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Time for a huge rethink after Madrid
March 16 2004
A War on Terror is not the answer. It is a clumsy, bullying expression. It is an invitation to hostility. It is a declaration that allows atrocity to be committed in the name of war. And it is probably unwinnable, by either side.
The USA created the war on terror as their shocked response to 9/11. They wanted a rallying call; but as is so often in the case they had to rally around the lowest common denominator. They rallied around a simple chant; something that could be yelled out by the frantic masses that might be at a taping of the Jerry Springer Show. It was hasty; it was ill-worded and it is time to move on to a far more sophisticated response.
This war is not winnable. Not in this way. Al-Qaida can only be emboldened by its successes in Madrid. They blind-sided the intelligence agencies and overthrew a ruling party that had supported the US/UK invasion of Iraq. There is only one word for that sort of impact. WOW. They basically sent out a message that no where is safe from well organised covert planning. It is simply impossible to protect every potential target.
It may be that the war in Iraq became al-Qaida's greatest recruiting asset. And that should give us all a chill.
So lets end the war on terror. Lets not use words that are inflammatory. Lets not provoke the next atrocity. These acts are committed because people do not like what the US and its allies represent; they do not share the same beliefs; they do not see the world as the US and its allies do. It is time to better understand the enemy and find a way of compromise and co-existence. That means taking away the table thumping rhetoric.
Bertuzzi update
March 12 2004
Mr Bertuzzi was suspended until the end of the season; that may be 17 games. The Vancouver Canucks were fined C$250,000 basically for alllowing the attack to take place. Bertuzzi at least had the decency not to make any excuses and he offered a wholesome apology to Steve Moore and his family.
But his insistence that he did not mean to cause harm rings rather hollow. It was a calculated and pre-meditated assault and if the police press charges there can be no complaints !
The Madrid Bombings
March 12,2004
If ever we needed a reminder of just how vulnerable we all are yesterday's Madrid bombings should concern us all. It is simply too easy for well organised terrorists to cause devastation. It also shows just how ineffective the war on terror is.
This was an attack targetted to do the maximum damage. There was no warning; it was a crowded morning rush hour.
The TV coverage fails to do justice to the carnage, the trauma, the grief and the helplessness. TV sanitises everything. It therefore leaves us cold and distant. When we should be furious, angry, terribly sad and very worried. TV coverage shows distant shots of the bandaged wounded. It does not, and dare not, show the bloodied loss of limbs and the utter carnage that the terrorists cause.
The 190 plus who died were decent working folk going about there everyday lives; even if the authorities find those responsible there will be another outrage in another city.
We have to live with that now. It is not a comforting thought.
The implications of the attack really do depend on who did it. The Spanish government were probably in too much of a hurry to blame the ETA Basque separatists. This would be an attack on a scale unknown to ETA. ETA have also given warnings of previous attacks and have not targetted civilians. If it is ETA then the world will see this largely as a domestic issue. It will also play to the Spanish government who would rather not believe that their support for the US led war on Iraq has caused this slaughter.
It does have all the hallmarks of an organised al-Qaeda attack. If so the date of the 11th may be significant. And the Spanish support of the Iraq war has cost the people dearly. A point which will not be lost of the opposition in Spain with an election due (but may be postponed) on Sunday.
For Spain and the Europeans, a bombing is sadly not unusual. It is the scale of this attack that is so horrifying. The European response will be measured. There will not be the post 9/11 declarations of war that came from the US. For Europe, from Spain to Russia to Northern Ireland, the people have seen it too often before.
