The President's
Eulogy at the funeral of Edward Kennedy
30 August 2009
The President's
elegant eulogy made yesterday at the funeral of Senator Edward Kenndy held
at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Roxbury, Massachusetts:
THE PRESIDENT: "Your Eminence, Vicki, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran,
Caroline, members of the Kennedy family, distinguished guests, and fellow
citizens:
Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. The
world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a
champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the
lion of the United States Senate -- a man who graces nearly 1,000 laws, and
who penned more than 300 laws himself.
But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy
by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Grandfather. Uncle
Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, "The
Grand Fromage," or "The Big Cheese." I, like so many others in the city
where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a
mentor, and above all, as a friend.
Ted Kennedy was the baby of the family who became its patriarch; the
restless dreamer who became its rock. He was the sunny, joyful child who
bore the brunt of his brothers' teasing, but learned quickly how to brush it
off. When they tossed him off a boat because he didn't know what a jib was,
six-year-old Teddy got back in and learned to sail. When a photographer
asked the newly elected Bobby to step back at a press conference because he
was casting a shadow on his younger brother, Teddy quipped, "It'll be the
same in Washington."
That spirit of resilience and good humor would see Teddy through more pain
and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age
of 16. He saw two more taken violently from a country that loved them. He
said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his life.
He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with
cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks
in the most public way possible.
It's a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would
have been easy for Ted to let himself become bitter and hardened; to
surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out
his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that.
But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, "…Individual faults and
frailties are no excuse to give in -- and no exemption from the common
obligation to give of ourselves." Indeed, Ted was the "Happy Warrior" that
the poet Wordsworth spoke of when he wrote:
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and
the suffering of others -- the sick child who could not see a doctor; the
young soldier denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she
loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed -- the
Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform,
children's health insurance, the Family and Medical Leave Act -- all have a
running thread. Ted Kennedy's life work was not to champion the causes of
those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to
those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to
make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his
brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as
many wrongs as the years would allow.
We can still hear his voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face
reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature, in support
of health care or workers' rights or civil rights. And yet, as has been
noted, while his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did.
While he was seen by his fiercest critics as a partisan lightning rod,
that's not the prism through which Ted Kennedy saw the world, nor was it the
prism through which his colleagues saw Ted Kennedy. He was a product of an
age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and
platform and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual
respect -- a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots.
And that's how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He
did it by hewing to principle, yes, but also by seeking compromise and
common cause -- not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through
friendship, and kindness, and humor. There was the time he courted Orrin
Hatch for support of the Children's Health Insurance Program by having his
chief of staff serenade the senator with a song Orrin had written himself;
the time he delivered shamrock cookies on a china plate to sweeten up a
crusty Republican colleague; the famous story of how he won the support of a
Texas committee chairman on an immigration bill. Teddy walked into a meeting
with a plain manila envelope, and showed only the chairman that it was
filled with the Texan's favorite cigars. When the negotiations were going
well, he would inch the envelope closer to the chairman. When they weren't,
he'd pull it back. Before long, the deal was done.
It was only a few years ago, on St. Patrick's Day, when Teddy buttonholed me
on the floor of the Senate for my support of a certain piece of legislation
that was coming up for vote. I gave my pledge, but I expressed skepticism
that it would pass. But when the roll call was over, the bill garnered the
votes that it needed, and then some. I looked at Teddy with astonishment and
asked how had he done it. He just patted me on the back and said, "Luck of
the Irish."
Of course, luck had little to do with Ted Kennedy's legislative success; he
knew that. A few years ago, his father-in-law told him that he and Daniel
Webster just might be the two greatest senators of all time. Without missing
a beat, Teddy replied, "What did Webster do?"
But though it is Teddy's historic body of achievements that we will
remember, it is his giving heart that we will miss. It was the friend and
the colleague who was always the first to pick up the phone and say, "I'm
sorry for your loss," or "I hope you feel better," or "What can I do to
help?" It was the boss so adored by his staff that over 500, spanning five
decades, showed up for his 75th birthday party. It was the man who sent
birthday wishes and thank-you notes and even his own paintings to so many
who never imagined that a U.S. senator of such stature would take the time
to think about somebody like them. I have one of those paintings in my
private study off the Oval Office -- a Cape Cod seascape that was a gift to
a freshman legislator who had just arrived in Washington and happened to
admire it when Ted Kennedy welcomed him into his office. That, by the way,
is my second gift from Teddy and Vicki after our dog Bo. And it seems like
everyone has one of those stories -- the ones that often start with "You
wouldn't believe who called me today."
Ted Kennedy was the father who looked not only after his own three children,
but John's and Bobby's as well. He took them camping and taught them to
sail. He laughed and danced with them at birthdays and weddings; cried and
mourned with them through hardship and tragedy; and passed on that same
sense of service and selflessness that his parents had instilled in him.
Shortly after Ted walked Caroline down the aisle and gave her away at the
altar, he received a note from Jackie that read, "On you the carefree
youngest brother fell a burden a hero would have begged to been spared. We
are all going to make it because you were always there with your love."
Not only did the Kennedy family make it because of Ted's love -- he made it
because of theirs, especially because the love and the life he found in
Vicki. After so much loss and so much sorrow, it could not have been easy
for Ted to risk his heart again. And that he did is a testament to how
deeply he loved this remarkable woman from Louisiana. And she didn't just
love him back. As Ted would often acknowledge, Vicki saved him. She gave him
strength and purpose; joy and friendship; and stood by him always,
especially in those last, hardest days.
We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the
trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know what
God's plan is for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and
with love, and with joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest
to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and
respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow
from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so
that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time
here, we know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our
fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of others.
This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy. He once said, as has
already been mentioned, of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized
or enlarged in death because what he was in life -- and I imagine he would
say the same about himself. The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted
Kennedy's shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because
of who he became. We do not weep for him today because of the prestige
attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and
tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy -- not for the sake of
ambition or vanity; not for wealth or power; but only for the people and the
country that he loved.
In the days after September 11th, Teddy made it a point to personally call
each one of the 177 families of this state who lost a loved one in the
attack. But he didn't stop there. He kept calling and checking up on them.
He fought through red tape to get them assistance and grief counseling. He
invited them sailing, played with their children, and would write each
family a letter whenever the anniversary of that terrible day came along. To
one widow, he wrote the following:
"As you know so well, the passage of time never really heals the tragic
memory of such a great loss, but we carry on, because we have to, because
our loved ones would want us to, and because there is still light to guide
us in the world from the love they gave us."
We carry on.
Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those
that he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those
of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good that he
did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image -- the image of a
man on a boat, white mane tousled, smiling broadly as he sails into the
wind, ready for whatever storms may come, carrying on toward some new and
wondrous place just beyond the horizon. May God bless Ted Kennedy, and may
he rest in eternal peace.
Daranee gets 18
years
28 August 2009
Those responsible
for the Santika pub fire on New Year's Eve have not been charged or
prosecuted.
This responsible
for the takeover and closure of Bangkok's airports in 2008 have not been
prosecuted.
But a Thai court
has sentenced Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul to 18 years in prison
for insulting the monarchy in speeches during political rallies. She was
arrested in 2008; within a week of making a strongly worded political
speech.
She was charged
with violating Thailand's lese majeste law, which mandates a jail term of
three to 15 years for anyone who "defames, insults, or threatens the King,
the Queen, the Heir-apparent, or the Regent".
Daranee, nicknamed "Da Torpedo" for her aggressive speaking style, has been
detained without bail since July 2008.
The court sentenced Daranee, a journalist-turned-activist, to six years in
prison for three different remarks deemed insulting to the monarchy during
public political rallies, said Judge Phrommaj Poosae.
Daranee told
reporters she will appeal the verdict. "I expected the verdict," she told
reports. "My lawyer will appeal."
We will not know what happened in court as the judge decided to close
the trial to the public, citing national security and sensitivity of the
issue despite concerns raised by Amnesty International and other human
rights groups.
Under the lese-majeste
law a complaint can be filed by anybody against anybody, no matter how
minor the alleged disrespect.
The law has been a regular feature of the charged political atmosphere in
Thailand in the past three years. The generals who overthrew Thaksin cited
his alleged disrespect for the monarchy among other reasons.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has said he wants to strike a balance
between upholding the law and freedom of expression, but critics say little
has changed.
I have trouble
comprehending this. Eighteen years in a Thai jail for making a strongly
worded political speech. This does look like the silencing or a forceful
opposition voice. What really does Thai society have to fear from Daranee
Charncherngsilpakul however unacceptable some people might find what she
said?
Democratic nations
need dissent to function properly. If not they tend towards totalitarianism.
Or they are already there.
See also
this report in the Sydney Morning Herald
Democrats
foolish proposal to reduce airport security
28 August 2009
The Bangkok Post
reports today that Thai politicians are pressuring Suvarnabhumi Airport's
security staff to drop some pre-boarding screening procedures, even though
this would breach global aviation security standards.
Pichet Panwichartkul, a Democrat MP is proposing to remove the requirement
for passengers to put their jackets and belts through X-ray machines before
they walk through metal detectors.
Presumably he
demanded, and was refused, special treatment because he is a MP. So now he
wants to change the rules.
Mr Pichet has called the procedures an inconvenience for passengers and he
is attempting to use his position as an adviser to the House standing
committee on banking and finance to ease airport security.
Apparently the committee recently summoned airport security chiefs to issue
an ultimatum for the procedure to be waived from last Wednesday. The
committee threatened to take further steps to enforce its demand if this
order was ignored.
In a broadside at Suvarnabhumi management published in the Aug 19 edition of
Naew Na newspaper, Mr Pichet questioned Suvarnabhumi security's inability to
distinguish between suspicious belts and normal ones.
The former finance minister asked why passengers have to take off their
belts at the checkpoint and then clumsily put them back on in public.
He misses the
point completely. A belt is almost always made in part of metal. Removal of
the belt means that the sensitive metal detectors will not be set off as
every passenger is screened.
"How is it possible that a female foreign passenger must remove her jacket
to reveal her light clothing underneath to go through the screening?" he
asked.
Because people
leave things in their jacket pockets. These can now be screened through the
x-ray machine.
The management of Suvarnabhumi and its airport security have "acknowledged"
Mr Pichet's wish but so far have continued with the pre-boarding screening
procedures.
Aviation operators have pointed out that the screening procedures Mr Pichet
wants to axe are enforced by most airports around the world and are in
direct compliance with those enforced by the United States Transport
Security Administration (TSA) as a counter-terrorism precaution.
"Mr Pichet's wish to ease the screening procedure, if heeded, is very
dangerous in exposing Suvarnabhumi and all airlines which operate through it
to security risks," said one airline executive.
He described Mr Pichet's request as reflecting a lack of understanding of
the objectives of aviation security, which are to protect aircraft,
passengers and crew, as well as to support national security and prevent
terrorism.
Putting jackets and belts into X-ray machines enables airport security
personnel to detect weapons or contraband goods like narcotics.
"There have been four or five recent cases when Suvarnabhumi security
discovered belts with small knives inserted inside. That could not be
detected by the naked eye," said an airport source.
Relaxing screening procedures simply to reduce inconvenience for passengers
would result in Suvarnabhumi being downgraded in its global security rating,
said sources in the aviation industry. "Air travellers will not feel safe
passing through Suvarnabhumi and airlines, especially US carriers, will have
to review security risks when operating through this airport," said an
aviation executive.
If these procedures were waived, most airlines would have to conduct their
own screening at the gates, increasing inconvenience and cost and wasting
passengers' time.
BKK airport
security is already questionable. After all the PAD walked into the airport
last year and closed it for 8 days.
There are too many
staff who are not well trained and paid minimal wages to give anyone a real
sense of security at the airport.
Lese-majeste
cases in Thailand
28 August 2009 - Reuters
A Thai court on
Friday sentenced a political campaigner to 18 years in prison for insulting
the monarchy, a serious offence in a country where the royal institution is
revered and officially above politics.
The trial of Darunee Charnchoengsilpakul, a supporter of ousted premier
Thaksin Shinawatra, was the latest in a slew of lese-majeste cases critics
say are stifling dissent and freedom of speech.
Following are details of some of those who have recently fallen foul of the
law, which carries harsh prison sentences for insults or threats to the
deeply revered monarchy.
DARUNEE CHARNCHOENGSILPAKUL - More commonly known as "Da Torpedo," she
delivered an exceptionally strong speech last year criticizing the 2006 coup
and the monarchy. Her trial on lese majeste charges was closed for reasons
of national security.
JAKRAPOB PENKAIR - A spokesman for ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra,
Jakrapob had to resign as a minister in the pro-Thaksin government in May
2008 after being accused of slandering the king in a talk at the Foreign
Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) in 2007. Prosecutors are yet to
decide whether to press charges against Jakrapob, whose whereabouts are
unknown. He is also accused of inciting violence during anti-government
protests in April.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB OF THAILAND BOARD OF DIRECTORS - Police are
weighing up whether to investigate the 13-member FCCT board, which includes
journalists from the BBC, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, after receiving
a complaint from a staunch critic of Thaksin in July. Freelance translator
Laksana Kornsil said the FCCT's sale of a DVD containing Jakrapob's disputed
speech was an attempt to undermine the monarchy.
GILES UNGPAKORN - A leading leftist commentator and respected academic at
Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, Giles fled Thailand in February 2009
after being charged with lese majeste for a book criticizing the 2006 coup.
Giles fled to London, claiming he would not receive a fair trial and
accusing the military and current government of using lese-majeste laws to
silence dissent. A Thai court issued an arrest warrant for him in March.
SUWICHA THAKHOR - Suwicha was jailed for 10 years in April 2009 for posting
comments on the Internet that were deemed insulting to the monarchy. His
sentence was reduced from 20 years after he pleaded guilty. His arrest in
January came during a government crackdown on thousands of Web pages
considered critical or disrespectful of the palace.
HARRY NICOLAIDES - An Australian author, English teacher and long-time
resident of Thailand, Nicolaides was sentenced in January 2009 to three
years in jail for defaming the crown prince in his 2005 novel
'Verisimilitude'. Only seven copies of the book were sold. He received a
royal pardon in February.
SULAK SIVARAKSA - A leading academic and long-time critic of the lese-majeste
law, Sulak was taken from his Bangkok home late one night in November 2008
and driven 450 km (280 miles) to a police station in the northeast province
of Khon Kaen. There he was charged with insulting the monarchy in a
university lecture he gave in December the previous year.
CHOTISAK ONSOONG - The young political activist was accused by police in
April 2008 of insulting the monarchy for refusing to stand during the royal
anthem that precedes all movie screenings in Thailand. Prosecutors are still
considering charges against him.
JITRA KOTCHADEJ - A union activist and friend of Chotisak, Jitra was fired
by bosses at her clothing factory in August 2008 for appearing on a TV panel
discussion wearing a T-shirt saying "Not standing is not a crime," a
reference to Chotisak.
OLIVER JUFER - The Swiss national was sentenced to 10 years in prison in
2007 for spraying black paint on huge public portraits of King Bhumibol
Adulyadej. He was pardoned and deported after serving four months.
Is Air China
the future for Cathay Pacific?
27 August 2009
The South China
Morning Post in a recent article discussed Air China's increased stake (now
30%) in Hong Kong based Cathay Pacific Airlines and the eventual intent of
Air China to take control of Cathay Pacific.
This will be a
significant clash of cultures and the eventual demise of the Cathay Pacific
brand - this appears inevitable over time - is sad.
