At the same time, parts of the public realm are also, sadly, waking up to the fact that artworks are assets that can be converted into cash: hence Tower Hamlets council in London cynically trying to sell o its Henry Moore, OldFlo. The notion of art shown for the public benet for free, in the civic realm, looks almost quaint amid the clinking champagne glasses of the Frieze-week jamboree. But if art is engulfed by the private sphere, it risks becoming a branch of the luxury-goods market and an irrelevance.