England v Pakistan - schedule
28 July 2015
The England v Pakistan cricket schedule to be played in the
UAE in October and November 2015 has now been announced: three test matches;
4 one day internationals and 3 T20s. Enjoy!
October 13-17: First Test, Zayed Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi
October 22-26: Second Test, Dubai Cricket Stadium
November 1-5: Third Test, Sharjah Cricket Club
November 11: First One Day International (ODI) Day/Night (D/N), Zayed
Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi
November 13: Second ODI D/N, Zayed Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi
November 17: Third ODI D/N, Sharjah Cricket Club
November 20: Fourth ODI D/N, Dubai Cricket Stadium
November 26: First T20, Dubai Cricket Stadium
November 27: Second T20, Dubai Cricket Stadium
November 30: Third T20, Sharjah Cricket Club
The nuclear deal’s other winner
25 July 2015 The Economist
(Not sure that the Dubai- Iran trade qualifies as
smuggling when it is entirely open along Dubai Creek - there is no sense of
doing anything illegal).
At Dubai Creek in the United Arab Emirates the dock workers load everything
from computers to cigarettes onto dhows headed across the Persian Gulf to
Iran. At the airport, some ten minutes away, men with suitcases full of
dollars board planes bound for Tehran. Dubai, the busiest entrepot in the
Gulf, has long been the back door through which smugglers have entered Iran
to swap goods and cash in breach of Western sanctions. It is now hoping to
become Iran’s front door as well.
The nuclear deal between Iran, America and five other world powers will
gradually lift most sanctions if the mullahs keep their end of the bargain.
This has raised fears that a more prosperous Iran will step up its meddling
in Arab affairs, and that its renewed oil sales will lead to yet lower
prices and a battle for market share. But others see an opportunity, as the
region’s largest market—home to nearly 80m mostly young and typically
well-educated people—reopens. Dubai is best placed to take advantage.
Of the 400,000 or so Iranians who now call the UAE home, many live in Dubai.
The emirate also plays host to nearly 10,000 Iranian businesses and trading
companies, by one estimate—though some are mere fronts for smuggling. Little
wonder, then, that the UAE is Iran’s second-largest trading partner, after
China, even though commerce between the countries has slowed since sanctions
began to bite in 2011. If the Iranian economy grows fast, as analysts
predict, the amount of cash, goods and tourists crossing the Gulf will
likely surge.
It so happens that the three sectors of the Iranian economy worst hit by
sanctions are ones where Dubai excels. Start with air transport, which has
suffered in Iran due to a lack of spare parts for its ageing and
increasingly unsafe fleet of planes. Dubai, meanwhile, has created a vast
air-services hub, including maintenance and manufacturing facilities, around
its airport, one of the world’s busiest.
Similarly, Iran’s oilfields have been crippled as sanctions kept needed
equipment out of the country. Much of the investment in new Iranian
infrastructure will now run through Dubai’s port at Jebel Ali, which is a
hub for everything to do with pipes, pumps and rigs.
The third sector is finance, where sanctions have left Iran completely
outmoded. Dubai, by contrast, hosts the regional headquarters of most big
banks. Rouzbeh Pirouz of Turquoise Partners, an investment firm in Tehran,
is reminded of Hong Kong, where global financial institutions and
multinational firms set up to gain access to the young Chinese market.
“Dubai can play a similar role [for Iran],” says Mr Pirouz. It is already a
hub for firms looking to do business in the Middle East and Africa. Tehran
is just two hours away by plane and trade links between the countries are
centuries old.
There are already about 50 flights a week between Dubai and Tehran, and
dozens more between various other cities in the UAE and Iran. FlyDubai, a
discount carrier, has increased the number of Iranian destinations it serves
from two to nine this year. Emirates, the region’s biggest airline, already
flies to Tehran and will now also connect with Mashhad, Iran’s second most
populous city and a Shia pilgrimage site. Meanwhile, the port at Jebel Ali,
which saw shipping volumes from Iran fall as a result of the sanctions, is
set to bolster its place as a main trans-shipment point for Iran-bound
goods.
Analysts caution that the economic impact of Iran’s opening will be delayed.
Sanctions will be lifted at intervals, and only if Tehran complies fully
with the agreement. America’s own trade embargo, related to terrorism, will
remain in place. Companies looking to trade in Iran will also encounter a
range of bureaucratic hurdles (see article). The country is a woeful 130th
on the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business list. Some firms may choose to
wait. The smugglers of Dubai Creek will not go out of business just yet.
Keplerians?
25 July 2015
The age old question - are there other life-forms out
there? Maybe we are a little closer to saying yes.
Yesterday NASA announced that its exoplanet-hunting
Kepler spacecraft has spotted another Earth-like world. The space agency
today announced the discovery of Kepler-452b, the smallest planet we've
found yet orbiting inside a star's habitable zone — the places around a sun
where it’s warm enough for liquid surface water. NASA researchers are
dubbing Kepler-452b as Earth 2.0.
Kepler-452b is about 60 percent larger than Earth and orbits its parent
star, Kepler-452, once every 385 days — just 20 days longer than Earth
orbits the Sun. Kepler-452 is also a lot like our own host star; it's
roughly the same size and temperature and only 20 percent brighter.
Kepler-452 is also 6 billion years old, approximately 1.5 billion years
older than our Sun.
"This is really the first step, and humankind’s first step, to answering
that question "Are we alone in the Universe?"
Kepler-452b’s system is about 1,400 light years away from our Solar System,
located in the constellation Cygnus. NASA researchers don’t know its exact
mass or what it’s made out of, but they said that previous research has
shown that planets the size of Kepler-452b are usually rocky. And since the
exoplanet has spent 6 billion years in orbit around its star, the chances
are good that life may be dwelling there.
"This is really the first step, and humankind’s first step, to answering
that question "Are we alone in the Universe?" John Jenkins, of the SETI
Institute, said at a NASA press conference. "You and I won’t be traveling to
these planets, but our children’s children’s children may."
The discovery of Kepler-452b is substantial but it’s not the first of its
kind. Last year, astronomers at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Researcher
Center announced the first Earth-sized exoplanet, Kepler-186f, found
orbiting in a star’s habitable zone. The main difference between Kepler-186f
and Kepler-452b is their host stars; Kepler-186 is a red dwarf whereas
Kepler-452 is much more closely related to our Sun.
The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009, with the goal of searching for
other Earth-like worlds within the Milky Way Galaxy. So far, the spacecraft
has found 4,696 exoplanet candidates, and follow-up observations and
analysis have confirmed 1,030 of these candidates to exist. Through the
combined efforts of Kepler and other astronomers we know of 1,927 exoplanets
out there in the cosmos.
Emirates replaces Conakry with Bamoko
24 July 2015
Emirates airline will add Bamako, the capital and largest
city of Mali, to its global network from 25th October 2015.
Bamako is one of the fastest growing cities in the world with a population
of about 2,3 million people, and is located in the south western part of
Mali on the Niger River. Once services commence, it will become Emirates’
28th destination in Africa and 6th in West Africa.
Bamako will be linked to Emirates’ current four times weekly service to
Dakar, Senegal, which is operated by an Emirates Airbus A340-300 and offers
12 luxurious seats in First Class, 42 deep reclining seats in Business Class
and 213 spacious seats in Economy Class.
“There is currently no direct service between Dubai and Bamako. Mali has a
growing economy and huge tourism potential, and we expect that linking
Bamako to our Dakar service will greatly boost both business and leisure
travel to and from Mali,” said Adil Al Ghaith, Emirates Senior Vice
President, Commercial Operations, Northern and Western Africa.
The flight to Bamako will depart Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at
0720hrs and arrive in Bamako at 1310hrs. It will then depart Bamako at
1440hrs and arrive in Dakar at 1630hrs. The return flight will depart Dakar
at 1800hrs and arrive back in Dubai at 0730hrs the next morning.
Airbus confirms plans for next gen A380 superjumbo
25 July 2015
Airbus is to go ahead with plans to build a new generation version of the
A380 super jumbo.