Cathay Pacific is
an icon of pre handover Hong Kong and is considered as one of the best-run
airlines in the world. Air China meanwhile is like mant mainland enterprises
- slow and bureaucratic.
With Air China
this week announcing it would lift its stake in Cathay to almost 30 per cent
as part of an eventual plan to take control of the Hong Kong carrier, the
differences are starting to appear. Two more Air China directors are
expected to join the Cathay board, bringing the representation to four.
Cathay and Air China come from two radically different corporate worlds. One
of the most noticeable differences is the remuneration for top people. Air
China chairman Kong Dong has pocketed HK$327,000 from sitting on Cathay's
board since May last year - 1.7 times his annual salary at the mainland
carrier, according to the company reports.
Zhang Lan, a senior vice-president at Air China, received a HK$529,000
director's fee from Cathay last year. Details of her salary at Air China are
not available.
By contrast, Christopher Pratt and Philip Chen Nan-lok, the Cathay
executives sitting on Air China's board, received no fee from the mainland
carrier. At Cathay, Mr Pratt earned HK$3.46 million as chairman last year
while chief executive Tony Tyler received HK$15 million.
The real
difference here is that the senior executives at Cathay Pacific do in fact
run the airline. At Air China senior directors are more likely to be
directed from Beijing.
The SCMP reported the story of Andrew Tse, who founded Hong Kong Express
Airways in 2004. He had first-hand experience of this top-down management
style after HNA Group, the fourth-largest mainland aviation group, became
the carrier's single largest shareholder in 2006.
Hong Kong Express, which is losing millions of dollars a month, applied for
a licence to operate a new air-cargo business last month over the objections
of Mr Tse, who was concerned the carrier lacked the resources to start
freight operations.
"There is no discussion at all ... Whoever is the majority shareholder makes
the call," said Mr Tse, who still owns 14.7 per cent of the airline.
In Hong Kong, directors are elected by shareholders at annual general
meetings and the management of the company is then appointed by the board.
The appointment of senior executives at state-owned enterprises is solely
controlled by Beijing.
That may explain the unease being felt at Cathay about the prospects of an
Air China takeover. Middle management were more willing to initiate new
policy or challenge their bosses if they found decisions were not in the
best interests of the company, said one Cathay manager who declined to be
named. Such a system would be anathema to a state-run airline.
The cultural differences extend to day-to-day matters. A former executive at
Hong Kong Express recalls senior managers communicating with their
colleagues by passing around fax paper with notes in red ink. The executive
still cannot figure out why the mainland managers did not use the office
intranet.
The corporate peculiarities got even stranger earlier this year when cabin
crew at Hong Kong Express and sister carrier Hong Kong Airlines were asked
to memorise and recite a company creed on command. Staff who failed to
recite correctly faced punishment.
While Cathay remains in the hands of Swire Pacific (SEHK: 0019), staff can
rest assured they will not be forced to recite a creed anytime soon. But
whether Swire remains in control over the long term remains to be seen.
Air China is keen to get its hands on Cathay to boost its international
presence and take advantage of the Hong Kong carrier's experience in
training and services.
John Slosar, the Putonghua-speaking chief operating officer of Cathay, has
reassured staff and investors that the strategy and management would not
change despite Air China's increased presence.
At the moment, Air China would probably have to dig pretty deep to further
increase its stake in Cathay.
"It remains the firm intention of Swire to remain the single largest
shareholder in the airline, as indeed we have been for the past 60 years,"
Mr Pratt, the chairman of both Swire and Cathay, said last week. "Swire is
wholeheartedly committed to the long-term development of the aviation
industry in Hong Kong and on the mainland."
Cathay also claims it has a legally binding agreement that Air China has to
get the written consent of Swire if it intends to increase its stake to more
than 30 per cent.
But in the volatile world of aviation, one should never say never. Swire
could change its mind if Cathay encounters another once-in-a-lifetime crisis
like the current one it has just flown through. If that crisis was so big
that it had to raise funds from its shareholders - Air China and Swire - all
bets could be off.
Air China, a state flag carrier with unlimited access to low-cost funding,
could easily dilute Swire's holdings if Cathay is in need of a huge amount
of capital to pay down debt.
The carrier's net-debt-to-equity ratio increased to 81 per cent from 69 per
cent in the first half of the year. Cash outflows of HK$1.2 billion were
incurred in the first half because of a HK$2.9 billion cash settlement for
fuel hedging losses. The situation is not alarming right now, but if there
is any significant reversal in oil price movement, losses could start to
mount.
"We have to face the reality that the airline industry is a tough one with
very thin profit margins," said Mr Tse, an industry veteran. "The mergers
and acquisitions involving airlines in the United States and Europe show
that."
Without support from a state-backed carrier, Cathay could lose out under the
"open skies" policy that seeks to liberalise routes around the world. Cathay
is already losing the one-route, one-carrier privilege on many mainland
routes, a protection that was passed down from Hong Kong's former British
government.
Hong Kong Dragon Airlines (Dragonair), a subsidiary of Cathay, has a
comprehensive network on the mainland but it is reportedly operating at a
loss amid fierce competition from mainland carriers.
State-owned mainland carriers have deep enough pockets to increase their
fleet and expand their network as part of Beijing's goal of stimulating the
nation's economy.
"The room for a purely commercial airline to survive is getting narrower
than ever," Mr Tse said.
The mainland is considered one of the aviation industry's growth engines and
it would appear Cathay is on the doorstep of a hugely lucrative market. But
the cosy position Cathay held in colonial days is truly over.
With cash-rich mainland airlines breathing down its neck and the city's
airport seeking closer co-operation with airports in the Pearl River Delta,
the road could be even more bumpy ahead for Cathay.
Cathay may be Hong Kong's most recognisable brand. But the world is changing
and cultural differences not withstanding, Cathay's future lies more and
more across the border.
Fall release
for new cd from Blue Rodeo
26 August 2009
Blue Rodeo
frontman Jim Cuddy feels the wind of change sweeping through a record
industry that is increasingly moving away from traditional album releases.
He just doesn't care.
"It was funny 'cause just recently, (Radiohead lead singer) Thom Yorke said
he couldn't be bothered making albums anymore - that the album was dead, and
he was going to make singles from now on," Cuddy told The Canadian Press in
a recent telephone interview.
"Well we're making a double record. In an effort to swim completely
cross-current - we're very excited about this - we're making a double
record, so we'll have a double vinyl and a double CD."
Cuddy says Blue Rodeo is just finishing the new album at their Toronto
studio now, and it'll be released at the end of October. The title, he
thinks, will be "All The Things We Left Behind."
"It's just sort of a massive work," Cuddy said. "It's 16 songs, and it's
very enjoyable for us to be thinking about splitting it into two sections,
and then splitting each one into a different side."
Cuddy said the record would feature vocals from Cuff the Duke's Wayne Petti.
Unsurprisingly, the album sounds like it'll be a throwback of sorts.
"It's pretty organic, acoustic-y," Cuddy said. "It's got a lot of vocals on
it. We're kind of harkening back to Neil Young, CSNY, that kind of vocal
sound - much more falsetto, bigger choirs. "
"There's a couple songs that are very different for us, instrumentation-wise
too. It's got a pretty wide range, as I think you'd expect from a double
record."
And Cuddy says he's particularly excited about the prospect of laying the
record out on double vinyl.
"I'm becoming more of a vinyl-phile, all the time, as more become available,
which is great," he said. "How to split it up - an A-side is different than
a B-side, is a B-side heavier, or more sleepy, or whatever? - it's been a
very enjoyable little conundrum for us to try to figure out how to arrange
this."
Blue Rodeo will play the Molson Ampitheatre in Toronto on Aug. 27 with
September shows scheduled in London, Ont., and Carp, Ont.
Told you so
26 August 2009
Noppadon Pattama,
legal adviser for former premier Thaksin Shinawatra said it was incorrect
that the UAE requested the fugitive politician to leave the country because
it does not want to be a base for his political activities.
Mr Noppadon said the UAE has never requested Thaksin to leave, as claimed by
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's spokesman Thepthai Senpong.
"What Mr Thepthai said is a lie," Mr Noppadon said. "The UAE has never asked
him (Thaksin) to leave the country."
He also said that Thaksin holds a Montenegro passport and had spent a few
nights in the UAE before travelling to Africa to look at diamond mines.
''He is visiting three countries in Africa, but I won't reveal what they are
because I don't want Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya to cause him any
problems," he said.
Smoke and mirrors
26 August 2009
I am not sure that
I believe the latest Thai government claims about ex PM Thaksin.
The government is
claiming that former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has left the United
Arab Emirates at the request of the UAE government and flown to Montenegro,
according to Thepthai Senpong, spokesman for Democrat Party leader.
Mr. Thepthai said that the UAE government did not want its territory used as
a base for Thaksin's political activities as it could affect relationships
between the two countries, according to Mr Thepthai.
Thaksin is reported to have a Montenegro passport and investment interests
in the Mediterranean principality.
There are too many
occasions when Thai officials will make announcements that are entirely self
serving. Maybe that is true of most politicians.
But I suspect that
Thaksin's visit visa in the UAE has expired and that he needs to leave the
country before re-entering. Thaksin visits Dubai and spends good - and
decent amounts of - money here.
So the question is
- what is gained from Thepthai's lies?
Thailand brings
back the death penalty
24 August 2009
This was a sad day
in Thailand. I do not believe in the death penalty. I never have and I never
will. And it is a massive step backwards for Thailand to re-introduce
capital punishment after six years.
I would be even
sadder if there are people in the Thai government who think that executions
will help the government look stronger and is an electoral benefit.
The two drug
traffickers executed this evening at Bang Kwang Prison were Bundit
Charoenwanich, 45, and Jirawat Phumpruek, 52. Both were arrested on March
29, 2001 for having 114,219 methamphetamine tablets in their possession.
They were convicted of drug trafficking. Although the death sentence is
often commuted to life imprisonment, the Director of the Department of
Corrections received a directive from the Prime Minister's office for this
sentence to be carried out.
So the decision to
execute was approved by Abhisit. Sad.
The execution was kept a secret. Prison lockdown was at 3 p.m. as normal.
Then the two prisoners were taken out of their cells on Death Row to be
prepared for the execution. They were allowed one call to relatives but they
were only given one minute to talk. That is poor.
In the execution
chamber where they were given a final blessing and sermon by a monk.
The governor of Nonthaburi and other government officials attended the
execution together with reporters. Their relatives were not present but they
will go the prison in the morning to take part in religious rites for the
prisoners.
The last execution
by machine gun was carried out on 11th December 2002. This was then changed
to lethal injection. The first and last time this was carried out was 12th
December 2003 when four prisoners were executed.
This was the first
execution in Thailand for six years.
This is a sad day for Thailand. I am sorry but I don't believe in the death
penalty and I certainly don't believe in the lethal injection as the method.
Whose bell is it anyway?
24 August 2009 - Chang Noi
I am not
sure if Chang Noi is still being published in the Nation newspaper. His
views are so measured compared to that newspapers rabid hate Thaksin
campaign. Here is Chang Noi on the red-shirt petition for a Thaksin pardon.
"In the weeks leading up to the submission of the redshirts’ petition on
behalf of Thaksin, some surprising things were said and written.
We were told repeatedly by political figures, academics, and media
contributors that the petition was illegal and improper, that those signing
it might be liable to prosecution for lese majeste or contempt of court (one
general suggested the death penalty), and that the whole exercise was
counter to law, tradition, convention, and proper “Thai” behaviour.
But Section 59 of the current constitution states: “A person shall have the
right to present a petition and to be informed about the result of its
consideration within the appropriate time.” And Section 187 states, “The
King has the prerogative to grant a pardon.”
It does not matter what the criminal code says about the proper procedure
for petitions on specific issues. The right to submit a petition is an
absolute right governed by the constitution.
The 1997 constitution stated: “A person shall have the right to present a
petition and to be informed of the result of its consideration within the
appropriate time, as provided by law.” The final clause in this 1997 version
did make it appear that this right was conditional on other laws. But the
drafters of the 2007 constitution, appointed by the coup generals, removed
this trailing clause for greater clarity. In the 2007 version, the right to
present a petition is an absolute right, without qualification. And the
royal prerogative is totally unconditional.
Could it be that most journalists and broadcasters, several permanent
secretaries, the rectors of major universities, almost the entire academic
staff of Chulalongkorn University, and the prime minister are unaware of
these provisions in the constitution? Probably not.
Could it be that several of those who claimed the Thaksin petition is
illegal, immoral, improper, distasteful, and devious have forgotten that
they signed a petition three years ago calling on the monarch to remove
Thaksin from office under Section 7 of the constitution? Probably not. Yet
the distinguished political scientist who led the delegation that
hand-delivered that petition to the palace on 5 March 2006 has been among
those decrying the Thaksin petition.
Make no mistake. Chang Noi thinks that Thaksin does not deserve a pardon,
and indeed should be punished for his major crimes. But the opposition to
the petition raised issues of principle, history, and practical politics.
More interestingly, many of those who felt moved to publicly oppose the
Thaksin petition are precisely those people who regularly point to the right
of petition as one proof that Thailand is a better democracy as a result of
being a democracy with a constitutional monarchy. The fundamental text for
this argument is Inscription One, claimed to have been authored by King
Ramkhamhaeng of Sukhothai in the thirteenth century. The Inscription lists
several claims for Ramkhamhaeng’s enlightened rule, including: “He has hung
a bell in the opening of the gate over there; if any commoner in the land
has a grievance which sickens his belly and gripes his heart, and which he
wants to make known to his ruler and lord, it is easy; he goes and strikes
the bell which the King has hung there. King Ramkhamhaeng, the ruler of the
kingdom, hears the call; he goes and questions the man, examines the case,
and decides in justly for him. So the people of this city of Sukhothai
praise him.”
For over 60 years, this excerpt from the inscription has been repeatedly
quoted to support the idea that there has been a unique “Thai system of
government” down through the ages. In 1946, Prince Dhani Nivat argued that
the bell proved that the Thai monarch was always “accessible to the people,”
and that this method of calling for redress “survived with slight
modifications all through the centuries down to the change of regime in
1932.” A few years later, Kukrit Pramoj cited the bell as central to his
argument that “this Thai system of government is good,” and has always been
good. He repeated the quotation time and again through his long career as
politician and publicist, eventually claiming the bell and the right of
petition were proof that liberalism, democracy, and monarchy were bound
together in Thai tradition for 700 years. Countless others have followed
suit in using Ramkhamhaeng’s bell as symbol and proof of the specialness and
value of this tradition.
What is fascinating is that many of the people opposing the Thaksin petition
were exactly the sort of people who normally love to cite the example of the
bell. Of course, in opposing the petition, they tried to add some
conditional arguments. They said that in this case the bell was being used
in the wrong way; the bell was being used with bad intentions; the bell was
being used illegally. They seem to have forgotten that the key point of the
original line in the inscription is that the bell is totally without
conditions: “if any commoner in the land has a grievance … he goes and
strikes the bell.” They seem to have forgotten that it was the simplicity
and universality of the bell that made it so attractive to Prince Dhani,
Kukrit, and others of similar mind as proof that “this Thai system of
government is good.”
Over the last two years, we have got used to seeing the pillars of Thai
democracy undermined for short-term reasons. But it is still surprising to
see one of the foundations of the conservative tradition treated in the same
way.