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To die in Madrid It is also a feature of the age in which we live that the carnage unleashed yesterday could have had several authors. Unable to comprehend an attack on civilians that could bury political support for Eta in the Basque country, the outlawed political wing of Eta, Batasuna "absolutely rejected" the attacks. One of its leaders, Arnold Otegi, claimed that an operative cell from the "Arab resistance" was responsible. By which he presumably meant al-Qaida or an affiliate. US intelligence agencies and the head of the European Union's police agency, Europol, were equally sceptical. The discovery of a van with seven detonators and an Arabic-language cassette tape with Koranic verse kept all lines of inquiry open. Spain's interior minister, Angel Acebes, who had maintained all day that Eta alone was responsible, said he had instructed his security forces not to rule out any line of investigation. But Eta, he maintained, remained the main line of investigation. No warnings were given and Eta had done nothing in its 35-year campaign remotely on the scale of yesterday's attacks. But ministry officials said the bombs used the same kind of dynamite Eta had employed in the past and that they had found explosives packed in travel bags on a Madrid-bound train on Christmas Eve. Only 10 days ago, a van with half a tonne of explosive - enough to level a tall building - was intercepted south of Madrid, with two more suspected Eta members on board. So the assumption that Eta, or some faction of it, was planning an overwhelming strike on the eve of a general election is reasonable enough. What is also clear is that the 9/11 attacks have raised the threshold of terror, causing what one Spanish security analyst calls "a kind of global terror inflation". For such a group to claim it is in business, it is no longer sufficient for casualty rates to be in their 10s. Now they have to be in their 100s. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards will take to the streets tonight in acts of protest and remembrance. For the outgoing prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, these days will mark a grim epitaph on a premiership dedicated to combatting terrorism.His iron centrist fist also inflamed moderate nationalist feeling in Catalonia and the Basque country, with their long separatist traditions. It is one thing to tar the Socialist opposition with the brush that it is soft on terrorism, but quite another when that opposition resides in Barcelona. When Josep-Lluis Carod-Rovira, the leader of the separatist Catalan Republican Left, the region's fastest-growing party, went to talk on his own with Eta, Eta declared a ceasefire in Catalonia. This led the People's Party to declare that Mr Carod-Rovira had cut a deal that let Eta free to kill everyone else in Spain. Under Mr Aznar, Madrid's dialogue with its two
most troublesome regions had all but disappeared. Whoever is found
responsible for yesterday's carnage, both Madrid and its regions will have
to work harder than ever to dissociate the legitimate discourse of
separatism from the horrors of yesterday's massacre of innocents.
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When sport is not sporting - and the failure of authority
March 9 2004
Two events in the last week in two great sports played by countries with deep and long sporting traditions make it very clear that these great sports are deeply flawed and that the sports authorities are woefully pathetic when faced by the dollars brought in by media and sponsorship.
Lets start in the great white north, in Canada, where ice hockey is a religion. At its best it is a wonderful, fast, athletic and spectacular sport. At its worst, the NHL, it is like watching a combination of the World Wrestling Federation and the Jerry Springer show on ice.
On Monday night and well away from the game itself, Vancouver's Todd Bertuzzi skated behind Colorado's Steve Moore, grabbed Moore's sweater and punched the back of his head. The Avalanche forward was slammed head first to the ice under the weight of the 245-pound Canucks forward, who slammed down on top of him. It was a premeditated assault; it was designed to do damage; it could have ended Moore's career; it could have taken his life. The Colorado player has a fractured neck, concussion and deep facial lacerations. He will be out for the rest of the season.
Unbelievably the Vancouver general manager Brian Burke told an afternoon press conference that Bertuzzi was "very upset about what happened" and added that "in terms of the incident, he's remorseful and relieved that Mr. Moore's injuries at this point appear, that a full recovery should be possible."
A pool of blood formed around Moore's head as he lay motionless. A stretcher was wheeled out and after 10 minutes the 25-year-old native of Windsor, Ont., was taken off for medical attention.
Now what I would like to hear from the coach is that an assault such as that is utterly unacceptable and that Bertuzzi will never play for Vancouver again.
The NHL announced Monday night that Bertuzzi, who served a 10-game suspension during the 2001-02 season for leaving the bench to join a fight, has been suspended indefinitely without pay.
An in-person hearing with NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell will be conducted Wednesday morning at the League's Toronto office.