President and chief executive, Fabrice Brégier told The Sunday Times that
the A380neo, which will have new engines, could be ready for sale in five
years.
“We will move to the A380neo type. You can say that. Absolutely. We will
need it between 2020 and 2025,” he said. The neo will cost $3 billion to
develop.
Brégier said Airbus had not decided whether the fuselage on the new version
would be extended to provide more seats, but that the company would not do a
stretched version “for one airline”...I assume he means Emirates!
New engines will help to cut the double decker aircraft’s operating costs.
The A380 programme has struggled to find customers; one carrier, Emirates,
accounts for about half the 300 aircraft ordered so far.
Brégier said he was “convinced there is a market” for a new A380 because
trends in aviation with fast-rising passenger numbers and slot constraints
at airports in many countries favouring bigger aircraft.
“The air passenger market is doubling every 15 years. Airlines can’t simply
rely on flying more planes more often. We have to have larger aircraft,” he
said.
“How can you imagine crowded Heathrow in 2030 without the A380? This is the
same for New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Frankfurt and China in a few
years.”
The Guardian view on media globalisation: good news for
the Financial Times
24 July 2015 (Thoughtful and optimistic commentary on the
Nikkei acquisition of the Financial Times)
The Financial Times is one of the best newspapers in the
world, not just in Britain. It is quick without being rash, accurate without
leaden pedantry, thoughtful without being ponderous, and unpredictable in
its opinions without being tediously contrarian. On top of all that, it even
makes money. So its sale to the Japanese newspaper publisher Nikkei is a
matter of global interest in the media business, and a fascinating
development in the globalisation and digitisation of our industry. As a
newspaper market, Japan has many advantages over the English-speaking world.
Newspaper circulations are huge: the two biggest broadsheets sell 9m and 7m
print copies a day, while even the Nikkei newspaper, Japan’s equivalent of
the Financial Times, sells 3m broadsheet print copies a day – compared with
2m for the tabloid Daily Mail in the UK and a mere 200,000 for the FT
itself.
These subscription figures, and the unparalleled delivery system that makes
them possible, have so far cushioned the Japanese industry from the
advertising slump. Fiercely competitive local distributors keep almost every
household supplied with a daily paper, which is thus woven into the fabric
of everyday life. Barriers of language, culture and technological ecosystems
all tend to preserve this uniquely profitable media market. But Japanese
newspaper subscribers are getting old. The habit of print is weakening. More
and more people read on their smartphones. Students today hardly ever
subscribe to newspapers. It makes sense for Nikkei to spend its cash on one
of the few really successful global digital brands. The Financial Times is
almost unique in the English-speaking digital news business in funding its
digital operations in a rather Japanese way, by charging subscriptions
rather than relying on advertising. And it manages the trick, too, by
supplying reliable information entertainingly that allows readers to make
decisions that they hope will make them money.
Pearson, the previous owner of the FT, wants to concentrate on its
educational business, despite recent setbacks. It has kept the 50% of the
Economist that it owns. So the deal makes sense from that end, too. But what
about the readers of the paper, and the people who work there?
One of this week’s big business stories has been the scandal at Toshiba,
where earnings were inflated by 152bn yen (£780m) over the last decade, and
which shows the potential conflicts between British and Japanese attitudes
to financial scandals. The pressures on companies in both countries are
similar: if the bosses demand impossible performance figures, there is a
temptation for their subordinates to cook the books rather than admit
failure. But in Japan this is often regarded as a more or less victimless
crime. In Britain and America the interests of the shareholders are
paramount, and they see the crime as one with real victims – shareholders,
who are deprived of the accurate information they need to make the most
profitable decisions. The Financial Times is unequivocally on the side of
shareholders; Nikkei only questionably so.
The last really big corporate scandal in Japan, when Olympus was found to be
concealing losses of $1.3bn, resulted in the unceremonious sacking of the
(English) chief executive who revealed it. The Financial Times broke the
story; Nikkei did not cover it until it became wholly unavoidable. Nor would
readers of Nikkei be acutely aware that Japanese-made airbags have been
blowing up in the US since 2004, a story that has long preoccupied the New
York Times. Mainstream Japanese journalism is not corrupt, but it is
respectful, like the culture around it. Anglo-Saxon journalistic traditions
are not, at their best, respectful of anything. There are some things that
British newspapers should respect more, such as privacy, but it is also
possible for respect to shade into the kind of incurious deference to power
which lets scandalous behaviour flourish.
So there are obviously ways in which the deal might go wrong. But it is at
least as possible that it will go right. The better parts of each company’s
culture will come to influence the other. The world needs journalism that is
both measured and punchy and the FT is today one of the papers that best
supplies it. That in turn can only be sustained by a profitable business.
Nikkei has the capital and the Financial Times the global reach, the
language and the knowhow that could combine to build a media business that
can make a profit from quality even in the digital age.
Phase one of DWC to be ready by Q1 2022
18 July 2015
The expansion of Dubai's Al Maktoum
International Airport - to make it the world's biggest - will be completed
by the first quarter of 2022, according to a senior official.
Khalifa Al Zaffin, executive chairman, Dubai Aviation City Corporation (DACC),
said the expansion will increase the airport's annual passenger capacity
from the current five million passengers to 130 million.
In comments published in the July edition of Via Dubai, the official
newsletter of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), he said: "Our current
aim for Al Maktoum International Airport is twofold - to attract more
airlines to operate from the airport and ease passenger traffic at DXB until
such time that Phase 1 of the new airport is ready.
"In that context, AMIA is currently undergoing an expansionary phase that
will see its annual passenger handling capacity rise from the current five
million to seven million by early 2016," he said.
Last September, it was announced that Dubai is to spend $32 billion
expanding Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central (DWC),
making it the world’s largest airport.
Al Maktoum International Airport at DWC is expected to become the largest in
the world and will be developed in two phases.
Phase one will include two satellite buildings which will jointly be able to
handle around 120 million passengers annually and accommodate up to 100 A380
superjumbos at any given time.
It is anticipated the airport will ultimately be able to accommodate more
than 200 million passengers a year when complete, a quarter more than the
previous estimate of 160 million.
The announcement came as passenger traffic continues to grow at Dubai
International Airport and is expected to reach almost 100 million by the end
of 2020.
Separately, Via Dubai quoted Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, president of
DCAA and chairman of Dubai Airports said the aviation's importance will grow
significantly in the run up to Expo 2020.
"The UAE has an outstanding aviation infrastructure and globally recognized
for seamless travel facilitation. We are developing Al Maktoum International
Airport in Dubai World Central (DWC) into the world's biggest airport with
an annual capacity of over 220 million passengers. Alongside, we continue to
develop the Dubai International Airport which will handle 100 million
passengers when the expansion plans get over. Emirates and flydubai have
remained in expansion mode," he said.
"It has been rightly said that Dubai is exemplary of the heights that can be
reached when governments believe in the role of aviation as a strategic
economic growth partner and a powerful driver of social and economic
progress," added Sheikh Ahmed.
The implications are that current planning is
for the two airports to both be operational until at least the final
expansion of DWC is complete - which will probably not be until around 2030.
Up close with Pluto
16 July 2015
NASA’s New Horizons probe has just made history by
successfully completing its flyby of Pluto. This is the first time any space
probe has encountered the former ninth planet, and scientists are currently
swimming in data, which will no doubt lead to plenty of discoveries. New
Horizons has been a historic mission in numerous ways and was designed quite
ingeniously.
New Horizons blasted off in January 19 2006, and was the fastest launch
recorded, reaching speeds of over 36,000 miles per hour. The spacecraft
passed the Moon after just nine hours, around eight times quicker than the
Apollo programme, and reached Jupiter the following year.
Most spacecraft are powered by solar radiation, converting incoming light
into electricity to keep onboard equipment warm and power communication and
processing units. But at nearly four billion miles from the sun, the solar
radiation is so faint by the time a spacecraft reaches Pluto that it would
need impractically large solar panels to harvest enough energy. Instead, New
Horizons is powered by a nuclear generator – appropriately containing
plutonium fuel – that gives off heat as it decays.