But the most important point concerns the political consequences of this
outcry against the petition in the context of today’s delicate political
tensions. For supporters of Thaksin who remember the simple old argument of
the bell and cannot follow the subtle conditionalities introduced by
political scientists, leader writers, university rectors, and permanent
secretaries, will probably assume that what they are really being told is:
the bell is for us not for you."
Flintoff
- a very English hero
BBC - Test
Match special - 24 August 2009
"One day, your son
or daughter might pull a copy of Wisden from the bookshelf, or more likely
magic Andrew Flintoff's stats on to a computer screen, and ask the killer
question: "Was he really that good?"
And you'll sigh and chuckle, having recalled 'that' over at Edgbaston back
in 2005, or his five-for at Lord's in 2009, or his 167 against West Indies
in Birmingham in 2004. And you'll find yourself saying, rather patronisingly,
"you'll never really understand".
The record books will tell future generations that Flintoff wasn't even the
best all-rounder of his time. South Africa's Jacques Kallis, with his
10,000-plus runs, his 31 Test centuries, his 258 wickets, rather swamps
Flintoff in terms of cold statistics.
Chris Cairns of New Zealand, in a career blighted by injury, averaged higher
with bat and lower with ball. Another Kiwi, Daniel Vettori, runs Flintoff
close on batting stats and has taken 18 five-fors to the Lancastrian's three
and three 10-wicket matches to Flintoff's none.
But then the English have never really dealt in cold statistics when it
comes to choosing their heroes. Most will take the maverick James Hunt over
the monochrome Nigel Mansell; the lavishly gifted but fatally flawed Jimmy
White over Steve Davis, the cold-blooded winner; "daft as a brush" Gazza
over Brand Beckham.
Indeed, Seve Ballesteros, the winner of five majors, elicits more love from
the English public than Nick Faldo, winner of six majors and arguably his
country's greatest ever individual sportsman. And perhaps that could only
happen in England.
In his book Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero,
historian Adam Nicolson describes how Admiral Lord Nelson, one of England's
first celebrities, provided the template for the English hero as we now
recognise him.
The masses in early 19th Century England revelled in Nelson's "sense of
daring and totality in his style of battle", just as the English public
embraced Flintoff's exuberance, his dash, his swashbuckling vigour. For 'The
Nelson Touch', read 'The Flintoff Touch'.
Just as you can imagine Faldo as a dueller in a frosty glade, walking 10
paces before turning and shooting his opponent between the eyes, you can
picture Flintoff leaping between a ship's rigging, sword drawn, masts
burning overhead, blood and gore spattered all around him.
Flintoff at his best was brutal, destructive, whether with bat or with ball.
His twin fifties against Australia at Edgbaston in 2005 included nine sixes
and shook the old enemy to the core.
In between, Flintoff sent down one of the most furious overs in Test
history: Justin Langer's furniture smashed to pieces, Ricky Ponting
confounded by a fizzing leg-cutter. Here, the Aussies must have thought, was
Ian Botham reincarnate.
While Flintoff's critics complained about his too-short length and his lack
of five-wicket hauls, opponents let it be known that there were few more
dangerous foes in world cricket.
"You look through his bare statistics and they probably don't read that
flatteringly, but he has an impact on how that team plays and performs,"
said Ponting when Flintoff announced his retirement from Test cricket last
month.
"For that impact he has to be right up there. He just seems to be one of
those guys that everyone really enjoys playing with."
Like Nelson, indeed like Botham, Flintoff is rough-hewn rather than
polished; a little coarse, but honest. As a result, he is of the masses
rather than apart from them.
Many winced when they saw him swaying drunkenly outside 10 Downing Street in
2005. Others giggled with him. Ashes regained, Flintoff got thoroughly
banjaxed, and it's what most people in his position would have done.
"The fans can relate to him, he's the sort of cricketer, who plays as hard
on the field as he does off the field," said former England skipper Graham
Gooch.
"He's a dying breed. The modern cricketer doesn't fall into that psyche,
with all the trainers and off-field staff they have following them. I'm
afraid that 'Fred' is the last character to play Test cricket. They are few
and far between nowadays."
Alas, 'The Flintoff Touch' didn't always extend to the field of play.
Largely as a result of his feats in the 2005 Ashes, England's selectors
thought he was the right man to lead his country in the 2006/07 renewal.
"I am now set up for a conjuror," Nelson once opined, "and God knows they
will very soon find out I am far from being one."
Flintoff, too, was made human on Australian soil, presiding over a
humiliating 5-0 drubbing. While his troops let him down, the conclusion was
that he was more effective at the spear point than directing from the rear.
Flintoff, like Botham, became less effective with age, his body poorly
designed to deal with the rigours of modern international cricket. He
managed to squeeze out one last match-winning spurt at Lord's last month and
hit a clunking fifty at Edgbaston.
When he was forced to sit out the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley, England
duly got clobbered. Then, back in the side for the decider at The Oval, he
was overshadowed by the man people are already calling the "new Flintoff",
Stuart Broad.
But, like a petulant schoolboy starved of attention, Freddie wanted one last
"look at me moment", and he provided it with his scintillating run-out of
Ponting, one final match-turning moment.
The comparisons with Botham are inevitable. On their day, both men could be
devastating with bat or ball. Both men challenged the establishment with
their off-field behaviour. Both men inspired the love of the masses,
Flintoff maybe even more so.
Botham will go down as the greater player, his stats alone attest to that.
But the simple fact the question "where's the next Botham" is asked no
longer illustrates just how good Flintoff was.
My abiding memory of Flintoff won't be of him stooping to shake Brett Lee's
hand at Edgbaston in 2005, as emblematic of the man as that photograph is.
It will be of Flintoff in post-wicket-taking stance in that same series:
arms and legs spread wide, chest puffed out, as if every sinew in his body
was straining to soak up the adoration of his fans.
They say that even Australian children were striking the 'Freddie' pose that
glorious summer. And that is perhaps the ultimate mark of the man."
What a sports
team says about it's country
24 August 2009
An interesting
contrast in sporting stories today.
Everyone has
rightly lauded the Australian cricketers as being great ambassadors for
their country. And Ponting was generous in defeat. There really was very
little to choose between the teams.
Which is rather
more than can be said for the UAE football champions, Al Ahli, currently on
tour in the UK. They appear to be intent on making as few friends as
possible.
The English
Football Association is to launch a probe into a training ground friendly
match last week between Chelsea apprentices and players from the Al Alhi
club after a game at Chelsea's training ground last week descended into an
on field brawl and was abandoned after 35 minutes. Players, coaches and
officials from Chelsea's reserve team and United Arab Emirates side Al Alhi
traded blows for five minutes.
A two-footed tackle above the knee on Chelsea left-back Ben Gordon sparked
the row, which left Chelsea defender Jack Cork, now on loan at Coventry,
sporting a black eye after he was repeatedly hit while in a headlock.
Newspaper reports allege that the Chelsea players were assaulted with karate
kicks, knee-high tackles and had their hair pulled out and eyes gouged.
I am sure that Al
Ahli management will have a different view of events.
Funny old game
23 August 2009
Funny old game -
cricket. That's why if you grow up with it you love it forever.
Australia probably
outplayed England for the better part of this five test series yet England
won 2-1 and recovered the Ashes. The Aussies should have won the Cardiff
test but Collingwood, Panesar and Anderson hung on for the draw. And that
draw gave England the momentum to win at Lords.
England won the
fifth and final test. The Oval is packed - the crowd are singing Jerusalem,
Land of Hope and Glory (except no one knows the words!) and Rule Britannia -
the last night of the Poms!
But the Aussies
scored eight centuries to England's two. The Aussie bowlers took more
wickets. If you pick a 'best of' team there are probably eight Aussies and
three Englishmen in that team.
Picking my
composite team: Strauss, Katich, Border, Clarke, Hussey, Prior, Broad,
Swann, Johnson, Siddle, Hilfenhaus. Good looking team but the middle order
batting is all Australia !
Note there is no
room for Flintoff in this side. He had a great time in the Australian first
innings at Lords but he is not fit enough for five day tests.
Great tv interview
from Andrew Flintoff who retires today from test cricket. Articulate and
sensible - and he will probably have a few beers tonight. Also a good
interview with Steve Harmison. Cricketers are an articulate bunch!
And a tip of the
hat to Ricky Ponting - one of the greatest batsmen ever and very generous
and honest in defeat.
Shane Warne has
been great fun in the commentary box all through the series. Balanced,
insightful and entertaining.
There is a one day
series to come - but frankly no one cares that much. There is nothing quiet
like an Ashes series. I listened under the bed sheets to the radio through
the nights of the 1965-66 tour down under. Mike (MJK) Smith was England
captain. He was also captain of my home county, Warwickshire and I was just
starting to play for my primary school. Through the 1990s Australia were
dominant. Its nice to see two well balanced sides battling now for that 4
inch trophy, born in jest in 1882.
Releasing
Al-Megrahi Bodes ill
Ruth Wedgwood - Forbes Magazine
23 August 2009
"At every turn, Libya has probed the weakness of the West. On Dec. 21, 1988,
the Libyan state intelligence service blew a Pan Am jet out of the sky,
scattering bodies and wreckage over the countryside of Lockerbie, Scotland.
Thirty-five college students from New York's Syracuse University never made
it home for the holidays.
In response to the bombing, the Americans mobilized lawyers and diplomats.
The U.S. and U.K. marched to the U.N. Security Council to demand the arrest
of the Libyan operatives, and pressed that they be extradited for
prosecution--for at the time, and even now, there were no international
criminal courts with jurisdiction. In reply, Libya hired a former U.N. legal
counselor to file suit before the International Court of Justice in The
Hague, claiming the right to try its own state-commissioned crimes in its
own courts.
The Libyan claim was ultimately defeated, by dint of the ICJ's required
deference to a mandatory Security Council resolution. So Colonel Muammar
al-Qaddafi, the honcho of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
proposed another solution he could live with. He called for a specially
created criminal court to convene in the Netherlands, seating Scottish
judges and applying Scottish law. An Italian air force jet was painted
white, decked with a U.N. decal, and flew to Tripoli to pick up the two
suspects. As a U.N. veteran has recounted, the two suspects were not
handcuffed on the flight. That was, perhaps, a symbol of how much sway Libya
exercised even then.
Of course, Libya did not promise to turn over evidence and did not assist
the court. But the Scottish police mounted one of the most extensive
forensic investigations seen in the annals of modern crime. Analysis of
thousands of small pieces of debris picked up by dozens of policemen
revealed that the bomb on Pan Am 103 had been concealed in a Toshiba radio
cassette player, and that the clothing used to conceal the device within a
suitcase was purchased in Malta. The unaccompanied suitcase containing the
bomb was sent on its deadly path on Dec. 21, on an Air Malta flight to
Frankfurt from Malta's international airport. It was thereafter transferred
to London, where it was loaded onto Pan Am 103's transatlantic flight.
Tellingly, a senior Libyan intelligence official arrived in Malta Dec. 20,
flying from Tripoli on a false passport. He returned to Tripoli Dec. 21,
shortly after the bomb was loaded on the Air Malta flight, again using a
false identity. He provided no explanation for his activities in Malta, but
in fact, he met with Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a former station manager for
Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta who was familiar with the airport's protocols.
This same senior Libyan intelligence operative also knew something about
timers for bombs. He had leased offices in Zurich from a small Swiss company
called MEGO. It was revealed to be the firm that designed a special-order
timer called the MST-13, 20 of which it supplied to the Libyan intelligence
service in 1985. Some of these timers were tested with explosives and air
bombs in the Libyan desert. And critically, the MST-13 was the
special-design timer that triggered the fatal bomb placed in the suitcase
that went from Malta, to Frankfurt, to London, and then on to Pan Am 103.
A New York jury would know how to read such evidence, and what to do with
such a senior operative. Nonetheless, the Scottish courts succeeded in tying
their trousers in a knot, in part because of a shaky eyewitness
identification of the senior operative who was thought to have purchased the
clothing to go in the suitcase bomb. But as Inspector Maigret would have
said, you didn't need that evidence to convict.
This same senior intelligence operative, whose real name is Abdel Basset Ali
al-Megrahi, is now a free man. He was convicted in the specially created
Hague trial court by a panel of Scottish judges, and his appeal was rejected
by the Scottish appellate chamber. He remained in prison and began to serve
his time.
But on Aug. 20, 2009, he was released from his Scottish jail cell by the
justice minister of Scotland, walking away from a 27-year sentence. The
release, said the minister, was a gesture of "compassion" in light of the
defendant's advanced prostate cancer.
Al-Megrahi has now flown back to Tripoli on the Libyan leader's private
plane. Ardent supporters were brought to the airport by government buses to
greet him on his return. He has appeared publicly with one of al-Qaddafi's
sons and will be received officially by al-Qaddafi as well.
When the prospect of the release of this convicted murderer became widely
known this week, the president of the United States told a radio interviewer
he had "objected" to the release. But he did not say how much body English
had gone into this objection. President Obama warned that al-Megrahi should
not be given a "hero's welcome" by Libya. But this thought too was, as
diplomats like to say, "overtaken by events."
Meanwhile, British Foreign Minister David Miliband says it is a "slur" to
speculate that the release of a mass murderer was influenced, even at the
margin, by the bidding for oil extraction rights in Libya. One of England's
princes has been to Libya three times recently to talk about oil.
The role of oil, though, does make the motivation for al-Megrahi's release
look murky, and the road ahead worrisome.
First, Libya may use this "compassionate" release to sow specious doubt
about its own role in the mass murder. This was its tactic, even, in
countering the civil law suits filed by the families of the victims.
Al-Qaddafi agreed to settle with the families, but never directly admitted
Libya's operational role.
Of course, Libya's problem is that the custom-designed timers for explosives
served as a signature in the crime. Undaunted, Libya may still try to
insinuate that it was some other group--say Iran, operating alone or through
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That, of course, is not
an especially exculpatory choice, since after their expulsion from Lebanon,
parts of the Palestinian leadership took up residence in Libya.
Second, and equally dismaying, Libya may read this triumph as a certified
all-purpose "get out of jail free" card--absolving it of a broad swath of
bad acts.
With oil reserves at play in North Africa's version of the Great Game, it
could seem churlish to recall that, without any accounting, during the
1990s, Libya helped to fuel the bloody civil conflicts of West Africa,
supplying money and weapons to the RUF rebellion in Sierra Leone, prolonging
the misuse of child soldiers and the staggering atrocities against
civilians. Or that Libya may have had a hand in the unrest on the
Sudanese-Chad border, since southern turmoil makes Libya's southern tribes
more dependent on Tripoli for defense.
Libya's leadership still thinks it can get away with common indecencies.
There was, of course, the jailing of the Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian
doctor, released in 2007 after being held as virtual hostages for eight
years in an HIV controversy.
Another striking example consists of a recent contretemps in Geneva. Last
summer, the Swiss police arrested one of al-Qaddafi's sons, Hannibal
al-Qaddafi, in the lakeside environs of the Hotel Wilson, charging him with
serious physical abuse of his household staff. Hannibal was released on a
bail of 500,000 Swiss francs (about 475,000 U.S. dollars) and returned to
Libya.
In the style of Don Corleone, the Tripoli regime quickly suspended oil sales
to Switzerland, withdrew $7 billion from its Swiss bank accounts and forbade
two Swiss businessmen from leaving Libya. On Aug. 20, just as the Lockerbie
bomber was flying home, the president of Switzerland chose to appear at a
Tripoli press conference to give his apology for the "unjust arrest" of
Hannibal al-Qaddafi. He was assured, he said, that the two Swiss businessmen
would be allowed to go home by early next month.