Sadly the Canucks captain, Markus Naslund, said that "as weird as it seems, I don't think that was Todd's intentions. He obviously gave him a sucker punch, but he feels really awful about it right now."
GIve me a break; watch the video. And then explain to the kids watching exactly what Mr. Bertuzzi's intentions were.
The trouble is that Bertuzzi is high profile in Vancouver; sponsors, endorsements, TV and radio fees all generate revenue that the sport needs to cover inflated salary costs.
If the league has balls (pucks??) he will get a one year suspension. I bet he gets 10 to 12 games. And the league will do nothing to stop the fighting because sadly that's why so many of the punters watch. A beautiful and deeply flawed sport.
Now lets go to sunny Spain where three Leicester City footballers remain in a Cartagena jail awaiting charges for alleged rape. Now we can protest all we want about being innocent until proven guilty. But at a very minimum the three players got themselves into a situation where they were deeply compromised.
Sending a group of hormonal footballers on a glorified booze trip to La Manga, Spain, was a crisis waiting to happen. What were they thinking?
The three players clearly believe that they were set up. They argue that they were trying to stop the girls from having a cat fight and that is how the bruises and scratches appeared. Maybe they all head the ball too often; as they clearly failed to use any brains in this situation.
Local Spanish newspapers say they have seen court papers where the players admit to consensual sex with the women. The three German women (who in overtly racist terms the tabloid papers keep emphasising are of African origin) allege that the players forced their way into their room early on Monday at the Hyatt hotel in La Manga. The women were then sexually assaulted, sustaining injuries, they allege.
The Spanish courts must believe that there is a case to be answered. We should not judge the outcome although I do expect the truth will come out. What is sad is comments from club officials that their players are innocent of the allegations against them. A spokesman said: "They are innocent and we will move heaven and earth to bring them back."
At a minimum the players have let down their manager and club and devastated their families. And yet once again FA and club officials try to play down the scandal. In a year that has made roasting and dogging part of the football culture and language it really is time for English football to clean up its image.
'A global threat needs a global response'
March 6, 2004
Over the last 15 months this web site has commented at length on Iraq and the British and American responses to the apparent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. In Tony Blair's thoughtful speech it is too easy to see an implied link between Sept 11th 2001 and the Iraqi regime. No such link has been proven.
But the terror threat remains -
maybe now more than ever. And Blair remains worth listening to as a man who puts
international peace and well-being in advance of his own interests and who
continues to take risks politically. The Guardian editorial below Blair's speech
is a good summary of the issues and of the Blair speech with praise where due
and concerns raised where necessary.
Extracts from Tony Blair's speech yesterday on the
threat of global terrorism
Saturday March 6, 2004
The Guardian
No decision I have ever made in politics has been as divisive as the decision to
go to war in Iraq. It remains deeply divisive today. I know a large part of the
public want to move on. Rightly, they say the government should concentrate on
the issues that elected us in 1997: the economy, jobs, living standards, health,
education, crime.
I share that view, and we are. But I know too that the nature of this issue over Iraq, stirring such bitter emotions as it does, can't just be swept away. This is not simply because of the gravity of war, or the continued engagement of British troops and civilians in Iraq, or even because of reflections made on the integrity of the prime minister.
It is because it was in March 2003 and remains my fervent view that the nature of the global threat we face in Britain and round the world is real and existential and it is the task of leadership to expose it and fight it, whatever the political cost.
The fundamental source of division over Iraq is not over issues of trust or integrity, though some insist on trying to translate it into that. The truth is we went to war to enforce compliance with UN resolutions.
It is now apparent from the Survey Group that Iraq was indeed in breach of UN resolution 1441. It did not disclose laboratories and facilities it should have; nor the teams of scientists kept together to retain their WMD including nuclear expertise; nor its continuing research relevant to CW and BW [chemical and biological warfare].