New Horizons was still moving quite fast a year into its
mission, but a quick slingshot around Jupiter boosted its speed by more than
9,000 mph. If not for this boost, it would have taken three more years to
reach Pluto.
It will take until late 2016 for all the data to transmitted
back to Earth at a rate of just 2 kilobits a second. It takes 4.5 hours for
the signal to reach Earth.
The fuel is designed to last until the late 2020s or even
beyond. When it runs out of power, astronomers will lose contact with the
probe and it will continue to drift out past the Kuiper belt and eventually
leave the solar system.
Bolding going where no space probe has gone before.
All change in the Middle East?
16 July 2015
The Iran nuclear deal is done. It’s a
historic moment. But as important as it is to defang Iran’s nuclear threat,
the bigger story is what the deal means for Iran’s new standing in a
crumbling geopolitical order. Three changes will matter most.
First, the competition between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia will heat
up, and the balance of power will tip toward Tehran. Saudi Arabia is now
pumping the most oil since 1980, but an unsanctioned Iran will cut into
Saudi market share. Iran is the holder of the world's fourth-largest proven
crude oil reserves and second-largest natural gas reserves, and will soon
bring 1 million barrels a day back to the market. Meanwhile, proxy fights in
Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere will intensify. As the U.S. and Europe
look to reduce their presence in the region, the escalation of proxy wars
between Saudi Arabia and Iran will heighten the risk of direct conflict.
Next, Iran will open for business. The world will trade again with Iran’s
$420 billion economy. Trade with the EU could expand as much as 400 percent,
from $8.3 billion last year. Economic benefits will spill across the Gulf.
Dubai will become a launch pad for foreign investment in Iran. And the
investors are coming. Iran is not just another Middle Eastern petro-state;
it offers investors a diversified economy with an established capital
market. Its population of 80 million, the second largest in the Middle East,
promises consumer demand across sectors as varied as travel and logistics to
pharmaceuticals and consumer products. By some estimates, the nuclear deal
could accelerate growth in Iran to 8 percent over the next three years and
motivate the potential return of hundreds of thousands of highly talented
Iranians.
Finally, Iran will lead the fight against ISIS. Obama is in no position to
put U.S. boots on the ground, but the more battles ISIS wins in the Middle
East, the more of a problem it will become internationally. Washington needs
someone with the will and resources to deal ISIS a strong blow. And that’s
Iran. Though economic sanctions and a global arms embargo have limited the
sophistication of Iran’s military powers (Iran spends a fifth as much as
Saudi Arabia on boosting its military assets), the expansion of Iranian
influence and economic capabilities will pave the way for greater defense
leadership in the Middle East. Iraqi Shia militias, backed by Iran, will
offer a desperately-needed counter to ISIS.
Will Iran cheat on the deal? Yes. The U.S. and Iran aren’t about to start
trusting one other, much less become fast friends. But in the world created
by the deal, Iran starts to matter much more than Saudi Arabia and other
old-guard U.S. allies.
Today’s deal isn’t the end of the story. It’s only the end of the first
chapter.
A deal - and now for the hard work
13 July 2015
European leaders lined up to say Grexit has been averted, but
this snappy soundbite glides over the fact the eurozone has simply agreed to
open negotiations on an €86bn (£62bn) bailout. Although this is a step to
shoring-up confidence in the euro, it is only a promise to have more talks
with no guarantee of success.
Talks on the bailout plan are forecast to last around four weeks. “We know
time is critical for Greece, but there are no shortcuts,” said Klaus Regling,
the official in charge of the the European Stability Mechanism, the
eurozone’s permanent bailout fund that Greece hopes to tap.
But these formal talks can only begin, if eurozone leaders avoid several
political and financial tripwires. The Greek government has until the end of
Wednesday to ensure that sweeping reforms to its pension system and VAT
rates are written into law. If Greek lawmakers meet this eurozone-imposed
deadline, the baton will pass to the creditors. At least five countries,
including Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, will have to put the idea of
opening negotiations on a bailout to a parliamentary vote.
Politics could be overtaken by financial deadlines. Athens faces demands to
repay €7bn of debts in July, including €3.5bn due to the European Central
Bank on Monday (20 July).
Eurozone officials are working round the clock to come up with emergency
funds that will help Greece bridge the gap before a permanent bailout kicks
in. “It’s not going to be easy,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the hawkish Dutch
politician, who was re-elected chair of the eurozone group of finance
ministers on Monday. Several options were being discussed on bridge finance,
but no one had found “the golden key to solve the problem”, he said,
although he hopes to see progress by Wednesday.
And that is the short simplified version.
How damaged is eurozone and EU by Greek debacle?
13 July 2015 - Robert Peston, Economics editor, BBC
Over the weekend, the director of one of the world's biggest drug companies
told me that this company had given up expecting to be paid by Greece for
the life-saving pharmaceuticals it makes.
But for those dependent on its cancer and other treatments to stay alive,
for example, it would not stop supplying them - though now for free. It
could not and would not pass a death sentence by withholding medicines.
But whether any new cancer sufferers - those not diagnosed till today -
would be able to obtain these treatments, now that's another question. I
asked and my answer was a shrug and sheepish look.
That brings home to me the magnitude of what is happening in Greece.
We simply haven't seen since the 1930s a rich developed country collapse as
Greece is doing right now - millions of people threatened with losing their
life savings, companies on the point of collapse, cancer sufferers unsure
what treatments, if any, will be available to them.
Now to most outsiders, this demarche is in part the consequence of the
incompetence and greed of a succession of Greek governments, and the
negligence, incompetence and political insensitivity of the rest of the
eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.
In other words, debtor and creditors are both to blame, arguably in equal
measure.
So what is particularly horrifying to dispassionate observers is the
perception that most of the eurozone, and especially Germany, is hell-bent
on making an example of Athens, humiliating the government of Alexis Tsipras,
as the price of a financial rescue that - in a best case - will continue to
make Greeks poorer, though not as poor as leaving the euro would do.
The unappealing facts are these.
On Friday, Mr Tsipras capitulated - and accepted tax rises, pension cuts and
economic reforms that his creditors had been demanding and which the Greek
people overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum a few days earlier.
But rather than using Mr Tsipras's personally painful climbdown - which
involved forming an entente with hated opposition parties and splitting his
own party - as a basis for consensual discussions on a sustainable bailout,
Eurogroup finance ministers, led by Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble, denigrated
it as too little, too late.
Instead, Mr Schaeuble tried to bundle Athens towards a door no one thought
existed, since the euro is supposed to be forever - the one marked
"temporary exit".
This so terrified Mr Tsipras that he has since, in the Eurogroup meeting and
an all-night meeting of eurozone government heads - which at the time of
writing is still continuing - allowed himself into negotiations that, if
successful, would rob Greece of all meaningful economic sovereignty.
Tax, spending, privatisations and the structure of industries - the stuff
that shapes lives - would be determined by emergency legislation rushed
through the Greek parliament by Wednesday, with no opportunity for serious
debate.
Is that democracy?
Only if an entire parliament demonstrably surrenders by the middle of this
week would the rest of the eurozone start talks on possibly extending the
additional €86bn of finance Greece needs to prevent future default and the
total collapse of its banking system.
And for what it's worth, the presumption among other eurozone leaders that
Mr Tsipras is willing and able to deliver the abject obeisance of Athens
lawmakers may turn out to be naive.
Here in Athens, all I detect from government members, bankers and others is
fatalism that they're ruined, more or less whatever happens - which makes
their behaviour unpredictable.
There would in effect be a takeover, for years, of Greece by Berlin,
Brussels and the IMF in Washington.
Monitors, from the IMF, would be permanently stationed in Athens, to prevent
backsliding by the administration.
Privatisation proceeds would be put into some kind of escrow account,
possibly in Luxembourg.
Athens would be deprived of even a figleaf of national economic autonomy.
Now it is perfectly plausible to argue that Mr Tsipras and his colleagues
have brought this upon themselves by their incompetence - especially in
their negotiations with the rest of the eurozone - since being elected at
the turn of the year.