Then there is Libya's own domestic human rights record. Two years ago, the
U.N. Human Rights Committee noted its concern at the "allegedly large number
of forced disappearances and cases of extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions." Libya has never finished its inquiry into the killing of many
hundreds of prisoners at the Abu Salim prison in 1996. It still controls and
intimidates the press.
The release of the Lockerbie bomber as an act of "humanitarianism" is thus
likely to be mistaken for weakness. First-class medical care must be
provided to any person serving a criminal sentence. It has been suggested by
many, in a rather different debate, that this quality is available under
Britain's National Health Service. Visits from family members are also an
appropriate accommodation.
But there is no right to be released from a 27-year sentence, when the
victims of mass murder cannot be released from the grave. We should be
concerned about the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber--for the
audacity that it may breed in the Libyan regime, and as a wider signal of
the West's lack of resolve when an oil-rich suitor comes calling."
Ruth Wedgwood is a professor of international law at Johns Hopkins
University's School of Advanced International Studies and a member of the
Hoover Institution task force on law and national security.
FBI Director slams Scots
23 August 2009
The full letter
from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, to Scottish Minister Kenny
MacAskill regarding the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Al
Megrahi.
"Dear Mr.
Secretary:
Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the
FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other
prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts
and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.
Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this
case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been
the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment
of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged at your decision,
blithely defended on the grounds of "compassion."
Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to
the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe
that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury
after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to
the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man's exercise of
"compassion." Your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted
to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the
government of Libya ever disclosed the names and roles of others who were
responsible.
Your action makes a mockery of the emotions, passions and pathos of all
those affected by the Lockerbie tragedy: the medical personnel who first
faced the horror of 270 bodies strewn in the fields around Lockerbie, and in
the town of Lockerbie itself; the hundreds of volunteers who walked the
fields of Lockerbie to retrieve any piece of debris related to the breakup
of the plane; the hundreds of FBI agents and Scottish police who undertook
an unprecedented global investigation to identify those responsible; the
prosecutors who worked for years--in some cases a full career--to see
justice done.
But most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the
families who lost their own on December 21, 1988. You could not have spent
much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved
in the investigation and prosecution. You could not have visited the small
wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were
gathered for identification--the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the
Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning
home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking
forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.
You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your
partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the
Lockerbie tragedy. Although the FBI and Scottish police, and prosecutors in
both countries, worked exceptionally closely to hold those responsible
accountable, you never once sought our opinion, preferring to keep your own
counsel and hiding behind opaque references to "the need for compassion."
You have given the family members of those who died continued grief and
frustration. You have given those who sought to assure that the persons
responsible would be held accountable the back of your hand. You have given
Megrahi a "jubilant welcome" in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where,
I ask, is the justice?
Sincerely yours,
Robert S. Mueller, III
Director"
Boycott
Scotland
22 August 2009
Americans are the biggest contributors to Scotland's £980 million overseas
tourism market, accounting for 14 per cent of foreign visitors. Already the
negative effect upon the Scottish tourist industry is being sharply felt, no
matter how hard the Scottish Tourist Board tries to spin the facts.
The best way to boycott the Scottish decision is to simply not travel to
Scotland. Ireland has been advocated by many as the best alternative to
those who regularly travel to and conduct business in Scotland.
Those
leading the boycott campaign also advocate the boycott of British Petroleum
and other major British companies that have been lobbying for closer trade
relations with Libya. As the news continues to unfold, more and more
evidence is mounting regarding BP's role in this affair, as well as that of
other major British industries seeking a foothold in the increasingly
lucrative Libyan market. It has almost certain that the release of al-Megrahi
was a concession made towards this end.
VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION
Mr.
MacAskill may be emailed at
kenny.macaskill.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Mr.
Alex Salmond, Leader of the Scottish National Party, has also
snubbed the families of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and dismissed our
concerns. He may be emailed at
Alex.Salmond.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Prime
Minister Gordon Brown has thus far remained silent regarding the matter, nor
has he condemned the Scottish government for its reprehensible actions. Why
should he, considering that his own government is complicit with the
Scottish National Party in this sordid travesty?
And
the website leading the boycott initiative is -
http://www.boycottscotland.com/
The
two following editorials express their indignation at this decision in the
strongest terms.
VisitScotland has suggested the website's creation was insignificant when
compared with the number of Americans who regularly come to Scotland to
spend their dollars.
But the agency admits that it has received messages from the United States
asking if Scottish holidays could be cancelled.
A spokeswoman said: "The strong and enduring relationship between Scotland
and the United States will continue, as will the friendship between the
American and Scottish people. Our priority is ensuring that American
visitors and tourists are extended a very warm welcome to Scotland. One
unattributed website is not a significant factor, when compared to the
thousands of US citizens who visit and will continue to visit Scotland."
I
suspect that VisitScotland, like the Scottish government, has underestimated
the anger that they have caused.
Scotland’s
misplaced sympathy for an unforgivable criminal
The Boston Globe editorial - August 21, 2009
"It is possible to
believe in a compassionate justice system, oppose the death penalty, and
still be outraged at the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the
cancer-stricken man convicted of bombing Pam Am Flight 103. With due respect
for the humanity displayed by the Scottish officials who gave Megrahi the
chance to die in Libya, their sympathy is misguided.
Terrorism is a uniquely culpable crime. While many murders are in some sense
premeditated, a terrorist attack is meticulously plotted, intricately
studied, and carefully calibrated to inflect the deepest possible injury on
a society. So it was with the Pan Am 103 bombing on Dec. 21, 1988.
Massachusetts residents know well the cost of that tragic event. The plane’s
258 passengers included about two dozen people from New England, many of
them college students returning from a semester in England organized through
Syracuse University. The grief was like a lightning bolt aimed at local
towns. Empty Christmas stockings hung on living room mantles as families
gathered to mourn their lost children. The images became indelible: the
cockpit of the plane, crumpled like papier-mache on a wheat field; the
mother of one young passenger wailing in agony on the floor of the Pan Am
terminal; the burned-out center of Lockerbie, Scotland, looking like a
British town during the Blitz.
The images resonate not only because of their pain, but because they
illustrate precisely what the bombers intended: To tear at the fabric of a
society. Criminal justice can and must create a hierarchy of culpability,
even among vicious crimes. And none is less forgivable than the intent to
terrorize.
That is exactly what a special court in the Netherlands convicted Megrahi of
doing. Evidence indicated that his position as head of security for the
Libyan state airline was a cover for intelligence work, that he used false
passports to travel to Malta and Zurich, the two most important sites in the
planning of the attacks, and that he personally purchased the clothes in the
suitcase that contained the bomb. He maintained his innocence, but 16 months
after his conviction in 2001, Libya itself acknowledged responsibility for
the bombing.
Confession, bringing closure to a sad drama, can sometimes be a
consideration in granting a terminally ill prisoner a compassionate release.
Megrahi hasn’t confessed. He has made no expression of remorse, and there is
a real danger that in returning to Tripoli he will be greeted as a hero. His
disease, an advanced form of prostate cancer, can still be slow-growing and
unpredictable. Scottish officials, however, insist that he has no more than
three months to live.
Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister, declared that Megrahi has
had “a sentence imposed by a higher power. It’s one that no court in any
jurisdiction in any land can revoke or unroll. It’s terminal, irrevocable,
and final - he’s going to die.’’ MacAskill’s statement, which is distasteful
in equating cancer with a criminal judgment, also reeks of an untoward
certainty, as if MacAskill himself, more than the court or the cancer or the
law, is assuming the role of higher power. There may be honorable intentions
behind this decision, but MacAskill’s sympathies would be better directed to
the victims’ families, who have almost uniformly opposed Megrahi’s release.
Two days after the bombing, a friend of one of the victims, 20-year-old
Stephen Boland of Nashua, recalled how she would always buy him Beatles
books for Christmas. She had spoken to him in England, as he got ready to
come home on Flight 103. “He told me he stood on Abbey Road, and I suppose
he is with John Lennon now,’’ she said.
This is an occasion, if one were ever necessary, to think again of Stephen
Boland and his fellow passengers."
Justice and power
The Financial Times - August 21 2009 19:21 (my emphasis).
"Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill used his 15 minutes of fame to
full effect this week, explaining the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi,
convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, in terms of “compassion and mercy”.
A higher authority would now take over, he intoned, with a sentence
“terminal, final and irrevocable”. Mr al-Megrahi is expected to die from
cancer within three months.
Mr MacAskill’s handling of the process was despicably self-serving.
But, although made by a politician, the decision itself was in keeping with
the normal operations of Scotland’s legal system. Mr MacAskill, a Scottish
nationalist, emphasised it was taken in Edinburgh not London, a point seized
on by the British government as an excellent way of getting itself off the
hook.
Unlike the 2007 decision to halt investigation into bribery claims around
BAE’s dealings with Saudi Arabia – citing national security – this was a
legal decision that does not appear to have been influenced by commercial
considerations.
Nevertheless, the minister made a grave mistake in not retaining in
UK custody a man convicted of mass murder.
Mr al-Megrahi’s release was lambasted by some, welcomed by others, and used
as propaganda by Libya. America and Britain’s leaders demanded Mr al-Megrahi
not be feted in Tripoli. Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi pointedly ignored
them both.
So, instead of a discreet touch-down, Mr al-Megrahi was welcomed by
enthusiastic crowds. Having been extradited from Libya in 1999 in return for
the lifting of UN sanctions, Mr al-Megrahi has been pressed into Mr
Gaddafi’s service a second time. His release will doubtless be
propagandised as a great victory in the dictator’s self-aggrandising quest
to present himself as the natural leader of the Arab, Islamic and African
worlds. This is unedifying, but inevitable.
Two things are clear. First, despite Libyan attempts to present Mr al-Megrahi’s
release as an acceptance of his innocence, it has nothing to do with the
legal case.
Second, and most important, the Lockerbie saga should not end here. Despite
the investigation of the bombing, the subsequent trial and Mr al-Megrahi’s
conviction, questions over who was behind this atrocity have not been fully
answered.
The families of the 270 Lockerbie victims have been let down. The full story
of what happened still needs investigation. Justice must be seen to be
done. That is still not the case."
Ramadan to
start on Saturday
21 August 2009
The Moonsighting
Committee met yesterday evening after prayers, gazed up into the skies and
agreed that they had seen what they needed to declare that this Saturday, 22
August 2009, is the day when Ramadan will commence in the UAE.
Saturday will be the first day of fasting in the holy month of Ramadan.
Ramadan Kareem!
Lockerbie
bomber's freedom is at a cost
20 August 2009
The only convicted
Lockerbie bomber has been set free to return to Libya on compassionate
grounds. It is a mystery what deal was done behind the scenes. USA relations
with Scotland are strained as a result.
There are some
interesting comments from a writer to the Guardian newspaper which follow
below.
Here is my
problem. The courts convicted al-Megrahi for the murder of 270 people.
Therefore he is guilty and should not be released. Compassion was allowing
him to live after conviction. Europe has no death penalty. Thankfully. A USA
trial would have seen him on death row. No compassion there.
Bit if he is
innocent, and the evidence is as poor against him as it is alleged to be,
then this case should have gone to appeal/inquiry and his only way of
release would be for the conviction to be overthrown. A release on
compassionate grounds is not the correct way to right a judicial wrong.
The note in the
Guardian said:
"This will be a day of mixed emotions in Greenock Prison. Both in-mates and
prison officers will be happy for Abdul Baset al-Megrahi because to a man
they were in no doubt he was innocent. But he will also be sadly missed,
especially by the remaining prisoners. One reason for his popularity with
other inmates was that he had a very large television with satellite
channels (paid for by Libya) which he kindly allowed his fellow prisoners to
watch. The other, more poignant, reason was that he helped illiterate local
prisoners to read and write letters in English. It is known that almost half
the 300 prisoners are functionally illiterate, a devastating comment on the
failure of trendy education in Scotland."
Sadly the whole Lockerbie saga smells very bad. Questionable evidence.
Dubious conviction. Secret deals. Inappropriate release. Now the truth of
who was behind the bombing will never be known. Was it Libya acting alone?
Unlikely. Iran and Syria were immediate suspects in December 1981. Al-Megrahi
clearly did not act alone if he was involved at all. The truth is now lost
and we will never know who was involved and at what level the bombing was
sanctioned.
Etihad's US
alliance
20 August 2009
The United Arab
Emirates’ (UAE) national carrier Etihad Airways has signed a code sharing
agreement with the American Airlines that will benefit travellers from the
region, WAM news agency reported Wednesday.
The new agreement will come into effect this week. Etihad Airways will start
maiden flights to Chicago Sep 2, the airline said in a statement.
The agreement will also help expand the two airlines’ global networks as
well as between Abu Dhabi and key cities in the US, including Washington,
Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston.
Etihad Airways currently flies to two destinations in North America - New
York in the US and Toronto in Canada.
Forget the great in britain
Newsweek -
International Edition - Stryker McGuire
Hard hitting
article. Hard to argue with the basic text. The underlying problems
will confine Britain increasingly to a secondary role on the world stage;
but that may not be a bad thing. Sometimes the cloth has to be cut to fit.
And forget military power, empire, financial leadership. There are greater
assets that Britain will enjoy a lead role in for centuries; humour, arts,
music, theatre, world leading media, free expression, the creative arts. And
a continuing talent for satire, scandal and sedition.
19 August 2009
"Even in the
decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket
superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed
military might, its extraordinary relationship with America—all these things
helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now
all that is changing as the bills come due on Britain's role in last year's
financial meltdown, the rescue of the banks, and the ensuing recession.
Suddenly, the sun that once never set on the British Empire is casting long
shadows over what's left of Britain's imperial ambitions, and the country is
having to rethink its role in the world—perhaps as Little Britain, certainly
as a lesser Britain.
This is a watershed moment for the United Kingdom. The country's public debt
is soaring, possibly doubling to a record high of 100 percent of GDP over
the next five years, according to the International Monetary Fund. The
National Institute for Economic and Social Research forecasts that it will
take six years for per capita income to reach early-2008 levels again. The
effects will cascade across government. Budgets will be slashed at the
Ministry of Defense and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, affecting
Britain's ability to project power, hard and soft. And there's little that
can be done to reverse the trend, either by Prime Minister Gordon Brown or
by the incoming government of David Cameron's Conservatives, assuming they
win a general election that must be held within the next 10 months. As
William Hague, Cameron's deputy and shadow foreign secretary, said in a
recent speech: "It will become more difficult over time for Britain to exert
on world affairs the influence which we are used to."
History has been closing in on Britain for some time. The rise of giant
emerging economies like China and India always meant that Britain would have
a smaller seat at the increasingly crowded top table of nations. It also
meant that the United States would recalibrate the so-called special
relationship as it sought new partners and alliances, inevitably shrinking
the disproportionate role Britain has long played in world affairs. Brown's
predecessor, Tony Blair, made a final stab at greatness with what amounted
to a 51st-state strategy: by locking Britain into America's wars—on terror,
in Afghanistan, and in Iraq—London achieved an importance it hadn't had
since Churchill and the war. But whatever advantage Britain gained in the
short term was wiped out by the political damage Blair's strategy caused at
home. Ordinary Britons and even members of the British establishment grew
increasingly critical of what they saw as London's subservient relationship
with Washington. Blair's authority was diminished, his political agenda at
home suffered as a result, and it became clear that Britain's geopolitical
default setting would no longer be to automatically follow America's lead.