Then, most recently, is the attempt to cast doubt on the attorney general's legal opinion. He said the war was lawful. He published a statement on the legal advice. It is said this opinion is disputed. Of course it is. It was disputed in March 2003. It is today. The lawyers continue to divide over it with their legal opinions bearing a remarkable similarity to their political view of the war.
Iraq in March 2003 was an immensely difficult judgment. I have never disrespected those who disagreed with the decision. Sure, some were anti-American; some against all wars. But there was a core of sensible people who, faced with this decision, would have gone the other way, for sensible reasons. Their argument is one I understand totally. It is that Iraq posed no direct, immediate threat to Britain.
Of course the opponents are boosted by the fact that though we know Saddam had WMD, we haven't found the physical evidence of them in the 11 months since the war. But in fact, everyone thought he had them.
The characterisation of the threat is where the difference lies. Here is where I feel so passionately that we are in mortal danger of mistaking the nature of the new world. If the 20th century scripted our conventional way of thinking, the 21st century is unconventional in almost every respect. This is true also of our security. The threat we face is not conventional. It was defined not by Iraq but by September 11.
Let me attempt an explanation of how my own thinking, as a political leader, has evolved during these past few years. The only clear case in international relations for armed intervention had been self-defence, response to aggression. But the notion of intervening on humanitarian grounds had been gaining currency. I set this out, following the Kosovo war.
So, for me, before September 11, I was already reaching for a different philosophy in international relations from a traditional one that has held sway since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, namely that a country's internal affairs are for it and you don't interfere unless it threatens you, or breaches a treaty, or triggers an obligation of alliance. I did not consider Iraq fitted into this philosophy. However, I had started to become concerned about two other phenomena.
The first was the increasing amount of information about Islamic extremism that was crossing my desk. The second was the attempts by states - some of them highly unstable - to develop nuclear weapons programmes, CW and BW material, and long-range missiles.
September 11 was for me a revelation. The purpose was to cause such hatred between Muslims and the west that a religious jihad became reality, and the world engulfed by it.
The global threat to our security was clear. So was our duty: to act to eliminate it. So we came to the point of decision. Prime ministers don't have the luxury of maintaining both sides of the argument. They can see both sides. But, ultimately, leadership is about deciding.
My view was and is that if the UN had come together and delivered a tough ultimatum to Saddam, listing clearly what he had to do, benchmarking it, he may have folded and events set in train that might just and eventually have led to his departure from power.
But the security council didn't agree. Suppose at that point we had backed away. Inspectors would have stayed but only the utterly naive would believe that following such a public climbdown by the US and its partners, Saddam would have cooperated more.
It is possible that Saddam would change his ambitions; possible he would develop the WMD but never use it; possible that the terrorists would never get their hands on WMD, whether from Iraq or elsewhere. We cannot be certain. Perhaps we would have found different ways of reducing it. Perhaps this Islamic terrorism would ebb of its own accord.But do we want to take the risk? That is the judgment.
This is not a time to err on the side of caution; not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance; not a time for the cynicism of the worldly-wise who favour playing it long. Their worldly-wise cynicism is actually at best naivety and at worst dereliction.
It is monstrously premature to think the threat has passed. The risk remains in the balance here and abroad. That is why our duty is to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as stable and democratic nations. Which brings me to the final point. It may well be that under international law as presently constituted, a regime can systematically brutalise and oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do, when dialogue, diplomacy and even sanctions fail, unless it comes within the definition of a humanitarian catastrophe. This may be the law, but should it be?
The doctrine of international community is no longer a vision of idealism. It is a practical recognition that just as within a country, citizens who are free, well educated and prosperous tend to be responsible, to feel solidarity with a society in which they have a stake, so do nations that are free, democratic and benefiting from economic progress tend to be stable and solid partners in the advance of humankind.
But we cannot advance these values except within a framework that recognises their universality. If it is a global threat, it needs a global response, based on global rules. Which brings us to how you make the rules and how you decide what is right or wrong in enforcing them. The UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights is a fine document. But it is strange the UN is so reluctant to enforce them.