But if the eurozone and EU stands for anything, it is solidarity between
member nations.
The widespread perception that Berlin and Brussels have put fiscal
rectitude, the importance of a country paying its debts, above humanitarian
concern for a nation's plight, or even the long-term sustainability of the
euro itself, will reap a bitter future harvest for eurozone and the wider EU.
Will the eurozone's marginalisation of Greece make it harder or easier for
David Cameron to sell continued membership of the EU to the people of the
UK?
Will the offer by Mr Schaeuble of temporary leave of absence for Greece from
the euro make it harder or easier for Brussels, Berlin and the European
Central Bank in Frankfurt to quell the growing doubts of investors - who
fund all important economic activity - that the euro is the permanent
enterprise it claims to be?
Will the rise and rise of populist anti-EU parties all over Europe be
staunched or encouraged by reports that an EU official described Mr
Tsipras's treatment by other EU leaders as the equivalent of "waterboarding"?
The eurozone crisis began in Greece in 2010. It threatens to degenerate into
an existential crisis for the wider EU.
Greece - again
13 July 2015
Sorry to give you more on Greece - but it is a spell-binding
as it is depressing.
Where are we now: it is midnight in Dubai:
Alexis Tsipas , the other 18 eurozone leaders, and the heads
of the IMF, ECB and EU are locked in talks at the emergency summit to
discuss Greece’s request for a third bailout.
The proposal on the table would force Greece to vote through sweeping
changes by Wednesday night. Or, it would be offered a ‘temporary Grexit’; an
opportunity to restructure its debts.
The plan also suggests Greece surrenders €50bn of valuable assets to a
euro-body, who would sell them off to pay down debt. Unless Athens cracks on
with privatisations in a way it has never managed before.
We may know more in the morning.
Here are tonight's thoughts from the BBC's Richard Peston: @Peston
on twitter.
Bemused that German fin min Schaeuble doesn't see that
temporary Greek euro exit would more surely destroy euro than permanent exit
#Greece
But once principle of temporary exit is established, the euro
becomes a glorified currency peg, & they never endure.
Greek bankers tell me there have been no talks with them on
how to manage euro exit. Tragic negligence?
And costs for European Central Bank of euro exit for Greece
would be massive. Also survival of euro would be in doubt
If eurozone governments force regime change on Greece as
price of rescue, euro risks being seen as antipathetic to democracy
I've never covered a crisis like the #GreeceCrisis where no
deadline is real, while the destruction of an economy grinds on
remorselessly
3 killer lines in eurogroup rescue offer:
1) Greece needs additional finance of €82-86bn - boost debt to well over
200% GDP. Bonkers?
2) Greek banks need additional capital of up to €25bn to
absorb losses from implosion of econ - caused by forced bank closures!
3) if deal not reached, Greece should be offered "swift
negotiations on time out of euro, with possible debt restructuring"
Understandable
@atsipras
recoils at eurozone insistence privatisation proceeds to go to Luxembourg
escrow. This like divorce humiliation
@Peston is good - and I suspect spot on in his concern that
any form of Greek exit - permanent or temporary - is a disaster for the
euro.
But there are so many more issues at stake:
There are many in the euro-zone that want regime change in
Greece. They do not trust Alexis Tsipras and his ruling left Syriza party.
The idea of an escrow account filled with Greek assets reflects this lack of
trust. They do not believe that promised changes will be made. Demands that
the controversial reforms be approved by the Greek government and enacted
into law by Wednesday were described as “utter blackmail” by leading party
members.
There is likely to be a split in Syriza and the government
may not survive. A cabinet reshuffle – removing those ministers who had
refused to vote the austerity package through parliament early Saturday –
could come as early as Monday.
It is not just Greece that is divided; Europe is split like
never before under the Union: the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is now
warning that there cannot be a deal at any cost. A German government paper
floated the idea of expelling Greece from the eurozone for at least five
years. But France and Italy argue that Greece must be kept in the currency
union, fearing Grexit would be a historic mistake that would damage the
credibility of the entire European Union.
Meanwhile several countries that have recently emerged from their own
painful austerity bailouts, such as Portugal and Ireland, want to ensure
Greece signs up to credible reforms to get further help. Finland is certain
to reject another bailout for Greece to avoid a schism that could topple its
two-month-old government.
Which led to this wonderful tweet: Alex Andreou @sturdyAlex
: We practically HANDED you Eurovision 2012 with our 8 points. We all used
NOKIAs for a decade. Bastards.
Finland’s refusal could embolden other eurozone members to block a deal,
especially those in central Europe and the Baltic, which are proving to be
the fiercest critics of the Greek government. Lithuania has hit out at what
the Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, called Greece’s “mañana”
approach to negotiations; Slovakia fears the eurozone could become a
“zombie” area if Greece stays.
Potentially, eurozone governments could override Finland, or another small
country, by resorting to an emergency voting procedure that requires only
85% of eurozone governments to support a bailout. But this could be
politically explosive, as well as uncharted legal terrain. To use the
special voting rule, eurozone leaders would have to agree that “the economic
and financial sustainability” of the eurozone is at stake. But many
governments have spent weeks arguing exactly the opposite.
Whatever happens Europe will never be the same.
Those countries that sit on the outside of the Euro - such as
the UK and Switzerland - are grinning in the background.
Above all else - if Greece does stay in the euro zone its
sovereignty is gone. It will be run from Berlin. There will be euro
officials drafting laws in Greece and overseeing their implementation;
policy will be run from Berlin. And Greece will be left in political
turmoil.
The union was always an experiment. It may have already
failed.
Eurogroup draft on demands for Greek
reforms
12 July 2015 Reuters
Euro zone finance ministers meeting in crisis talks in Brussels want Greece
to commit to more measures to reform its economic system and government
finances before they agree to negotiate a bailout loan.
Following is a partial draft Eurogroup statement, seen by Reuters. It was
discussed by the ministers late on Saturday, before they resumed talks on
Sunday.
Euro zone sources said it was likely to be amended but formed a basis for
further discussion on Sunday. Sources also said ministers had pressed Greece
to take other measures, including passing early legislation increasing
value-added tax and making the national statistics agency independent:
"The Eurogroup takes note of the request by the Greek authorities for a
three-year ESM stability support and the accompanying list of policy
commitments, including a comprehensive list of prior action. The Eurogroup
reiterates the need for continued full involvement of the IMF.
The Eurogroup welcomes the assessment by the institutions that the list of
policy commitments of the Greek authorities represents a basis to start the
negotiations on a new program. The Eurogroup also agrees with the
institutions that the package needs to be significantly strengthened and
broadened in order to provide for appropriate conditionality for a possible
three-year ESM program. The Eurogroup thus welcomes the additional following
commitments of the Greek authorities on the basis of a clear timetable:
- fully comply with the medium-term primary surplus target of 3.5 percent of
GDP by 2018, according to a yearly schedule to be agreed with the
institutions;
- carry out ambitious pension reforms and specific policies to fully
compensate for the fiscal impact of the Constitutional Court ruling on the
2012 pension reform and to implement the zero deficit clause;
- adopt more ambitious product market reforms with a clear timetable for
implementation of all OECD toolkit I recommendations, including Sunday
trade, sales periods, over-the-counter pharmaceutical products, pharmacy
ownership, milk, bakeries. On the follow-up of the OECD toolkit II,
manufacturing needs to be included in the prior action;
- on energy markets, the privatization of the electricity transmission
network operator (ADMIE) must proceed, unless replacement measures can be
found that have equivalent effect, as agreed by the institutions;
- on labor markets, undertake rigorous reviews of collective bargaining,
industrial action and collective dismissals in line with the timetable and
the approach suggested by the institutions. Any changes should be based on
international and European best practices, and should not involve a return
to past policy settings which are not compatible with the goals of promoting
sustainable and inclusive growth;
- fully implement the relevant provisions of the Treaty on Stability,
Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, in
particular to make the Fiscal Council fully operational;
- adopt the necessary steps to strengthen the financial sector, including
decisive action on non-performing loans, transposition of BRRD and measures
to strengthen governance of the HFSF and the banks;
- develop a significantly scaled up privatization program with improved
governance. A working group with the institutions shall provide proposals
for better implementation mechanisms;
- amend or compensate for legislation adopted during 2015 which have not
been agreed with the institutions and run counter to the program
commitments;
- implement the key remaining elements from the December 2014 state of play
of the fifth review of the second economic adjustment program."