In fact, Blair may merely have postponed the inevitable: a lesser Britain is
a consequence of world events, not unlike the slow relative decline of the
United States, which finds itself today where Britain was at its apogee.
The global
recession has hit virtually every country, but Britain more than most. The
great engine room of British prosperity, the financial sector, now feels
like an anchor. Britain has slipped into deflation—a decline in general
price levels—for the first time in 50 years. The IMF believes Britain's
economic slump will be deeper and longer than that of any other advanced
economy. The number of Britons claiming unemployment benefits has jumped
from 1.3 million (4.6 percent of the workforce) in 1999 to more than 2
million and is on track to top 3 million. The Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development says Britain's recovery may begin later this
year, but will lag behind those of other rich countries like Japan and the
United States. At the moment, Britain is arguably saddled with the worst
public finances of any major nation, thanks to voracious spending in recent
years and to borrowing that is growing faster than in other developed
nations or even fast-growing developing ones. Britain is so heavily indebted
that one political commentator dubbed it "Iceland-on-Thames," suggesting
Britain could follow that nation into bankruptcy.
What makes the British case stand out even more is that it is the only
country of its size in recent history that has sought such a
disproportionately large role on the world stage. During the Cold War,
Margaret Thatcher saw herself as second only to Ronald Reagan as a leader
who helped to bring down the Soviet Union and make the world safe for
capitalism. During Blair's decade in office, from 1997 to 2007, Britain
fought three wars—in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq—in which its military
participation was right behind that of the United States. Now that's
changing. "Although we are a relatively wealthy country and we have a seat
on the U.N. Security Council, we are a power in decline," says Ian Kearns of
the Institute for Public Policy Research, which recently conducted a British
security review. Paddy Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats who
took part in the IPPR study, recalled the gibe by the late U.S. secretary of
state Dean Acheson in 1962: "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not
yet found a role." Britain found its footing for a while, but Acheson's
words sting again today. "If you were to say we haven't found a role," says
Lord Ashdown, "it's true."
The U.K. still maintains one of the largest defense budgets in the world,
but probably not for much longer. Recently, as the number of British deaths
in Afghanistan has risen dramatically during the summer fighting season,
both Labour and the Conservatives have felt obliged to say they would not
reduce defense spending, so as not to put troops at greater risk. But in the
longer term, experts say big cuts are inevitable. In a recent paper for the
Royal United Services Institute, Malcolm Chalmers estimates that the
Ministry of Defense budget will be cut by 11 percent in real terms over the
next six years. Other estimates are much higher. Ashdown, a former Royal
Marine, has said the annual £35 billion Ministry of Defense budget might
have to be cut by almost a quarter, which would put Britain more in line
with traditionally lower-spending continental powers.
Britain's role in the world will shrink with its budget. A cash-starved
British Army would have important implications for NATO, already weakened by
the fuzziness of its post–Cold War mission. As it stands, Britain is usually
second only to the United States in terms of troop commitments to NATO
operations such as Afghanistan, and its loyalty to the cause has encouraged
other European NATO partners to do their part. Flagging British commitment
will have the opposite, depressing effect and could further alter
transatlantic alliances by boosting the relative power of France, which only
recently reentered NATO's integrated military-command structure. Long before
Britain's withdrawal from Iraq earlier this year, the U.S. military
hierarchy was concerned about growing British domestic opposition. Now, as
the focus shifts to Afghanistan and British military casualties rise there,
public support for that war is waning, too; in a July poll, a majority said
the war is "unwinnable" and that British troops should be withdrawn
immediately. It hasn't helped that troops and officers have complained of
equipment shortages. It was the cause of some embarrassment a few weeks ago
that Gen. Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, had to hitch a ride
on an American Black Hawk helicopter while visiting British troops in
Helmand province because a British chopper wasn't available.
The future of Britain's nuclear force, the ultimate symbol of a great power,
is also uncertain. Britain's submarine-based Trident missile system is due
to be replaced over the next decade at a cost of some £20 billion. But
according to a recent Guardian/ICM poll, 54 percent of the British people
say Britain should give up its nuclear deterrent altogether. That's
unlikely, but it may force the next government to find a cheap way to extend
Trident's life span. Traditionally, being a nuclear power was one way of
securing permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council, and any
downgrading of Britain's deterrent could strengthen the demands of big
emerging powers that they should have more seats on the council, possibly at
Europe's and the U.K.'s expense.
Britain, having
paid a steep political price for the hard power it wielded in Iraq and
recognizing the limits to the money it can pour into weapons systems and the
like, is keen to project soft power. But the government is seemingly
weakening what should be a chief instrument of soft power, the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. The legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan is "strategic
incoherence" and has left the FCO adrift, says Christopher Meyer, a former
British ambassador to Washington. FCO cuts suggest that the diplomatic
corps, once the envy of the entire world, is losing the bureaucratic wars.
In 2004, the FCO closed 19 overseas missions out of about 300. In Australia,
New Zealand, Germany, France, Spain, and the United States, some consulates
were downgraded, leaving only local personnel in place. Since then, the FCO
has cut staff from 6,000 to 4,000. This year's FCO budget of £2 billion is
widely expected to be pared to £1.6 billion in the next fiscal year.
The glory days of the City of London are now grinding to a halt, too. The
main symbol of Britain's global might—the City boasts walls from Roman
times—found financing for some of the world's earliest and most prominent
multinational companies, and has had greater influence in global finance
than Westminster has had in geopolitics. London stole the march on Wall
Street by seizing the highest-growth areas, like hedge funds, exotic
derivatives, and the like. Unluckily for London, these areas were also the
hardest hit by the financial crisis. But now London, like New York, awaits a
slew of new national, regional, and global regulation that appears likely to
diminish its role in the world for years to come. The European Union has
already endorsed the creation of a Systemic Risk Board with oversight powers
that will include the City, even though Britain is outside the euro zone and
is not a member of the European Central Bank, whose members will appoint the
SRB chair. Britain has sidestepped such intervention in the past, but this
time is different. Germany and France appear intent on restraining the
excesses of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and may seek to engineer reforms that
steer a greater share of global capital flows into more cautious continental
hands.
When the dust settles, both the City and Wall Street will likely remain
preeminent but less so, confronting rival financial power centers in Europe
and Asia. It can also be argued that London, as the glitzier icon of laissez
faire, will pay a steeper price than Wall Street in the financial new world
order. Ever since the "big bang" of the 1980s, London has regulated the
banking industry with a light touch—controlling bankers' practices with sets
of principles, rather than law on the books as in the U.S. If European
regulations are "harmonized" to include London and if London's light touch
gets a little heavier, the City could suddenly become "more antagonistic to
the institutions that are being regulated," as Andrew Hilton of the Centre
for the Study of Financial Innovation in London puts it. In that event,
financial centers like Singapore and Hong Kong could draw business away from
the City.
Britain's bout of
reflection on its last gasps of empire comes at a natural point in its
history. The Great Recession came as a surprise and has accelerated the
trend, but the rise of China, India, and Brazil, and the changing ties to a
declining America, have been visible for many years. As America turns to
building new ties with the advancing powers of Asia and Latin America—even
sending its top envoys to promise its creditors in China that the U.S. will
handle its debts responsibly—-Britain can only feel less special. The nation
is in the totally predictable grip of the ennui and general grumpiness that
accompany the end of a political era.
Eleven years ago, the year after Tony Blair's Labour Party had swept to
victory, ending 18 years of Conservative rule, he spoke in Dublin of a
Britain that was "emerging from its post-empire malaise." He was
characteristically optimistic. He said he hoped the Irish saw Britain as a
country that was "modernizing, becoming as confident of its future as it
once was of its past." Those were indeed heady times for Britons. Phrases
like "New Labour" and "new dawn" and "new Britain" were not yet curdling on
the tongue. Today, Blair is two years out of office, Labour's reign 12 years
old. His successor, Gordon Brown, suffers from a gray, been-there-too-long
aura. Long gone is the cultural ferment of "Cool Britannia" that made London
the capital of cool in the early Blair years. The gloom was made all the
deeper in recent months by a parliamentary-expenses scandal that heaped
public scorn on politics and politicians alike.
Pity the prime minister who takes over from Brown. A Conservative victory at
the next election—a victory by any party at the next election—would have
little of the game-changing feeling that accompanied Blair's triumph 12
years ago. Then, Britain bought into Blair's mantra because it was real
enough: the economy had already begun a period of unprecedented growth,
immigration was enriching the country, an entrepreneurial fervor crackled
across even the old industrial heartland. Today that has evaporated. The
great test of the next prime minister, and probably the one after that, will
be not only to redefine Britain's place among great nations but also to
renew the kind of spirit that has ruled Britannia in the past."
Compassion or Justice
19 August 2009
The simple
question at issue is whether the only person to be held legally responsible
for the 1988 terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103 and the deaths of 270
people should be released from jail in Scotland and allowed to die in his
native Libya?
The simple answer
is "no". And this should never have even become an issue.
This is the question before Scotland's justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill,
who has apparently agreed to the release or transfer of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
The prospect of a
move has dismayed many victims' families – in particular, relatives of the
189 Americans who died when a bomb placed in the flight's cargo hold
exploded above Lockerbie, Scotland.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has talked to Mr. MacAskill and
"expressed strongly" the US view that Mr. Megrahi should not be released,
according to Philip Crowley, State Department spokesman. "We have made our
views clear not only to Scotland, not only to the UK, but also to Libya,"
Mr. Crowley said at a briefing last week.
There was a trial;
there was a conviction. There was no compassion shown to the 270 crew and
passengers of Pan American 103.
Attorney General Eric Holder has also contacted MacAskill, as have seven US
senators, including Sens. Edward Kennedy (D) and John Kerry (D), both of
Massachusetts.
"We know that the Scottish government shares our commitment – and the
world's – to support justice and oppose acts of terrorism," the seven
senators wrote in a letter to MacAskill. "That is why we urge you to ensure
that Abdel Basset al-Megrahi serves the remainder of his sentence in prison
in Scotland."
Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and was sentenced to life in prison (with a
minimum of 27 years before being considered for parole). According to his
lawyer, Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer in a late stage. It falls on
MacAskill to decide whether to grant him a "compassionate" release, given
his health condition, or allow him to serve the remainder of his sentence in
his native Libya, under the terms of a Prisoner Transfer Treaty, which was
signed between Libya and the UK last November.
There is every
possibility that Megrahi, despite advanced prostrate cancer, will be
celebrated on his return to Libya. And sadder still that BP's oil
concessions will flourish in Libya.
Manchester airport chaos
19 August 2009
Flights had to be diverted and others left mid-air above
Manchester Airport when staff were forced to carry out emergency repairs to
the main runway on Monday afternoon.
Apparently a light compressed into the runway leaving a hole in the 23R/5L
runway. This left 23L as the only operational runway fro both landing and
departures.
A number of flights were diverted to
Leeds Bradford,
Birmingham and Liverpool airports to refuel before returning to land at
Manchester.
But you can see the problem with landing on
23L in this picture.
There is no full length parallel taxiway. So
a plane landing on 23L has to taxi all the way to the end of the runway,
turn around and come back along 5R until it reaches one of the three exits
visible in the picture. The second runway is simply not functional for
single runway operation.
The main runway, 23R, was briefly reopened,
only to close down again as, including Emirates which had refuelled in
Birmingham, were already on their way into Manchester. Emirates had
fortunately taken on enough fuel to allow for a one hour hold.
The runway did reopen just in time for EK and
others to land and the airport to resume operations.
The Birmingham to Manchester flight took one
hour and 20 minutes; and overall was 3 hours late into MAN.
To compound the problem circling aircraft were further held
up by a Monarch A320 which landed with hydraulic problems and the emergency
services on standby.
An airport spokeswoman said: "We had to close a runway for a
short time to make some emergency repairs to a sunken light twice during the
afternoon.
"It did mean some flights had to hold and others had to divert to local
airports to refuel, but later returned here to offload passengers."
To compound the problems the information
given out by the so called information desk at the cramped and very
unpleasant arrivals area in the bowels of terminal 1 was embarrassing. No
reason for the delays. Just that the airplane was refueling in Birmingham.
And no idea of the arrival time which moved every 15 minutes from 1.30pm to
3.30pm. And no apology for what was clearly an airport problem.
The annual uniform outrage
19 August 2009
Here we go again.
Chulalongkorn
University (CU) is campaigning for students to comply with its dress code,
while Thammasat University (TU) wants to the government to launch a "Social
Cabinet" to tackle the issue of students wearing uniforms inappropriately.
Really - it needs
a government committee! As usual this will be a noise for a week or two
until the universities find something useful to worry about
At the project launch yesterday, CU rector Pirom Kamolratanakul said wearing
a Chula student uniform, the only one to be granted by the monarchy, is a
privilege.
TU deputy rector for student affairs Parinya Thewana-ruemitkul said the
president for Network of Deputy Rectors for Student Affairs supervised the
student uniform code at each university. He added that Thammasat was less
strict about the uniform than some other universities, but insisted students
wear "appropriate clothes" to classes.
Blaming the influence of fashions worn by movie and TV stars, he urged that
a Social Cabinet comprising the efforts of several ministries should be set
up to help universities solve the problem. The Culture Ministry could ask
celebrities to wear clothes appropriate to the time of day and occasion as
well as promote good values, he added.
Deputy Education Minister Chaiwuti Bannawat agreed that students need good
discipline and praised universities' successful efforts in improving the
standard of their students' dress.
Perhaps we need a Ministry of Clampdowns.
In this modern age
the fact university students are made to wear uniforms is a nonsense. This
is not a school. These are higher learning establishments for young adults.
Anywhere else in the world they would be in jeans and a tea shirt and would
be protesting global warming, illegal dumping and political hypocrisy.
Big, bigger,
biggest
August 15, 2009 -
Sydney Morning Herald
Michelle Wranik charts the rivalry between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Much like the rivalry between Sydney and
Melbourne, there has always been a hint of competition between Dubai and Abu
Dhabi, two of the biggest and most important of the seven emirates making up
the United Arab Emirates. They're a bit like Serena and Venus Williams.
Everyone thinks they want to knife each other in the back – especially
during Wimbledon – but we'll never know for sure. Who will win the trophy in
the competition between Dubai and Abu Dhabi? Time will tell.
Dubai
Rather like Vegemite, Dubai is either loved or loathed but there's no
denying the flashiest city in the United Arab Emirates has grabbed the
world's attention. In the same way that Paris Hilton sashays past a crowd of
paparazzi, Dubai knows how to work the camera.
Unless you're a hardened sceptic, it's hard not to be impressed by all the
man-made grandeur, especially when you gawp at the sheer scale of any of the
skyscrapers lining the city's 12-lane artery, Sheikh Zayed Road. Size
limitations and subtlty simply weren't in the rule book. In fact, the book
was probably binned. You can imagine the group of dishdasha-wearing Arabs
standing around a proposed design, shaking their heads and mouthing the word
"bigger".
Wowing the world with structural icons is what Dubai does best. Take the
Burj Al Arab, with its sky-high helipad, for example, or the Atlantis Hotel
on the phantasmagorical palm-shaped island, Palm Jumeirah, which has some
rooms facing an 11-million-litre aquarium packed with exotic fish.
Dubai also blitzes its competitors with the shopping. The Mall of the
Emirates is the showpiece, with about 450 retailers and an indoor ski slope.