Britain's role is to try to find a way through this. This agenda must be robust in tackling the security threat that this Islamic extremism poses, and fair to all peoples by promoting their human rights, wherever they are. It means tackling poverty in Africa and justice in Palestine. It means reforming the UN and giving the UN the capability to act effectively as well as debate.
That is the struggle which engages us. It is a new type of war. It forces us
to act even when so many comforts seem unaffected, and the threat so far off, if
not illusory. In the end, believe your political leaders or not as you will. But
do so at least having understood their minds.
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Seriously in conflict
It is impossible to imagine George Bush making such a speech - and this is in itself one of the problems with what Mr Blair had to say. Mr Blair touched on almost every aspect of the global problem of terror yesterday - except that of the response of the US and the stance of its current administration. This is an immense omission. Mr Blair advanced some very radical ideas yesterday about the future of global security and international law. But he did so within the context of Labour's internationalist philosophy in which global institutions play an essential role and in which human rights, whether in Africa or Palestine, are indivisible. Mr Bush does not think that way. Yet it is he who is the leader of the world's only military superpower. Mr Blair can propose multinational responses to global problems all he likes, but as long as Mr Bush is president, America will only dispose unilateralist responses that it perceives to be in the particular interests of the US. This was one of the key problems about the events of 12 months ago. Mr Blair is right to say we live in an interdependent world. He is right to place the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the declaration by Islamic fanatics of a "war without limit" among the gravest of all threats to global security. He is right, too, to insist on the enduring "mortal danger" to our lives from the synergy between the two. And that means that he is right to raise questions about the best means that the world can adopt to protect itself against the threat from devastating weapons in fanatical hands. These means, as Mr Blair also says, cannot be restricted to armed action. Ultimately, universal freedom and prosperity are the best deterrents to the threat. But until then, military means will sometimes be necessary, and Mr Blair is absolutely right to call on the nations of the modern world to rise to the challenge of defining the modern rules and means by which they will prevent the threat from creating the catastrophe. These are global problems, and they require global solutions. The failure to agree effective global solutions places every nation of the world at greater risk. This is the context in which Mr Blair continues to defend
the Iraq war. He was, and is, wrong about that conflict. Even Saddam
Hussein's Iraq was not the source of such an imminent terrorist threat of
the kind that Mr Blair warns it was necessary to attack prematurely and in
defiance of world opinion. Dialogue and diplomacy were not exhausted, as
Hans Blix's account shows. But who will swear that Saddam's Iraq would not
have been such a threat had it been able? Mr Blair is entitled to confront
his critics with the seriousness of the choice any leader faces when
intelligence suggests that such a threat may become a reality. To recognise
this is not to legitimise every response. Risk can be a smokescreen, too.