Another day of Greek drama
13 July 2015
Inside the most expensive boarding school in the world
By Harry Mount Daily Telegraph 26 January 2015
It is known as the school of kings, counting among its alumni the Shah of
Iran, Prince Rainier of Monaco and King Farouk of Egypt. Its catchment area
was once the glittering palaces that housed the grandest families on the
Continent: the Metternichs, the Borgheses and the Hohenlohes.
But Institut Le Rosey is now spreading its net to humble old Britain. For
the first time in its 135-year history, the prestigious Swiss boarding
school has been recruiting gilt-edged pupils, aged seven to 18, in London.
Co-educational since 1967, it is keen to claim a slice of a market hitherto
dominated by British boarding schools such as Eton and Harrow.
But at £80,000 a year - more than twice their fees - the most expensive
school in the world will hardly be cherry-picking the brightest and best
middle-class British pupils. Their parents find British school fees steep
enough already.
London, however, has become the city of choice for the world’s richest
parents so is also home to the world’s richest kids. And it is they who
formed the target audience for Le Rosey’s recruitment drive last week, held
at the city’s Swiss Embassy.
There has long been a tiny British contingent at the school, making up five
per cent of its 400 pupils. Its intake hails from 63 countries, with no more
than 10% of its students coming from any one country, to prevent a single
nationality dominating.
Sir Roger Moore and Elizabeth Taylor sent their children there. John
Lennon’s son Sean studied there too, as did the Duke of Kent and Winston
Spencer Churchill, grandson of the wartime Prime Minister.
But the days when it served an inter-continental upper-class elite are long
gone.
“Le Rosey was different in the 1950s when I first came here,” says Taki
Theodoracopulos, the Spectator columnist who lives in Gstaad, home to one of
Le Rosey’s two campuses. “Then all the kids were upper-class - Rainier and
the Shah were looked down upon. It was mostly American. Then the Italians
and the French came. And then, in the 1970s, the Arabs arrived.”
As the international mega-rich pour in, the school is losing its
Euro-Anglo-American founding ethos.
“That’s why they’re recruiting the British,” says Taki, whose son attended
the school. “They want to get some Europeans, and the odd token Briton and
American, but they can’t admit it.”
Some of that British sheen is supplied by Michael Gray, Le Rosey’s British
headmaster, educated at a Liverpool grammar school.
Otherwise, the school is not only in another country, it might as well be on
another planet as far as most people are concerned.
The winter term is spent in Gstaad, with lessons finishing by lunchtime so
the children can hit the slopes for the afternoon. In spring, they head to
the school’s Château du Rosey campus nestled on the site of a Gothic,
14th-century château in the village of Rolle on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The privately-owned institution is astonishingly well-equipped, with a
shooting range, 1,000-seat concert hall and an equestrian centre boasting 30
horses. Few other schools have their own 38-foot yacht on Lake Geneva, let
alone a spa for stressed-out pupils to unwind in at the end of the long
school day. Classes are in French and English, in a system called “à la
carte bilingualism”. The teacher-pupil ratio is an enviable 1:5.
But for those who can afford the fees, perhaps none of this seems out of the
ordinary.
“Seeing a helicopter land on the football pitches with a Russian pupil
stepping out with his parents, I was somewhat shocked at the in-your-face
parades of wealth,” says Annabel, 25, who worked as a housemaster’s au pair
at Le Rosey in 2008. “It is very different to a British boarding school - it
is run like a business. One pupil had 'I AM RICH’ planted across his jumper.
I felt the boys definitely wanted to prove their wealth in a more crass way
than the girl pupils.”
Yet the school is at pains to deny that money is a divisive issue among its
students.
“No one goes around, saying 'I’m richer than you’,” Gray told the Times,
“It’s completely unsnobbish. If people put on airs and graces they wouldn’t
survive.”
The school is also keen to stress it’s not just for those who have money but
no brains. All the pupils sit official external examinations - the
International Baccalaureate (IB) or the French baccalauréat. Only those who
can expect to get into university are offered a place . And only one in
three applicants is accepted.
“It’s certainly not academic,” says Taki, “But the school does do its best
to improve the kids. My son was happy there - and they are polite. My wife
was going up in the ski lift the other day with three Le Rosey kids. One was
Russian, one American, one Arab. They couldn’t have been nicer or more
polite.”
Unsurprisingly, this rarefied elite ends up forming close bonds.
“I saw a lot of relationships,” says Annabel, who now works in advertising
in Australia. “Many of the boarding students were renting out pretty
expensive hotel rooms in Gstaad for the weekend, where they could get up to
mischief without adult or teacher supervision.”
Go to Le Rosey - or, even better, marry another Ancien Roséen, as Old
Roseans are called - and you’re set up for life. There’s an Anciens Roséens
alumni programme and a strictly private directory that lets you network with
other super-rich old boys and girls.
With that exclusive alumni network, along with the school’s fabulous
settings and eye-watering fees, it’s hard not to agree with F Scott
Fitzgerald: the very rich “are different from you and me”. And they start
being very different at a very young age.
Greece’s fight is for democracy in Europe. That’s why we must
support it
6 July 2015 Owen Jones in The Guardian
From the cradle of democracy, a lion has roared. It is
difficult to overstate the pressure the Greek people have both endured and
defied. A country that has already experienced an austerity-induced economic
disaster with few precedents among developed nations in peacetime has
suffered a sustained campaign of economic and political warfare. The
European Central Bank – which has only recently deigned to publish some of
the minutes of its meetings – capped liquidity for Greek banks, driving them
to the verge of collapse. There were stringent capital controls, and
desperate queues outside banks followed. A country desperate to stay within
the euro was told it would be ejected, and with calamitous results.
That’s what the EU pulled off in Italy and Berlusconi – it should have been
his people who removed him
Martin Schulz, the European parliament’s president and a so-called social
democrat, whose attitude towards democracy can be generously described as
ambiguous, called for the removal of Greece’s elected government in favour
of a technocratic government.
It wasn’t bluster. That’s what the EU and the markets previously pulled off
in Greece and, yes, in Italy: however much justifiable distaste exists for
Silvio Berlusconi, it should have been his own people who removed him. In
Greece itself, the oligarch-owned “free media” acted as a political machine
(sound familiar?), pumping out relentless propaganda in favour of
capitulating to the creditors’ demands. An alliance between Greece’s
economic elite and the EU great powers told the Greek people: however tough
your lives have been in the last few years, your world will cave in unless
you acquiesce. And still the Greek people voted no – not narrowly, but
overwhelmingly.
The referendum was, of course, a rejection of an austerity programme that
has unleashed what is commonly described in Greece as a humanitarian crisis.
Since Lehman Brothers crashed in 2008, austerity has always relied on the
displacement of blame from elites to elsewhere. It was Goldman Sachs who
helped the then Greek government to cook the country’s books to win entry
into the euro. It was German and French banks who profitably and recklessly
lent to Greece, just as US banks disastrously showered subprime mortgages on
low-paid Americans. It was Germany who benefited from being able to export
its consumer goods to peripheral European countries such as Greece.
After the crash, Greece was forced to implement measures that sent debt
hurtling to 180% of GDP, doubled poverty, left a quarter of Greeks and over
half of young people without work, raised the suicide and infant mortality
rate, left many without healthcare, and shrunk the economy by a quarter.