Affectionately called "Moe", or "more of everything", by locals, this mall
was once the biggest in the world. But as Dubai likes to trump even itself,
Dubai Mall, with its 8.3-metre-high aquarium and underwater zoo, now holds
the lofty title. To boot, it's built in the shadow of the Burj Dubai Tower,
the world's tallest building, and overlooks the world's biggest fountain ...
you get the point.
Such scale, wealth and outrageous excessiveness can be off-putting but
there's something rather intoxicating about the idea of a desert
megalopolis. Especially one ruled by such a charismatic leader: Sheikh
Mohammed Bin Rashid al Maktoum. When it comes to the cool stakes, the Sheikh
has a manicured finger firmly on the pulse. He's on Facebook. And Twitter.
He mingles with the in-crowd at the Royal Ascot horse races, looking dapper
in a top hat. He has even recently released a book of poetry.
Despite the infamous sex-on-the-beach scandal, in which two visiting Britons
were sentenced to three months in prison, expats have found Dubai rather
intoxicating, too, giving the city a global feel and no shortage of
nightlife. Foodies won't be disappointed either, with Michelin-starred chefs
such as Nobu Matsuhisa, Gordon Ramsay and Pierre Gagnaire all opening
restaurants. And thanks to many generations of Indian and Pakistani
expatriates, you can find some of the tastiest curries and thalis at
rock-bottom prices in Karama or Satwa – both grungier, though
character-filled suburban areas.
It's in these lesser-known areas where Dubai hides most of its surprises.
Like parts of the beachside Umm Suqeim or Jumeirah, where there are small
mosques on every corner, ramshackle fishermen's huts and a well-loved
sailing club. Or the scruffy commercial district, Al Quoz, where the number
of art galleries sprouting up suggests a city ready for a cultural
renaissance.
The labyrinth of souks in Deira, on the eastern side of Dubai Creek, also
offers a glimpse into the city's past. The muddled rabbit warrens of stalls
manned by Indian and Persian merchants sell everything from tacky magnets to
fine silk, gold and spices. Walking along the creek at night when the calls
to prayer sound in unison from the surrounding mosques feels worlds away
from glacially air-conditioned shopping malls. There's even a Little India
of sorts, in the form of Hindi Lane – a chaotic alley behind the fabric souk,
packed with stalls selling flower garlands, incense and statues of Hindu
idols.
For those who fail to see beyond the fancy facade, Dubai is the epitome of
gaudy. But scrape beneath the surface and that's where the similarity
between Paris Hilton and Dubai begins and ends. It's not as synthetic as it
looks.
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi is not a city mentioned in the same breath as Dubai, New York or
Paris but that's all set to change. It might be lesser known but it's the
capital of the United Arab Emirates and, since hitting the oil jackpot in
1958, is the richest city in the world, sitting on billions of dollars worth
of reserves.
Abu Dhabi is smaller and far more reserved than its show-pony relative.
There are far fewer skyscrapers, no glitz and, from the immediate look of
it, no glam. Connected to the mainland by two bridges, it's spread out in a
T-shape that leads to The Corniche – the main drag lined with tailors, cheap
Lebanese restaurants and beauty salons. The Corniche curving around the
aquamarine-coloured shoreline has few cars and even fewer people. In the
height of summer, it can feel more like a sleepy coastal town than a
bustling capital city.
What Abu Dhabi doesn't have, however, it is building. From its rather humble
Bedouin beginnings as a peaceful, pearl-diving island, it is rising like a
sandy phoenix, quietly evolving into a capital of culture.
Today, one of Abu Dhabi's islands, 27-square-kilometre Sadiyaat, is shrouded
in a cloud of dust kicked up by cranes and construction workers. But by
2013, Sadiyaat – or the "island of happiness" – will host an eye-popping
collection of museums, galleries and universities, including the Louvre and
the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim, five-star hotels, championship golf
course and a luxury marina designed for super-yachts. Then, of course,
there's a concert hall by architect Zaha Hadid and the Sheikh Zayed National
Museum, with the British Museum on side to consult on the project. It's all
going to cost squillions but when you're sitting on coffers lined with oil,
that's pocket change.
On nearby Yas Island, another mega project is under way. The formula one
racing circuit (with an accompanying Ferrari theme park) will be finished in
months, ready to host the first race of the season in November.
Meanwhile, I ask a friend who knows the city intimately: what else is there
to see in Abu Dhabi? He hesitates before responding. “Well,” he begins,
“this is a question put to me often and, alas, people tend to go away
disappointed. There isn't a huge amount for tourists to do.”
He isn't all that wrong. Stopping off at the tourist information centre, two
Emirati men leap to their feet, seeming genuinely surprised to see us. They
pour cups of fragrant Arabic coffee and hand over free maps with all the
points of interest circled in blue ink. And you could feasibly see them all
in a day.
The biggest circle of ink points to the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Grand Mosque. Despite its feigned nonchalance for competition, Abu Dhabi
didn't cut corners when it came to this towering shrine to Islam, maybe even
catching a little bit of the biggest-and-best bug from Dubai. Driving
towards the city, it's unmissable, with 80 dazzlingly white marble domes and
minarets looming majestically, much like the Ivory Tower in the film The
Neverending Story.
The whole thing has cost more than $500 million, a good portion of that
going towards the Persian carpet covering the interior, classed as the
biggest in the world. With mosaic-tiled fountains, even the ablution
sections look more like a five-star hotel bathroom than an area where
Muslims wash before praying. Then there are the nine Swarovski crystal
chandeliers, one of which weighs 9.5 tonnes and is said to be the biggest in
the world.
Next stop is the Emirates Palace, billed as one of the most lavish hotels in
the world. Some might even say this $3 billion showpiece was built as a
not-so-subtle reaction to Dubai's seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel. With almost
ridiculously resplendent interiors rightfully earning it the "palace" tag,
it's frequented by slack-jawed tourists and has some of the city's best
restaurants.
Abu Dhabi's serene island existence and pearl-fishing roots are still
tangible when walking around the Dhow Wharf, where an army of old wooden
Arab fishing vessels bakes in the sun. They're used to haul in fish such as
hammour, native to the Gulf waters, with a host of Arabic restaurants nearby
to try it. One of the most famous, Al Arish, was opened by the much-loved
late ruler of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed.
Aside from the endless desert, the eastern mangroves fringing the city offer
ripe kayaking and camping opportunities on tiny, uninhabited islands.
Socially, Abu Dhabi doesn't have as much to offer as Dubai but it was a coup
when the world music festival WOMAD rolled in to town this year and the
spectacular Red Bull Air Race is always a draw.
It might be a while before it's anywhere near Dubai's league but give it
time. Abu Dhabi is aiming high – even for the stars, perhaps. Especially if
the rumours about it buying into Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic are true.
Abu Dhabi: the first emirate on the moon. Leaving Dubai, quite literally, in
the dust.
An astonishing rebound
Aug 13th 2009
- From The Economist print edition
It NEVER pays to underestimate the bounciness of Asia’s emerging economies.
After the region’s financial crisis of 1997-98, and again after the dotcom
bust in 2001, outsiders predicted a lengthy period on the floor—only for the
tigers to spring back rapidly. Earlier this year it was argued that such
export-dependent economies could not revive until customers in the rich
world did. The West still looks weak, with many economies contracting in the
second quarter, and even if America begins to grow in the second half of
this year, consumer spending looks sickly. Yet Asian economies, increasingly
decoupled from Western shopping habits, are growing fast.
The four emerging Asian economies which have reported GDP figures for the
second quarter (China, Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore) grew by an
average annualised rate of more than 10% (see article). Even richer and more
sluggish Japan, which cannot match that figure, seems to be recovering
faster than its Western peers. But emerging Asia should grow by more than 5%
this year—at a time when the old G7 could contract by 3.5%. Western
politicians should brace themselves for more talk of economic power drifting
inexorably to the East. How has Asia made such an astonishing rebound?
Out of smoke and mirrors, say some Western sceptics. They claim China’s
bounceback is yet another fake. The country’s numbers are certainly dodgy:
the components of GDP do not add up, and the data are always published
suspiciously early. China’s economy probably slowed more sharply in late
2008 than the official numbers suggest. But other indicators, which are less
likely to be massaged, confirm that China’s economy is roaring back.
Industrial production rose 11% in the year to July; electricity output,
which fell sharply last year, is growing again; and car sales are 70% higher
than a year ago.
And surely the whole of Asia cannot be engaged in a statistical fraud. South
Korea’s GDP grew by an annualised 10% in the second quarter. Taiwan’s
probably increased by even more: its industrial output jumped by an
astonishing annualised rate of 89%. India was hit less hard by the global
recession than many of its neighbours because it exports less, but its
industrial production has also perked up, rising by a seasonally adjusted
rate of 14% in the second quarter. Output in most of the smaller Asian
economies is still lower than a year ago, because they suffered steep
downturns late last year. But at economic turning points, one should track
quarterly changes.
Thrift in the boom, stimulus in the slump
Asia’s rebound has several causes. First, manufacturing accounts for a big
part of several local economies, and industries such as cars and electronics
are highly cyclical: output drops sharply in a downturn and then spurts in
the upturn. Second, the region’s decline in exports in late 2008 was
exacerbated by the freezing up of global trade finance, which is now flowing
again. Third, and most important, domestic spending has bounced back because
the fiscal stimulus in the region was bigger and worked faster than in the
West. India aside, the Asians entered this downturn with far healthier
government finances than rich countries, allowing them to spend more money.
Low private-sector debt made households and firms more likely to spend
government handouts; Asian banks were also in better shape than their
Western counterparts and able to lend more. Asia’s prudence during the past
decade did not allow it to escape the global recession, but it made the
region’s fiscal and monetary weapons more effective.
Western populists will no doubt once again try to blame their own sluggish
performance on “unfair” Asia. Ignore them. Emerging Asia’s average growth
rate of almost 8% over the past two decades—three times the rate in the rich
world—has brought huge benefits to the rest of the world. Its rebound now is
all the more useful when growth in the West is likely to be slow. Asia
cannot replace the American consumer: emerging Asia’s total consumption
amounts to only two-fifths of America’s. But it is the growth in spending
that really matters. In dollar terms, the increase in emerging Asia’s
consumer-spending this year will more than offset the drop in spending in
America and the euro area. This shift in spending from the West to the East
will help rebalance the world economy.
Beijing, Bangkok and Bangalore: beware boastfulness
It is easy to boost an economy with lots of government spending. But Asian
policymakers now face two difficult problems. Their immediate dilemma is how
to sustain recovery without inflating credit and asset-price bubbles. Local
equity and property markets are starting to froth. But policymakers’
reluctance to let their currencies rise faster against the dollar means that
their monetary policy is, in effect, being set by America’s Federal Reserve,
and is therefore too lax for these perkier economies. The longer-term
challenge is that once the impact of governments’ fiscal stimulus fades,
growth will slow unless economic reforms are put in place to bolster private
spending—something Japan, alas, never did (see article).
Part of the solution to both problems—preventing bubbles and strengthening
domestic spending—is to allow exchange rates to rise. If Asian central banks
stopped piling up reserves to hold down their currencies, this would help
stem domestic liquidity. Stronger currencies would also shift growth from
exports to domestic demand and increase households’ real spending power—and
help ward off protectionists in the West.
Hubris is the big worry. With the gap in growth rates between emerging Asia
and the developed world heading towards a record nine percentage points this
year, Chinese leaders have taken to warning America about its lax monetary
policy (while Washington has stopped lecturing China about the undervalued
yuan). But it would be a big mistake if Asia’s recovery led its politicians
to conclude that there was no need to change their exchange-rate policies or
adopt structural reforms to boost consumption. The tigers’
faster-than-expected rebound from their 1997-98 financial crisis encouraged
complacency and delayed necessary reforms, which left them more vulnerable
to the global downturns in 2001 and now. Make sure this new rise is not
followed by another fall.
Why the Premier League does not work
14 August 2009
So here we are in
mid summer and tomorrow the new English premiership season kicks off.
20 teams. But
there are only four that can win the league.
Manchester United, Liverpool,
Chelsea and Arsenal. Then there are the next five: Manchester City, Aston
Villa, Everton, Tottenham and West Ham. And then the rest. led by Fulham who
could produce a top 10 finish.
The bottom 10 will
be fighting relegation.
It has become a competition within a competition within a
competition, with three separate leagues running concurrently: the race for
the title, the race for Europe and the race for survival.
Sadly there are 15 clubs who know before a ball is kicked they have
absolutely no chance of winning the league. Manchester City have spent
outrageously. But will theirs stars really scarp for a win on a cold
February night in Burnley?
How polarised is the league. Over the past 15 seasons, three
clubs (Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal) have won the title. In the
previous 15 years, eight (Blackburn, Manchester United, Leeds, Arsenal,
Liverpool, Everton, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest) won it. More
tellingly, two of those champion outfits – Forest and Leeds – clinched the
championship within two years of gaining promotion. Impossible now.
The trouble is the
league is now dull and predictable. And for the most part uninteresting. It
is not run for the fans. it is run for television and corporate sponsors.
And it lasts for the next 9 months !
Find an
interesting fixture on the opening weekend? Everton and Arsenal is OK; Spurs
and Liverpool could be fun. But there are a lot of low interest games.
Chelsea v Hull
City
Aston Villa v Wigan Athletic
Blackburn Rovers v Manchester City
Bolton Wanderers v Sunderland
Portsmouth v Fulham
Stoke City v Burnley
Wolverhampton Wanderers v West Ham United
Everton v Arsenal
Manchester United v Birmingham City
Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool
So who will win
the league: Sadly I don't really care. Liverpool or Chelsea. OK. Chelsea to
win. From Man U (not what they were without Ronaldo and an aging squad) in
second. Arsenal
Who will be
relegated: Portsmouth; Birmingham (I hope so) and Hull City (ugly last year
- uglier this year).
Sadly it is all
rather dull and predictable. And however much the papers and Sky TV talk up
the new season it really is not very interesting.
Conspiracy watch
14 August 2009
Defence Minister
Prawit Wongsuwon left for Singapore on a two-day official visit on Thursday
to discuss cooperation between Thailand and the city state.
What was
interesting about this is that he was accompanied by the Supreme Commander (พล.อ.ทรงกิตติ
จักกาบาตร์ ผบ.สส), Army C-in-C Anupong, Navy C-in-C (พล.ร.อ.กำธร พุ่มหิรัญ
ผบ.ทร), and Air Force C-in-C (พล.อ.อ.อิทธพร ศุภวงศ์ ผบ.ทอ).
Why were they all
in Singapore together. Lots to discuss? The PAD, the Thaksin petition, the
Police Chief fiasco?
The Nation
newspaper can see a conspiracy under every bar stool and they have made an
issue of this trip and report that the three top leaders in security affairs
are conspiring with a powerful politican to plot a silent coup by using the
Monday's pardon petition as a springboard to grab power.
According to an
opposition party spokesman, the conspirators include three individuals
having P as their initial and a politician whose name starts with an N.
Many believe the initials refer to Prawit, whose name and nickname containg
the alphabet P, Army chief General Anupong Paochinda, whose nickname is Pok,
and Army chief-of-staff General Prayuth Chan-ocha.
The politician in question is faction leader Newin Chidchob. It can not be
verified whether Newin was in Singapore, coinciding with Prawit's visit as
claimed by Prompong.
ASEAN summit move
14 August 2009
The inept ASEAN
organisation is moving its October Summit from Phuket to Hua Hin in Prachuap
Khiri Khan and Cha-am in Phetchaburi for security reasons according to Thai
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya.