But the threat from terrorism is utterly real. Our nation, like others, is
in danger from it. Mr Blair's sombre statement of what is at stake calls for
both thought and action. |
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All you need is status
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern. Our presence is noted, our name registered, our views listened to, our failings treated with indulgence and our needs administered to. Under such care, we flourish. There may be differences between romantic and status forms of love - the latter has no sexual dimension, it cannot end in marriage, those who offer it usually bear secondary motives - and yet the beloved in the status field will, just like romantic lovers, enjoy protection under the benevolent gaze of others. Why do we need the love of others so badly? Because it seems we are very bad at remaining confident in ourselves without signs that other people like us. The American psychologist William James once wrote: "No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us dead', and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would be fore long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily torture would be a relief." But what exactly does happen to us emotionally without love and status; without attention, praise, smiles and compliments? William James suggested rage and impotent despair. Half a century later, another psychologist, the Austrian-born René Spitz, considered the question by comparing the development of babies looked after by a loving mother with that of babies in a number of orphanages. Both groups lived in hygenic surroundings, with good food and medical care. But whereas the babies with mothers were kissed, stroked, stimulated and held, the ones in Spitz's orphanages lived in near solitary confinement. Sheets were hung around their cribs; all they could see was white linen and the ceiling. Nurses came to see them only twice a day and always fed them by bottle. No one cooed at or tickled them. The consequences were dramatic. Thirty-four out of 91 cases studied died before their second year. In one orphanage, the death rate was 90%. Even when the babies lived, their development was distorted. Among surviving two-and-a-half-year-olds, most could not speak, few could eat alone and all were incontinent. A typical child from an orphanage had, wrote Spitz, "wide open, expressionless eyes, a frozen immobile face and a faraway expression as if in a daze", symptoms of what the psychologist called "hospitalism", a literal demonstration, were one to need it, that humans do not live by food alone and that clean, well-lit places are not enough. The truth extends beyond humans. To return to the animal kingdom, two decades after Spitz's study of orphanages, a third psychologist, the American Harry Harlow placed two newborn rhesus monkeys in separate cages. One newborn was accompanied by its mother, the second, by a wire dummy made to look a little like a mother. Both small monkeys had plenty of food, from the mother's breast or from a teat fixed to the upper body of the dummy. The experiment confirmed the paramount of importance of emotional proximity. In Harlow's words: "The actions of surrogate-raised monkeys became bizarre later in life. They engaged in stereotyped behaviour patterns such as clutching themselves and rocking constantly back and forth, and exhibited excessive and misdirected attention." Both male and female monkeys had difficulties having sex, and if they happened to become mothers, were incapable of looking after their young properly, being either indifferent or abusive to them. Love and status matter to us in part because they offer us protection - way beyond that offered by sturdy walls, food and warmth. We are frail creatures unable to survive on our own against the challenges of nature and the aggressions of social life and therefore need allies on whom we can depend, people who will defend us against our enemies and shelter us in our crises. Having status could be viewed as a sign that we will have access to such allies - and that we are as a result less likely to meet with an ugly and premature end. It follows that our sadness at the disapproval or neglect of others (and hence our anxiety about low status) is a natural response to a potential increase in danger. To be ignored is not only unpleasant, it is also, from an evolutionary perspective, unsafe. We are programmed to sense how a community perceives us; to be saddened by its censure and pleased by its love. We are the descendants of people who kept a close eye on what others thought of them. William James: "I should not be alive now had I not become sensitive to looks of approval or disapproval on the faces among which my life is cast." There is perhaps another more psychological reason why we require the love of those around us: how we feel about ourselves depends to an awkwardly large degree on how others feel about us. The world's approval promotes self-acceptance, its condemnation self-hatred. We need others to like us in order that we may like ourselves. Such malleability seems a strange, regrettable quirk of our make-up. Ideally, what someone thought of me would not affect what I thought of me. If I had carried out an honest appraisal of my character and concluded that I was intelligent, another person's suggestion of my idiocy would be of no great import. But only a few characters in history have managed to maintain such an unwavering attitude towards themselves in the face of the suspicions of others. Socrates and Jesus come to mind. The former was derided by the majority of his community for being dirty, unwashed, stupid and weird. The latter was derided for being mad, a heretic, stupid, naïve, blasphemous and