Precious little of the bailouts went to Greece; instead they went to the
European banks that had recklessly lent in the first place. While Germany’s
postwar economic renaissance owed everything to debt relief – including from
war-devastated countries such as Greece – Athens was denied the write-offs
it desperately needed. As French economist Thomas Piketty points out,
“Germany is the single best example of a country that, throughout its
history, has never repaid its external debt”, and Berlin is “profiting from
Greece” because of its high-interest loans. The weak euro makes German goods
so internationally competitive, and has been a linchpin of the country’s
recent economic success.
But this revolt was about something much bigger, and that is why Greece
remains in great danger. This is about the very nature of the European Union
itself. The European project was founded in the rubble of a war of
annihilation, genocide and totalitarianism. It was intended to secure peace,
prosperity and democracy for the people of Europe. This dream has become
something of a nightmare for a growing number of Europeans. A democratic
deficit is unaddressed. The Transatlantic Treaty Investment Partnership is
negotiated in secret with large corporations, conspiring to give them the
power to sue elected governments in secret courts to try to stop policies
they believe hit their profits. The EU treaty negotiated in 2011 effectively
forbade any future eurozone government from pursuing an expansionary fiscal
policy. Other treaties and directives enshrine free-market dogma in law.
Austerity is mindlessly implemented across the eurozone with terrible human
consequences: in Spain, too, around half of young people are out of work.
Syriza was a revolt against this Europe of austerity and
corporate power, in favour of a democratic, socially progressive Europe.
Podemos in Spain is part of this revolt, as is Sinn Féin in Ireland. If the
referendum had produced a yes, then it would have represented a potentially
terminal defeat for this gathering pan-European revolt. Instead, it has now
been emboldened. Unfortunately the EU elites are not stupid, and realise
this. They fear – justifiably – that if Syriza is seen to win concessions,
the rebellion will spread. The resignation of Yanis Varoufakis is almost
certainly part of an attempt to allow them to save face and do a deal.
But the EU is in a genuine bind. If Greece is ejected from the eurozone, the
currency is no longer an indivisible union and a precedent will be set for
the ejection of its members. If the ECB abandons Greece, the eurozone’s
reputation will not recover. This is why Greece has bargaining power in its
quest for debt relief and for an abandonment of austerity that has already
ravaged the country. The EU still wishes to make an example of the country:
by forcing Syriza to implement policies that will destroy the government, by
making “the economy scream” (to quote Henry Kissinger) until it is ejected
from office, or even a disastrous default and removal from the eurozone. It
may still succeed. And that is why Greece desperately needs support.
Europe after the Greek referendum:
Angela Merkel must take the lead
6 July 2015 - The Guardian editorial
This is a moment that demands both clear thinking and swift action by
European leaders, qualities not so often displayed in a union usually
characterised by ambiguity, complexity and delay. Those are necessary
lubricants in everyday Europe, a collective that always has to live with
contradictions and differences. But Europe after Greece is not everyday
Europe. It is a union perilously close to a disaster that, while certainly
not terminal, could be very damaging indeed.
Simply put, those leaders, above all Chancellor Angela Merkel, have to
decide whether they want to keep Greece in, or whether they will let that
unhappy country slip away. If Greece leaves the euro, there is no guarantee
that it won’t leave the EU altogether. After the referendum these are no
longer speculative possibilities, lying somewhere beyond the latest deadline
for this or that repayment. They are here now, right in Europe’s face,
needing resolution within a matter of days or, at the very most, weeks.
Measures of immediate economic support, putting the Greek economy on hold
until then, are probably needed within hours.
It would be foolish to predict the precise course of events, but broadly
speaking Europe has two options. It can, in very rapid negotiations, work
out a new and better deal for Greece, including a public promise that
significant debt relief is part of the plan, thus sustaining and vindicating
Alexis Tsipras’s government. That is something that the many critics of his
populist tactics, including Greece’s own yes voters, would find a bitter
pill to swallow, as of course would many voters in the countries that would
have to pay for such a deal. But it would keep the Greeks in. Or Europe can
conduct any negotiations in a laggard or inflexible way, precipitating
either a fresh breakdown of relations or a sour deal. Such a deal would be
no better or worse than what was on offer before the referendum.
Particularly after what was seen in Greece as arrogant interference in its
national politics in the runup to the referendum, that would set the
European leadership in a possibly permanent relationship of hostility with a
large segment of the Greek people, and deepen the political polarisation
already evident in that country. Some on the European side are speaking of
the negotiations, which could well start on Tuesday as a new Greek team
flies to Brussels, without the controversial Yanis Varoufakis but armed with
a document saying most political parties support the government in the
talks, as if they will consist of Greece making proposals and Europe saying
yes or no. But this is a profoundly negative way of approaching the
situation.
It seems likely that the majority of no voters in Greece intended to convey
a message on the lines of “Now they’ll finally see how utterly fed up, angry
and hopeless we are.” The vote, in other words, was a plea as well as a
warning. It was a plea for a human response, not in terms of sympathetic
coverage on television or newspapers – the Greeks have had almost too much
of that – but in terms of policy.
The biggest share of the responsibility for what happens next unavoidably
falls on the German chancellor, both because she is, in theory, the
strongest of Europe’s leaders and because part of her electorate is
resistant to such a plea. She has shown in the past an occasional capacity
to switch out of her normally passive mode and take decisive action, to go
from drift to drive. But scepticism about her leadership qualities has been
growing in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. She is seen as having failed to
handle Mr Tsipras effectively, and to be unwilling or unable to convince her
own voters that any substantial additional price for continued Greek
membership of the eurozone is worth paying. Yet Europe now desperately needs
her to transcend her nature, to rise to the occasion and to take decisive
charge of the crisis. There is, literally, nobody else who can do it.
Britain and other non-eurozone countries are on the sidelines. France’s
François Hollande can stand with her, and others as well, but she alone can
lead.
The representation of Germany as an aggressive power, exercising in a new
form Germany’s old ambition of dominating Europe, is a nonsense. Mrs
Merkel’s reluctance has mirrored that of her country, which wanted to be
largely left alone with the still unfinished task of reunification and with
the attempt to maintain its economic effectiveness. But events will not
leave either Germany or Mrs Merkel alone. It will be a testing time for them
both.
Back to being mothers says the FA
6 July 2015
The Football Association is mired in the 195s and run by
crusty old men still talking about Stanley Matthews.
I wish this was not true but a message from the on twitter
confirmed all the worst stereotypes:
England's "Lionesses" - who are professional athletes -
managed to make it to the semifinals of the World Cup and finished third
after beating world champions Germany in the 3rd/4th place playoff. The
men's team has not progressed this far since 1966.
And this is the best that the FA could come up with. The
reaction on social media to @England's tweet was wonderfully swift.
John Amaechi OBE @JohnAmaechi
Seriously @england when you take a Twitter handle that includes a country,
you really shouldn't tweet from the 70's.
The FA has deleted the tweet. Almost guaranteed to have been
written by a male.
Plenty of people have also wondered what people are offended
about - but it is the sort of casual sexism that is always inappropriate and
ill-considered. No one would talk of the men returning (after their very
short world cup campaign) to being fathers and sons.
Greece’s no vote: eight days that shook a continent
6 July 2015 The Guardian editorial
Kicking the can down the road has been the
cliche of choice over a slow euro crisis that has steadily strangled the
life out of the Greek economy. But at some point Europe was bound to run out
of road. That happened on Sunday night, when it emerged that the Greek
people had said no to continuing to engage with their creditors on the same
suffocating terms.
Just over a week ago, Alexis Tsipras staked his future on forcing this
denouement. The eight days that followed his midnight declaration of a
plebiscite, to accept or reject the creditors’ terms for the latest slug of
overdraft, have witnessed many extraordinary things. The Greek parliament
licensed a hasty referendum on a question that had already been overtaken by
events. A ballot paper written in jargon posed a ludicrously technical
question, opening up a void for emotion to fill. Mixing talk of “terror”
from their partners with haze about what would happen after a no, Mr Tsipras
and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, aimed squarely for the heart
rather than the head. Meanwhile, Greeks faced the fiercest financial
controls ever seen in modern Europe: bank doors were shut, supplies
disrupted, and citizens queued at every cashpoint for their ration of notes.