The Asean Summit was scheduled for Oct 23 to 25. This will be a very good
time to avoid Hua Hin.
Is this move
sensible. Probably not. The original summit would have been held in the
Laguna complex close to the Phuket airport. Foreign leaders could fly in and
out of Phuket. They cannot fly in and out of Hua Hin. Instead they will have
to fly into Bangkok and face a 2 and 1/2 hour drive to Hua Hin.
Demostrations can
be easily held in Hua Hin. Indeed with only one main road running into the
city it would actually be easy for red, yellow, blue or other coloured
demostrators to blockade access to the city and the summit.
Rather bizzarely the Foreign Minister explained that the Summit would have
been held in Phuket's popular annual vegetarian festival and it would not be
appropriate to impose the special security law in the island province,
because it would damp the tourist atmosphere.
The Internal Security Act was promulgated in Phuket and off-shore areas from
July 10 to 24 for the meeting of Asean foreign ministers and dialogue
partners.
The minister said it would be necessary to impose the Internal Security Act
during the October Asean summit and to forbid gatherings near the summit
venue.
The Asean Summit has been postponed since the Pattaya fiasco of April 11-13.
Canada's
misjudged bail out of Air Canada
14 August 2009
The only real
loser from Canada's bail -out of its national airline is the Canadian
traveler.
To support its
failing airline the Canadian government is simultaneously bailing out its
flag carrier and blocking entry by foreign airlines – on the basis that they
are “instruments of government policy”. As though Air Canada does not have
government intervention and support.
Air Canada is far
from safe, even with the bailout. But there is a special irony here. The
government justifies its action as a matter of “national interest”.
So this is not
about the financial well being of a private company but about the perceived
economic importance of the national airline.
Last week, the
formerly government-owned Air Canada announced it had managed to pull back
from the brink, securing just over CAD1 billion in loans, probably enough to
secure its future for the next few months.
Calin Rovinescu, Air Canada’s President and CEO, has remarkably achieved a
hard won battle and apparently prevented Air Canada from bankruptcy, at
least for this year.
But almost every dollar of the loans comes from the Canadian government and
from the company’s owner, ACE and associate company, Aeroplan. Despite its
prominent billing in the story, GE Canada Finance Holding Company is a minor
player. And then there are various amounts from sale and leaseback and
aggregating an array of biscuit-tin savings which help to achieve the magic
headline figure of CAD1 billion.
The basic loan is
for CAD600 million – nearly half of it from the Canadian government.
In reality this is merely the preservation of a famous old national brand,
securing the short term income of shareholders and a large private equity
group, avoiding a difficult political decision by a government which wilted
under pressure and has temporarily saved some jobs.
But the saddest part is that Air Canada has a temporary reprieve from the
threat of more efficient airlines which have to survive on their own merits.
Air Canada is inefficient; held hostage by its unions, and now carries a
debt burden which suggests that its long term future will be by no means
secure.
To protect its
poor investment Canada is returning to the arcane protectionism of the
1960s. This involves preventing entry by foreign airlines. It commits to
preferring the interests of Air Canada, a publicly-subsidised private
airline (that used to be government-owned) over the interests of the tourism
industry; and it deprives efficient, private competitors of gaining the
advantage that was their due in a supposedly free marketplace.
Ominously too, it suggests to the unions and the private equity owners of
ACE that the government will probably continue to bail the carrier out if
the going gets tough.
The base credit
agreement covers CAD600 million of loans, with the possibility of another
CAD100 million which may be drawn down in the next 12 months. This debt
doesn’t come cheaply – a minimum of 12.75% interest; its like a large pawn
shop and Air Canada has put everything in the store.
The government lenders say that their loans are on “commercial terms”. If
the loans are “on commercial terms” why is the government the only lender
prepared to make them? The answer: the risk is clearly too high for the
market. And, as an objective and practical judgment, what does that say for
Air Canada’s chances of survival beyond the short term?
To get from CAD600 million to a headline number of CAD1 billion meant some
other fancy footwork. There is an amount of CAD220 million from an unnamed
supplier – which, given the size of the amount would have to be an airframe
manufacturer; but the nature of this, whether loan, deferral or whatever is
not specified.
GE Aviation Capital has concluded a sale and leaseback of three B777s for a
capital amount of CAD122 million (as the aircraft are worth some three times
that amount, presumably the balance is already tied up in the form of debt
or attachment).
There is also an agreement to delay repayment of a CAD82 million secured
loan – which may count as a contribution for accounting purposes, but still
leaves a considerable level of indebtedness in place. And, finally, Boeing
has agreed to “amend certain commercial terms”, such as financial
adjustments and deferred delivery dates. Boeing has also agreed to shift 10
of Air Canada’s 23 B787 options to purchase orders, which do not carry the
same financial commitments.
The lowest interest rate payable on the main loans is “at least” 12.75%. If
that is the lowest rate, then the Canada Account’s loan, with its apparently
much higher risk, could be significantly higher; at least it should be, to
protect the taxpayers’ interests. As could ACE and Aeroplan’s. In rough
terms at least this means that Air Canada, stripped of any un-mortgaged
assets, will be paying probably CAD100 million a year in interest payments
alone on just this debt – before capital repayments and payments on its
other debt. For this loan, CAD30million in capital is payable each
anniversary beginning in August 2010. The repayments are backended, with
CAD120 million payable in 5 years.
Where will the lump sums and interest payments come from; Air Canada lost
over a billion dollars in the six months to 31-Mar-2009. And there is no
sign of a significant economic turnaround. Even the successful WestJet
last week reported a steep drop in profits for the Jun-2009 quarter, citing
continued weak economic conditions.
There is a certain
irony with regards to the Middle East. One of Air Canada's owners and
lenders is Aeroplan; “Groupe Aeroplan” today owns not only Aeroplan,
“Canada’s premier loyalty program”, but since splitting from Air Canada, has
acquired and/or developed “Nectar, the United Kingdom’s leading coalition
loyalty program”. And Groupe Aeroplan now owns 60% of Rewards Management
Middle East, the operator of Air Miles programmes in the UAE, Qatar and
Bahrain.
This is strange as ACE’s Chairman, President and CEO, and mastermind of the
whole Air Canada structure, Robert Milton, publicly opposes the entry of the
Gulf airlines into Canada (to protect Air Canada).
And that
opposition is successful and is specifically to protect not just Air Canada
but also its no Canadian Star Alliance partners.
Mr Milton has said
that new airlines should be allowed in only if their capacity is limited to
the end-to-end traffic they carry - and he apparently has the agreement of
Ottawa, even though that the same logic does not apply to other hub
airlines.
Do not expect any
change in Canadian policy. Remember this bail out is being led by a
Conservative government. Expect a liberal government to be even more
protectionist. Canadian policy appears to be that the socio-economic
benefits of the airline “industry” are so great that intervention is
essential.
Canada is now
seeking to retain the high moral ground by excluding sovereign
wealth-supported airlines, yet it provides the same support (and arguably
more support) to its own carrier.
The saddest part
of all. Without further government support it would be a foolish person who
bets on Air Canada still flying in three years time.
Regional shame
over Suu Kyi
13 August 2009
In Rangoon today
Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyer says they will appeal the lady's latest sentence.
Earlier this week with sad predictability a prison court sentenced her to
three years of hard labour after finding her guilty of breaching the terms
of her incarceration.
Junta strongman
Than Shwe commuted the punishment to a year and a half under house arrest.
Long enough to ensure that she does not participate in Burma's sham
elections next year.
The trial was a
sham. Gen Than Shwe's condescending theatricals made the travesty even more
in bad taste.
World leaders and human rights groups expressed condemnation and anger at
the verdict.
The lady's crime. Providing a shelter to an uninvited American who had swum
across the Rangoon lake to her home and was too sick to leave.
It was not her
crime. The fault was that of the armed military who enforce her house
arrest.
Than Shwe and his cadres fully know that no one will ever be able to punish
them, not even the world’s most powerful man, US President Barack Obama,
because the leaders of China and India continue to protect the junta and the
other nine members of ASEAN – Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand,
Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – hopelessly spout
non interference.
It is an abiding
shame on all the ASEAN leaders, especially those of democratic nations, who
continue to tolerate the gross human rights abuses being committed in
Myanmar.
What ASEAN should do , but lack the courage to do, is to suspend Myanmar’s
membership to the regional grouping until the nation’s generals surrender
power to a genuinely elected government and release Miss Suu Kyi and other
political prisoners.
Laughably China
urged the international community to respect the extended sentence of Miss
Suu Kyi. “International society should fully respect Myanmar's judicial
sovereignty,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu Jiang said.
“As a neighbour of Myanmar's, China hopes all sides in Myanmar can push
ethnic reconciliation through talks, and gradually realise stability,
democracy and development,” Ms Jiang added. “This not only accords with
Myanmar's interests, it is also beneficial to regional stability.” ie it is
beneficial to China's trade and influence.
The statement makes it almost unthinkable that the matter of Ms Suu Kyi’s
extended detention will provoke any action from the UN Security Council,
where China has a veto. No other country has more power and influence over
Burma than China, and yesterday’s position will frustrate foreign
governments and lobbying groups demanding democratic reform from the
dictatorship.
Two-way trade between China and Burma amounted to $2.6 billion (£1.6bn) last
year, with much of its oil, natural gas, and precious metals imported by
China, and cheap manufactured goods flowing into Burma together with
military equipment and arms.
Burma represents a strategic zone of influence with its proximity to China’s
regional rival, India, and access to the waters of the Indian Ocean.
After all since
China is a one party state that locks up those who challenge its rule, it
can hardly reprimand Burma for doing the same thing.
Meanwhile estimates suggest that trade between India and Burma is worth
about $1bn. India has won the right to develop the Burmese port of Sittwe, a
major entrepôt for goods and energy.
India is Burma's fourth largest trading partner, behind China, Thailand and
Singapore, but that could change as Delhi seeks to counter the mounting
influence of Beijing. Along with China and South Korea, India is also a
major investor in Burma's Sittwe gas fields, a project that will see the
construction of a gas pipeline to China.
Since the late 1990s and the implantation of its "Look East" policy, India
has provided crucial political support for a regime that it once criticised.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the 1988 democracy uprising in which an
estimated 6,000 people were killed, thousands of Burmese fled across the
border into India.
Neither India nor China have shown much inclination to change their
relationships with Burma.
As for Thailand,
the current chair of ASEAN, Prime Minister Abhisit said even though Asean
had protested against Burma's treatment of Mrs Suu Kyi, it would not do
anything to meddle in its internal affairs. Pathetic.
The right action
is for ASEAN to suspend Myanmar's membership now. Otherwise neither ASEAN or
its members retain any credibility.
The human face of Burma's tragedy
Writer: GORDON BROWN
12 August 2009
The appalling but inevitable outcome of Aung San Suu Kyi's sham trial is
final proof that the military regime in Burma is determined to continue
defying the world.
Depressing news that she has been sentenced to up to 1.5 years' further
house arrest is not only a tragedy for her and her family but also for the
Burmese people who suffer daily at the hand of tyranny.
This was the moment for the generals to embrace the growing clamour for
change and choose the path of reform demanded by the region and the global
community.
They comprehensively shunned it
The charges were baseless, the verdict outrageous.
So the international community must respond to this latest injustice with a
clear message to the junta that its tyrannical actions will no longer be
tolerated.
Further sanctions to target directly the regime's economic interests have
been agreed by the European Union in response to the verdict and must be
implemented as quickly as possible.
And determined action in the UN Security Council must follow. Nothing less
than a worldwide ban on the sale of arms to the regime will do as a first
step.
I also believe that we should identify and target those judges complicit in
these political show trials, which are an absurd mockery of justice.
The generals should be in no doubt about the strength of international
solidarity with the cause of freedom, democracy and development in Burma.
Political and humanitarian conditions in the country continue to
deteriorate.
When over 140,000 were killed and millions made destitute by Cyclone Nargis
last year, the world's efforts to help were resisted, a peaceful uprising by
monks in 2007 was violently quashed, ethnic minorities are persecuted and
under armed attack.
The media is muzzled, freedom of speech and assembly are non-existent and
the number of political prisoners - jailed only for their unwavering
commitment to peace and national reconciliation - has doubled to more than
2,000.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the most high profile of them.
She has long been a symbol of hope and defiance during her 14 years as a
prisoner of conscience.
She is a most courageous woman. In those long years of isolation, she has
barely seen her two sons yet is resolute in her faith in democracy and the
Burmese people.
Her refusal to buckle in the face of tyranny is an inspiration.
The facade of her prosecution is made more monstrous, therefore, because its
real objective is to sever her bond with the people for whom she is a beacon
of hope and resistance.
Her treatment can only be read as the junta's reluctance to move towards
freedom, democracy and rule of law with Aung San Suu Kyi a central figure in
a new Burma.
So unless they immediately free her - and all political prisoners - and
start genuine dialogue with opposition and ethnic groups, the elections next
year will have no credibility.
In July, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded such measures on a visit
to Rangoon. With this verdict, the generals have publicly snubbed him.
Now comes our greatest test.
In the face of this arrogance, we cannot stand by and effectively sanction
the abhorrent actions of a violent and repressive junta - but show them that
the international community is united and coordinated in its response.
We have seen an extraordinary consensus building around the world against
the Burmese regime, encompassing the UN, the EU, Asean and more than 45
heads of state.
All of us must continue to push for genuine political reconciliation and
change, especially those countries in the region with the greatest
influence.
Burma is rich in natural and human resources and sits at the heart of a
dynamic continent. Democratic reform would unleash the country's enormous
potential.
And I have always made clear that the UK would respond positively to any
signs of progress but attitudes must harden in the light of this verdict.
The generals are condemning the country and its people to ever deeper
isolation, poverty, conflict and despair.
Some may question why Burma warrants so much attention. There are other
countries where human rights are ignored or people live in poverty.
But the Burmese regime stands virtually alone in the scale of its misrule
and the sheer indifference to the daily suffering of its 50 million people.
Once again my thoughts are with Aung San Suu Kyi - the human face of Burma's
tragedy. But words and thoughts are no longer enough.
Gordon Brown is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The petition saga
12 August 2009
The UDD petition
really has got the attention of the exisiting government who seem focussed
on nothing else at the moment.
Now former prime
minister Chavalit Yongchaiyuth has been told that he should step in to put
on hold the planned to seek a royal pardon for fugitive premier Thaksin
Shinawatra, Thepthai Senpong, the spokesman of Democrat party leader, said
on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr Thepthai stated that as Gen Chavalit was respected by the leaders of the
pro-Thaksin United front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) and key
members of the opposition Puea Thai Party, he should block the red shirts’
attempt before it is too late.
UDD leaders had earlier insisted that they will submit the petition for
Thaksin pardon on August 17.
Meanwhile Chavalit
called on the people to comply with Her Majesty the Queen’s birthay wish and
join together to find a solution to the problems besetting the country.
“Their majesties the King and Queen have been working hard for the people
and therefore all Thai people should try to make them happy,'' Gen Chavalit
said.
''All parties should turn to talks to clear up the disputes, forgive each
other and do everything for the betterment of the nation.''
The former prime minister stressed that national reconciliation is the
solution to the continuing political conflict.
Her Majesty asked for national unity in an address from Chitrlada Palace
yesterday, on the eve of her 77th birthday.
The calls for
national reconciliation are interesting - as they are basically a call for
acceptance of the status quo. A status quo that the yellow shirts and their
supporters enjoy which says we know best, we are in charge, and the majority
should be disenfranchised and accepting of their status.