delusional. Yet in both cases, others' perceptions did not fundamentally impact on their self-perceptions. The good voices within were not muffled by the bad voices without. Most of us cannot manage such steeliness. We have within us a greater range of options about the kind of people we are. There may be evidence of cleverness, but there are other possibilities besides. There is also stupidity and sentimentality. Some mornings, there is nastiness and paranoia too. On a bad day, we are wholly absurd, a cosmic mistake, and it would be best if we were quickly and quietly thrown into a bin. If the hatred of others is so devastating, it is because it grips like a barnacle to latent negative feelings we already hold about ourselves. However, a declining mood may be re versed if others smile at us, if they compliment us on a piece of work or report a flattering comment made in passing by a third party. The love of others can highlight the best of the many available verdicts about who we are, and can dim the bad ones. It shores up a happy story about our identity and so delays our relegation to a dustbin. Our "ego" or self-conception might be pictured as a fine but leaking balloon, forever needing others to add air to it with their love and vulnerable to the smallest pin-pricks of neglect. There is something astonishing in the extent to which we can be cheered by the attentions of others and damaged by their disregard. We are capable of finding life worth living because someone has remembered our name or sent us a basket of fruit. We may be sent into despair because a colleague has given us a blank look in a corridor or we have been badly seated at dinner. It is not surprising, therefore, if we are concerned with what place we occupy in society. Our place is what will decide how much love the world offers us, and in turn, in light of the fragility of our ego, whether we can be satisfied with ourselves or must fall prey to humiliation and shame. Our rung on the ladder holds the key to a commodity of unprecedented emotional importance: a love without which we will be as sad as monkeys with wire mothers, and orphans in the hands of cold, unsmiling nurses. |
Hong Kong's Lantau cable car is underway
2 March 2004
As Hong Kong bounces back the new focus of the city's development is Lantau Island. Lantau is bigger than Hong Kong island and used to be a sleepy rugged place; great for walking. There was the famous Po Lin temple and the Big Buddha. There were a few villages and some quiet beaches.
Then came the strange little expat enclave at Discovery Bay; rather like Hong Kongs's answer to Portmerion. But then they built the new HKG airport which opened in 1998 with the highway and rail infrastructure. The town of Tung Chung grew out of no where mainly to support the new airport. Disney is building a themepark at Penny's Bay on Lantau and now a new cable car will take visitors from Tung Chung to the monastery, saving perhaps an hour's ride on a bus or minibus.
It is a spectacular island; assuming the island is not choking in smog this will be a great trip and a very popular attraction.
The story is covered in greater detail below:
It is finally all systems go for Hong Kong’s imaginative cable car project, which will link Chek Lap Kok airport with the iconic Big Buddha statue and Ngong Ping monastery on Lantau Island.
A ground breaking ceremony was held on February 9 to open what has been acclaimed a major new tourism attraction. It is due to start carrying passengers in 2005 in conjunction with the opening of Disneyland.
“The cable car will add a new dimension to the Hong Kong tourism industry and bring economic benefits to the people of Hong Kong,” the CEO of the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTR), Mr C K Chow, said.
“It will be a brand new tourism experience,” he said.
Hong Kong Tourism Board chairman, Ms Selina Chow, added the hi-tech cable car system would combine heritage with the stunning natural landscape of the high, jagged ridges and woodlands of Lantau.
Early completion of the world-class facility would help sustain the growth and development of Hong Kong’s tourism industry, Ms Chow added.
Tourism Commissioner, Ms Eva Cheng, said the system, based on the highly successful eco-friendly cable car that runs over the rainforest near Cairns in tropical Australia, would bring a new dimension to tourism.
“In two years, tourists to Lantau will increase significantly,” Ms Cheng said. She vowed the government would “continue to invest in tourism hardware and software to consolidate Hong Kong’s position as the most popular city destination to tourists in Asia”.
The cable car system will run 5.7km from a terminal at Tung Chung near the airport to a village on the Ngong Ping plateau near the statue and monastery. Initially, there was opposition from environmental groups, until MTR and tourism officials displayed proof that the system would not interfere with the ecological system and wildlife.
All pylons and other work will be dropped from helicopters to avoid building access roads across the untouched mountains.
The 17-minute trip on the cable car will replace an arduous journey on the Lantau Island buses now. This will significantly reduce diesel and noise pollution on the island and cut much of the road traffic on restricted and narrow roads.
Originally there was also opposition from the Buddhist monks at Ngong Ping, who feared the installation would cut into profits from the restaurants and other outlets they operate.
MTR will build a cultural village which will include a Buddhist learning centre, education components, tourism, retailing and international cuisine. Spokesmen say every aspect of the environment has been carefully designed to keep environmental impact to a minimum.