In countries such as Germany, where history engenders suspicion of
referendums, it may have looked like a paradigm case of how not to do
democracy.
But the response of the creditors was more
extraordinary still. The first noises from the council of finance ministers
and the European Central Bank sounded so hawkish that they might have been
trying to get the vote cancelled. But then came a bit of a rethink: it
emerged that the ECB was capping, rather than cutting off, liquidity
support, and leaders including Angela Merkel spied an opportunity to rid
themselves of a tricksy interlocutor. They imagined scared voters rallying
to yes, trashing Mr Tsipras’s personal authority and perhaps unravelling his
loose-knit Syriza alliance. By signalling that voting no would push Greece
out of the euro, they broke all the usual protocols by weighing into someone
else’s democratic contest. It was an appallingly presumptuous path to go
down. Now, after Greece has said no, Mr Tsipras’s future is not the
immediate question. It is the fate of the euro itself which is hanging by a
thread.
All the eurozone leaders have their own mandates and domestic pressures, but
those in the prosperous north should have grasped how much less room for
manoeuvre there was for a Greek government presiding over a society which
hardship has pushed to the edge of ruin. Having scotched one referendum plan
under the altogether more clubbable George Papandreou government, northern
leaders seeing the plebiscite resurface in less palatable form should have
done a little soul-searching, about whether it is sustainable for Europe to
allow itself to be pitted against “the people” in any one state. Above all,
the creditors should have shown humility about the abject failure of five
years of imposed austerity, which have not even succeeded in the very narrow
terms of making it feasible for Athens to pay its debts.
The messy fallout from the referendum will need to be much more adroitly
managed than the campaign. Athens needs to cool the rhetoric, and negotiate
with steely calm. It may be economically weak, but the logic of the
negotiation could be on its side. If Greece is forced out of the euro,
contracts will be disrupted and supplies may dry up for a while, but in
principle a carefully managed devaluation could provide a path away from
penury. For the broader eurozone, by contrast, forcing Greece out will
produce no upside. Instead of a negotiated debt settlement, official
creditors could lose everything. A slow-burn fuse would be lit under the
whole single-currency project, as markets speculate on where may be next.
And now that the respectable course of EU-backed orthodoxy has failed at the
ballot box, there is also a risk of political contagion, with untold
consequences for the more fundamental and more precious project of kinship
across the continent.
European leaders who have been used to getting their way in the past cannot
presume that they will do so in future. They must show some humility and
listen to a Greek people who have been driven to this leap in the dark. They
must come up with reforms to fix a rickety single currency from its
foundations. In time, that will mean underpinning monetary integration with
broader sovereignty-sharing. More immediately, it means having the honesty
to admit that the full Greek debts will not be repaid, and being ready to
negotiate towards something more realistic.
Koh Tao murder trial
2 July 2015
Burmese migrant workers Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both 22, go on
trial next week accused of killing Hannah Witheridge and David Miller, found
dead in late September 2014 on a beach on the island of Koh Tao, Thailand.
The two men were arrested in October 2014 and have been held
without bail.
Their case has revealed much about the exploitation and
helplessness of migrants across Thailand.
This combined with widespread criticism of the murder
investigation and allegations of powerful actors influencing developments,
continues to produce deep distrust or suspicion that the real people
responsible for the killings have yet to be apprehended.
Two weeks into the murder investigation, police had yet to charge anyone
with the killings. Amid conflicting statements regarding evidence and
suspects, the investigation appeared increasingly disorganised.
Under pressure to make an arrest, officials frequently suggested the murders
were committed by migrant workers.
In early October, authorities finally detained Zaw Lin and
Wai Phyo as suspects for the murders. Both were working on Koh Tao to save
money to support their families in impoverished Arakan [Rakhine] State in
Burma. The two allegedly confessed to the murders during questioning;
officials claimed the men’s guilt was also established by ‘solid’ forensic
evidence linking them to the crime scene and Hannah’s body.
The forensic evidence will only be introduced at trial and
has not been subject to independent verification. Zaw and Wai claim that
they had never met the two deceased. and if they were responsible for the
murder why would they have stayed working on the island rather than making a
hasty exit to Myanmar.
Several days after being arrested, Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo told
human rights monitors at Koh Samui prison that they were tortured following
detention, prior to being handed over to investigation
officials. A week later, both pleaded innocent to rights lawyers organised
for them. Both alleged their heads were covered with bags to imitate
suffocation while they were threatened with electrocution, burning and
execution to elicit confessions. Misconduct of translators assisting
investigators was also alleged.
Genuine justice in this case can be achieved through ensuring
a fair and transparent trial however this is not looking likely. If the
defense does not have time and resources to prepare their case, or if their
work is unfairly obstructed, there is a serious risk two innocent young men
could be convicted and possibly executed for the murders while the real
perpetrators live freely.
If they are found guilty, few people will accept it, and
Thailand's image will suffer. If they are found innocent, the credibility of
the police investigation will be in tatters, and Thailand's image will
suffer. In either case it is likely that the real murderer(s) will still be
at large, and unpunished
The are suggestions from the island that 112m THB was paid to
make all this go away by the island mafia family of the real murderers. Not
unusual in the Land of Smiles.
‘Torture made us admit killing British pair’
28 June 2015 The Sunday Times
The most striking thing about Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both 22,
is how small they are. Their black hair is closely cropped and skinny arms
and legs protrude from drab prison outfits. In their bare feet they stand
about and 5ft 3in and 4ft 11in respectively.
The men were detained after a bungled two-week manhunt for the people who
raped and murdered British tourist Hannah Witheridge, 23, and killed fellow
British traveller David Miller, 24, on the Thai diving mecca Koh Tao (Turtle
Island), in the early hours of September 15 last year.
Police suspicions moved in quick succession from locals to Burmese migrants,
then to British friends of the deceased, to speedboat drivers, to the son of
the island’s richest man and back, finally, to Burmese migrants.
The two former hotel workers smiled as they clutched telephones behind the
prison glass on the island of Koh Samui, eager to talk. Their trial for
murder opens on July 8.
“We did not commit this crime,” Zaw Lin insisted, repeating their claims of
innocence. They have recanted on confessions they claim were obtained after
they were beaten and scalded.
“We did not even see the people who were killed. We had the night off work
with our friend so we were near the beach, playing guitar,” Zaw Lin said.
“We had three drinks and got quite drunk because we don’t usually take
alcohol, so we went to bed.”
For now their home is a crowded prison with 700 inmates. Zaw Lin said: “We
are OK, we work cleaning bathrooms and we can exercise. Our cell only has 27
people so we can lie down and sleep, most are more crowded — one has 44
people.”
Both victims had head wounds inflicted by a heavy object police say was one
of the cumbersome beach hoes used to rake fire pits in the sand.
Miller, a fit, strong man who appears to have attempted to save Witheridge
from her attackers, drowned after being hit over the head, police said.
“Only an extremely violent and sadistic person could have done this. The
suspects show no sign of these tendencies,” Nakhon Chompoochart, the lead
defence lawyer said.
Zaw Lin admits he has been having trouble sleeping, the only sign that the
pair grasp the seriousness of their situation. “We can’t wait to go home,”
he said. “We miss our families.”
Police say they have forensic evidence linking the accused to the murders.
But there remain more questions than answers to the case.
On the night of the killings, Witheridge and Miller were in a crowd at the
AC bar 100 yards up the beach from where the young Burmese were relaxing.
The defence theory is that the hoe was used to hide gunshot wounds and the
bodies were arranged to disguise what had actually occurred. A photo taken
of Witheridge as she lay dead on the beach that has been obtained by The
Sunday Times appears to show shrapnel wounds to her face.
Few, if any, people who live on the island will speak out as the case has
been overshadowed by reports in the Thai media of interference by
“influential figures”, a euphemism for organised crime. No British witnesses
have come forward.
Since the murders of the young Britons there have been more suspicious
deaths on Koh Tao.
In January a Frenchman died in what looked like a staged suicide — his hands
were tied behind his back — and another European man, said to have been a
potential witness to events on the night of the double murder, was killed in
a diving accident.
Another Burmese man named Shy who was working at the AC bar on the night of
the murders has disappeared, people on the defence team said.
“Everything is dependent on the forensics result, since there
are no other witnesses to the crime so we will have to use the environment,”
Nakhon said. His biggest concern is that he thinks “there will definitely be
some political interference”.
The defence has struggled for adequate funding, raising fears of a
potentially flawed trial, according to British human rights activist Andy
Hall, whose Migrant Worker Rights Network is one of three non-government
organisations helping the defendants. “It’s been very stressful, we haven’t
had much money at all,” Hall said.
He said the British embassy and the UK government had been “very unco-operative,
very difficult”.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We want to see whoever committed
these murders brought to justice through a fair and transparent process.”
Back on Koh Tao, despite the murders and subsequent tragedy that now seems a
regular occurrence on the island, life goes on pretty much as usual. When
The Sunday Times visited the island in early June, hotels and bars were busy
despite it being the low season.
“There was a dip for a month or two after the murders,” one hotelier said,
and that is pretty much all anyone on the island wants to say.
The only reminder of the events of last September is a desultory memorial at
the rocks near the crime scene and the AC bar, which has been shuttered and
fallen into disrepair.
Alexis Tsipras must be stopped: the
underlying message of Europe's leaders
29 June 2015 - The Guardian
One day before Greece’s bailout ends and the
country’s financial lifeline melts away, Europe’s big guns have lined up one
after another to tell the Greeks unequivocally that voting no in Sunday’s
referendum means saying goodbye to the euro.
There was no mistaking the gravity of the situation now facing both Greece
and Europe on Monday. Leaders were by turns ashen-faced, resigned, desperate
and pleading with Athens to think again and pull back from the abyss.
There were also bitter attacks on Alexis Tsipras, the young Greek prime
minister whose brinkmanship has gone further than anyone believed possible
and left the eurozone’s leaders reeling.
One measure of the seriousness of the situation could be gleaned from the
leaders’ schedules. In Berlin, Brussels, Paris and London, a chancellor, two
presidents and a prime minister convened various meetings of cabinet, party
leaders and top officials devoted solely to Greece.
The French president, François Hollande, was to the fore. “It’s the Greek
people’s right to say what they want their future to be,” he said. “It’s
about whether the Greeks want to stay in the eurozone or take the risk of
leaving.”
Athens insists that this is not what is at stake in the highly complicated
question the Greek government has drafted for the referendum, but Berlin,
Paris and Brussels made plain that the 5 July vote will mean either staying
in the euro on their tough terms or returning to the drachma.
In what was arguably the biggest speech of his career, the president of the
European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, appeared before a packed press
hall in Brussels against a giant backdrop of the Greek and EU flags.
He was impassioned, bitter and disingenuous in appealing to the Greek people
to vote yes to the euro and his bailout terms, arguing that he and the
creditors – rather than the Syriza government – had the best interests of
Greeks at heart.
Tsipras had lied to his people, deceived and betrayed Europe’s negotiators
and distorted the bailout terms that were shredded when the negotiations
collapsed and the referendum was called, he said.
“I feel betrayed. The Greek people are very close to my heart. I know their
hardship … they have to know the truth,” he said.
“I’d like to ask the Greek people to vote yes … no would mean that Greece is
saying no to Europe.”
In a country where an estimated 11,000 people have killed themselves during
the hardship wrought by austerity, Juncker offered unfortunate advice. “I
say to the Greeks, don’t commit suicide because you’re afraid of dying,” he
said.
Juncker’s extraordinary performance sounded and looked as if he were already
mourning the passing of a Europe to which he has dedicated his long
political career. His 45-minute speech was both proprietorial and poignant
about his vision, which seems to be giving way to a rawer and rowdier place.
That was clear from the trenchant remarks of Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s
vice-chancellor and the head of the country’s Social Democratic party. He
coupled the Greek situation with last week’s foul tempers over immigration
and said that Europe faces its worst crisis since the EU’s founding treaty
was signed in Rome in 1957.
Gabriel was the first leading European politician to voice what many think
and say privately about Tsipras – that the Greek leader represents a threat
to the European order, that his radicalism is directed at the politics of
mainstream Europe and that he wants to force everyone else to rewrite the
rules underpinning the single currency.
The unspoken message was that Tsipras is a dangerous man on a mission who
has to be stopped.
Standing alongside his boss, Angela Merkel, as if to send a joint
nonpartisan national signal from Germany, Gabriel said that if the Greek
people vote no on Sunday, they would be voting “against remaining in the
euro”.
Unlike Juncker and Hollande, who pleaded with the Greek people to reject
Tsipras’s urging of a no vote, the German leaders sounded calmly resigned to
the rupture.
For Merkel, it was clear that the single currency’s rulebook was much more
important than Greece. In this colossal battle of wills, Tsipras could not
be allowed to prevail.
This is a good read to help understand the
issues :
Why Greece should vote No and leave the Euro
Clueless
29 June 2015
Clueless. That is the only way to describe some of the public
announcements from Thailand's military government.
In their latest rant deputy government spokesman Maj-General
Sansern Kaewkamnerd said that the United States has a duty to explain why it
put Thailand alongside countries experiencing the most significant human
rights setbacks in its latest human rights report.
Maybe he could try reading it - and to help out here is a
link to the State Department's annual
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014 - Thailand.
Sansern said that "the assessment in its human rights report
that Thailand has seriously curbed the freedom of people is its own point of
view towards the situation in many countries. However the US should say what
the basis is and the sources of the facts that led to the assumption."
Sansern insisted that Thailand placed the most importance on the real
situation in the country and the restoration of peace and happiness when the
National Council for Peace and Order ended the political conflict.
Now peace has returned to the Kingdom and people can travel to any place in
the country without fear, he said. Of course they cannot say what they
really think for fear of arrest and detention for attitude adjustment or for
the greater fear of a military trial under S112.
In the report's preface, US Secretary of State John Kerry placed Thailand
alongside China, Egypt, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia as countries that are
stifling the development of civil society.
"The military overthrew a democratically elected government, repealed the
constitution, and severely limited civil liberties," Kerry said. "Subsequent
efforts by the military government to rewrite the country's constitution and
recast its political intuitions raised concerns about lack of inclusivity in
the process."
It is hard to understand what part of that Sansern does not
understand.
Citizens no longer have the ability to change the government
through the right to vote in free and fair elections. Other human rights
problems included arbitrary arrests and detention; poor, overcrowded, and
unsanitary prison and detention facilities; insufficient protection for
vulnerable populations, including refugees; violence and discrimination
against women; sex tourism; sexual exploitation of children; trafficking in
persons; discrimination against persons with disabilities, minorities, hill
tribe members, and foreign migrant workers; child labor; and some
limitations on worker rights.
The report also noted that the junta had stifled academic freedom, ordered
scholars not to speak to the press and cancelled academic seminars.
The junta had also restricted press content deemed critical, leading to
widespread self-censorship.
The US also mentioned what it described as abuses by government security
forces and local defence volunteers in the deep South.
It is not a hard list to understand.
Now of course plenty of Thais and other apologists will call
foul and accuse the US of hypocrisy. But it is a spurious argument to
suggest the the sins of one country justify the sins of another. The USA has
been producing this annual report for many years and it is a useful measure
of a nation's progress or regress in respect of Human Rights.
It is a huge misunderstanding of US culture to assume that
Americans support their own civil rights abuses. What they do have is the
right to debate and protest them. Whether you like it or not the US is one
of the best information gathering machines we have to monitor such things as
human rights. The US is a nation of contrasts, conflicts and argument.
Meanwhile Thailand endures a strangled media and a non-elected government
with absolute power.
The 2014 report card for Thailand shows that slavery still
exists and refugees are sold into it; camps are burned to "prevent them from
being used again", or more likely to remove the evidence. Voting booths were
blocked; people arrested and detained for speaking their mind, and an
elected government was removed by a military coups. The US is far from
perfect, but that does not invalidate the state department report.