But for an
empowered population the status quo is not going to be good enough.
One of the greats - Ricky Ponting
10 August 2009
Abused and booed
by the English crowds - Ricky Ponting is one of the greats of modern
Australian cricket; and in this Ashes series he has stuck by his team, has
brought the best out of players like Mitchell Johnson, and has led from the
front.
As a batsman there
are few, if any, better.
I hope the English
boos are more as a sign of respect. Anything to distract the great man.
Because he looks very much in charge at the moment.
And this is a
great picture of a happy man relaxing with his one-year-old daughter Emmy on
the field after Australia defeated England by an innings and 80 runs in the
fourth Ashes cricket test match at Headingley.
Imagine the
caption competition. Daddy, daddy, why are all pommies bastards?
Great win, great
moment, great picture.
Djibouti next for
flydubai
10 August 2009
Unable to fly to India and with new planes arriving flydubai
is scratching its head for new destinations.
So now
Dubai-based low cost airline
flydubai has announced the expansion of it s network in Africa with a new
route to Djibouti starting next month.
The new service will operate three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and
Sundays, from September 1.
The budget carrier said a one way fare from Dubai will cost from AED650,
including taxes and one piece of hand luggage up to 10kg in weight.
Djibouti, bordered by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, is not well known as a
tourist destination. The country is about half the size of Abu Dhabi and has
a population of half a million people. National languages are Arabic and
French.
"As Dubai's Glitter Fades, Foreigners See Dark Side"
More Jailings, Prosecutions Follow Downturn
By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 10, 2009
Herve Jaubert, a French spy who left espionage to make leisure submarines
for the wealthy, was riding high.
Bankrolled by Dubai World, a government-owned conglomerate, he built a
submarine workshop on the Persian Gulf, lived rent-free in a villa with a
pool and tooled around town in a red Lamborghini. He had two Hummers. He
vacationed with local plutocrats.
Jaubert said he heard whispers about Dubai's darker side -- the abuse of
desperate laborers from impoverished Asian lands, the jailing of the
occasional Westerner who crossed a sheik -- but "I brushed it all off. I saw
glamour. I saw marble columns, mirrors and money."
Today, the former intelligence operative, who fled Dubai last summer in a
rubber dinghy, is a wanted man. In June, a Dubai court convicted him in
absentia on charges of embezzling $3.8 million and handed down a five-year
sentence, plus a big fine. Jaubert, speaking recently at his new home near
West Palm Beach, Fla., said he stole nothing and vowed never to set foot in
Dubai again. He said he fled because of gruesome threats by interrogators to
stick needles up his nose and what he described as constantly shifting, and
all bogus, accusations relating to bullets, murder and the finances of Dubai
World's now-defunct luxury submarine subsidiary.
"If I hadn't escaped, I'd be in the same hell as everyone else," said
Jaubert, one of scores of expatriate business people in this gleaming
city-state who have been accused of crimes -- and, in some cases, jailed for
long periods without being charged.
Jaubert's troubles began two years ago when Dubai's then-booming economy was
showing the first faint signs of strain. Local stock and property prices
have since swooned, and the tempo of arrests for alleged business misdeeds
ranging from a dud check -- a criminal offense here -- to serious fraud has
picked up sharply.
Dubai's government declined to comment on Jaubert's allegations of
mistreatment, but it has targeted what it sees as dodgy dealmakers and
deadbeat debtors, and has declared "no
tolerance" of
"anybody who makes illegal profits." For many expatriates, however, this
smacks of a hunt for foreign culprits to blame for the sheikdom's sliding
economic fortunes.
'It's All a Bit Scary'
A haven of stability in a region of tumult, Dubai is usually a place people
flee to, not from. Foreigners, lured by what President Obama in a June
speech in Cairo hailed as the "astonishing progress" of this autocratic but
vibrant Persian Gulf metropolis, account for more than 90 percent of the
population, and 99 percent of private-sector workers.
But a severe economic slump has reversed the flow. Those who came to Dubai
seeking fortunes in property, banking and luxury goodies for the rich now
face a less alluring prospect -- a prison cell or furtive flight. Only a
tiny minority has been picked up by police but, says a longtime foreign
resident who runs a company here, "It's all a bit scary. They are looking
for people to carry the can." The foreign resident, who requested anonymity
in order to speak freely, said a British neighbor was picked up last year.
The turbulence is a blow to a place that promoted itself as the Middle
East's answer to Hong Kong or Singapore. It is also a setback for
Washington, which has for years touted Dubai as a model of a modern,
prosperous Muslim land that, though far from democratic, seemed anchored in
the rule of law and committed to basic rights.
Among those who have been locked up are a JPMorgan investment banker;
American, British and other foreign property developers; a German yachtmaker;
and two Australians who worked as senior executives of what was to be the
world's largest waterfront development. The gigantic project had been
launched by Nakheel, the crisis-battered property arm of Dubai World and
builder of Dubai's signature palm-tree-shaped resort islands.
A few have been convicted, mostly for bouncing checks. Those still awaiting
trial often waited many months in jail before being charged: The two
Australians, for instance, was arrested in January, held in solitary
confinement for seven weeks and then finally charged, with fraud-related
offences, last month, said their Melbourne lawyer, Martin Amad.
A banker who headed JPMorgan's Dubai office and its Islamic banking business
was first jailed in June last year but was charged, also in connection with
fraud, only this spring. JPMorgan said the alleged crimes do not relate to
his work at the bank, which he joined in 2007 and quit in April this year
while in detention.
Some have complained through lawyers of being deprived of sleep, denied food
for days and routinely menaced. "We will insert needles into your nose again
and again," a security officer can be heard telling Jaubert, the spy turned
submarine-maker, on an audio recording, which the Frenchman said was made on
his cellphone during an interrogation before he fled. "Do you know how
painful it is to have needles put inside your nose repeatedly and then
twisted around? Do you think you can resist this kind of pain?"
Jaubert said the interrogation was conducted by two men in long white robes
in a bare, windowless room on April 22, 2007, at Dubai's Al Muraggabat
Police Station. On the recording, the interrogators described themselves as
state security officers, with one warning Jaubert that "we are above the
police, we are above the judges. We can keep here you forever."
Dubai's Media Affairs Office said the emirate "prides itself on a
well-established system of law and order and judicial fairness." It did not
respond to repeated and detailed questions, and said that officials who
could "are physically not here."
A Developing Chill
Released unharmed but without his passport, Jaubert, who is married to an
American, began to plot his escape. Last summer, four years after he arrived
Dubai on a business-class ticket, he slipped away by sea. "They picked the
wrong guy," said Jaubert, 53, a former naval officer who, according to a
confidential French report, left France's DGSE intelligence service in March
1993. "With my background, I don't need a passport to travel."
The French Consulate in Dubai, which is the business, business and tourism
hub of the United Arab Emirates, said it could not comment. France in May
opened a naval facility in Dubai's sister sheikhdom, Abu Dhabi, the UAE
capital. Western diplomatic missions have mostly avoided public criticism of
the legal system.
Dubai is still far more free and more predictable than most of its
neighbors, but a chill has taken hold as property values tumble, jobs vanish
and businessmen are detained. Tensions long masked by prosperity have burst
into full view -- tensions between a foreign majority and locals, known as
Emirati; between a city studded with shiny modern skyscrapers, including the
world's tallest now in the final stages of construction; and Dubai's
antiquated political and legal foundations.
Washington counts the UAE as one of its best friends in the region. U.S.
warships dock at Jebel Ali, a huge Dubai port area where Jaubert had his
luxury submarine venture, Exomos, which promised rich clients "the ultimate
underwater experience." Big U.S. companies, including General Electric,
Boeing and Microsoft, have their regional headquarters in Dubai, which has
around 20,000 American residents.
These intimate relations include a deal that will allow the UAE to develop a
nuclear-power program with U.S. know-how. But the relations came under
scrutiny in Washington this year after the release of videos that showed a
member of Abu Dhabi's ruling family torturing an Afghan grain dealer he
accused of cheating him. Abu Dhabi authorities are investigating.
The number of expatriates jailed in Dubai for alleged economic crimes is not
known. The government issues no figures. "All I can say is that it is
definitely on the rise," said Samer Muscati, a lawyer with New York-based
Human Rights Watch. The main concern, Muscati said, is not that all those
arrested are necessarily innocent but that Dubai's legal system is so
opaque, fickle and often heedless of due process.
A vivid example of this is the plight of Zack Shahin, an American
businessman of Lebanese origin. A former Pepsi-Cola executive who headed a
Dubai property company called Deyaar Development, he was arrested in March
last year in connection with a corruption probe involving the Dubai Islamic
Bank. Shahin was held incommunicado for 16 days and was not charged for over
a year. A Web site set up by his family in the United States alleged that
Shahin had been tortured, and it pleaded for his release. The UAE blocked
the Web site. U.S. diplomats asked that the case be handled in "an
expeditious and transparent manner," and complained that a delay in granting
access to Shahin violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
Early this summer, it looked as if Shahin might finally get his day in court
and be allowed to go home to await trial. His family took out an ad praising
Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler; took down the Web site;
and scratched together $1.1 million to meet bail. Just as Shahin was about
to be released, state security officers arrived and hauled him away for
questioning on new charges. He is still in detention. The bail money has not
been returned, his lawyers said. Dubai officials said no one was available
to comment on the case.
Uneasy Foreigners
Locals have been picked up, too, and some complain of being unjustly
detained. But well-connected Emirati rarely spend long in jail for economic
crimes. Wary of debtors' prison, a growing number of foreigners simply run
away.
Simon Ford, a British entrepreneur, skipped town this summer after his
company, a specialty gift service, was hit by the crisis and couldn't pay
its bills. He wrote an emotional "letter to the Dubai public" to apologize
for bailing out. He acknowledged that he owed money, and said he had fled
because Dubai "drives people to make horrible decisions." He promised to pay
back creditors.
Jaubert, the ex-French spy, said he fled because he feared getting stuck in
Dubai's penal twilight zone. A keen amateur marksman, he was first called in
for questioning in 2007 after bullets were found at his submarine company
offices. Interrogators told him that someone had been shot in the head and
that he might be involved. Jaubert replied that he didn't have a gun: his
rifle, which he had declared at Customs, was still stuck at the Dubai
airport. His bullets got through.
Security officers accused him of lying. Warning him that Dubai "is not
France; there is no democracy here," an interrogator heard on Jaubert's tape
threatened to put him "in a cave 300 meters underground, away from the world
and your family, and I will keep you there until you tell the truth."
Jaubert said authorities later accused him of fraud because "they were just
looking for something to nail me with."
Jaubert blamed his woes on pressure on Dubai World to rein in some of the
wilder investment projects launched by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the
company's chairman, who had first invited Jaubert to Dubai. "It was a palace
struggle over money," Jaubert said.
The Escape
Reached on his cellphone, Sulayem declined to comment. Dubai World's
internal audit chief, Abdul Qadar Obaid Ali, said Jaubert and his submarine
venture ran into trouble for other reasons: His submarines didn't work, and
auditors uncovered evidence of fraud involving overbilling for equipment
purchases. Jaubert denied this, saying all the transactions were approved
and paid for by Dubai World managers.
Fired from Exomos, the submarine company, and unable to get his passport
back, Jaubert hatched an elaborate escape plan. He sent his wife and their
two boys to Florida. He had diving equipment shipped out from France --
broken down into small bits to avoid arousing suspicion. Then, using a phony
name, he bought a Zodiac dinghy and sailboat. Using Google Earth, he
surveyed the UAE coastline for an escape route. He found an isolated beach
and arranged for a friend to take the sailboat out into international
waters.
On the eve of his escape, the former spy checked into a hotel near the
beach, put on his diving equipment and donned a long abaya, the
body-covering cloak worn by strictly observant Muslim women. He said he then
went down the beach and swam underwater to a nearby harbor, where the only
patrol boat in the vicinity was moored. He clambered aboard and sabotaged
the fuel line to make sure the craft could not give chase, he said.
Jaubert then set out to sea in the dinghy to the boat his friend had
positioned just outside the UAE's territorial waters, and they sailed toward
India. After eight days at sea, the pair arrived in Mumbai -- an account
corroborated by his traveling companion. With a new passport issued by the
French consulate, Jaubert flew to join his wife in Florida, where he is
writing a book he has titled "Escape From Dubai.""
British Idle
10 August 2009
Forget British
Idol. According to the latest Nuffield survey it is "British idle".
Couch Potato
Britain is too tired to play with children, balks at the idea of climbing
two flights of stairs and regularly chooses sleep over sex, according to a
new report.
A third of Britons are so lazy that they wouldn't run to catch a bus, it is
claimed. And almost two out of three are so unfit they won't countenance
walking up two flights of stairs and will opt to take the lift instead.
Once at home, one in six say that if the remote control was broken, they
would prefer to watch a TV programme they didn't like rather than get up to
change the channel, according to a study.
The poll was
carried out on behalf of private healthcare chain Nuffield Health, also
found that lazy lifestyles are having a devastating effect on our sex lives.
Three-quarters of couples surveyed admitted to having trouble mustering
enough energy at the end of the day for a night of passion with their
partner.
More than half (58 per cent) of those blamed their barren sex lives on a
lack of fitness.
Children are also suffering, with two-thirds of parents questioned owning up
to regularly being too tired to play with their youngsters.
The study of 2,000
adults concludes that it is no wonder one in six children are classified as
obese before they even start school.
Even the health of our pets is at risk. Despite our reputation as a nation
of dog-lovers, half of the owners questioned saying they often can't be
bothered to take their dog for a walk. Sarah Dauncey, medical director at
Nuffield Health, urged Britons to get off their sofas and shape-up.
She said:
'Ready-meals, remote controls and even internet shopping are all
contributing to a dangerously lazy and idle Britain.
'People need to get fitter, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of
their families, friends, and evidently their pets, too. If we don't start to
take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to
perform even the most rudimentary of tasks.' 'No one is saying that everyone
has to run a marathon. You can set aside 25 to 30 minutes three or four
times week to do simple things such as walking, cycling or running. It
doesn't have to take hours and hours.
The survey revealed Glasgow to be Britain's most slothful city, with 75 per
cent of people admitting they don't get enough exercise, followed by
Birmingham and Southampton in joint second place with 67 per cent admitting
their laziness. Bristol came in third, with London, Leeds, Newcastle,
Norwich, Manchester and Cardiff making up the rest of the top 10.
Dubai metro to
open unfinished
9 August 2009
It is only a week
ago that RTA officials were denying an analyst's report that said not all
the stations would open on the new Dubai metro.
But yesterday the RTA said that not all the stations will open. And not all
the trains will be running. Around 44 trains out of total 62 trains will run
on the Red Line at the time of the metro launch on September 9. The RTA says
that only 17-22 stations will be open out of the total 29.
The definition of
"Open" in Dubai is a rather loose term. Shopping malls open with most of the
stores still not available, parking lots incomplete and construction
everywhere. Apartments are completed when they still resemble a building
site. So for the metro passengers may be able to get on and off at certain
stations but there will probably still be ongoing construction and clean up
as well as the fit-out of the station's tenants like coffee shops or other
retailers for another 6 to 12 months.
"Open" should not
be confused or other words such as "complete, finished, done, etc."
The Langer
dossier
9 August 2009
Former Australian opener Justin Langer has been identified as the author of
a dossier, distributed to the Australian tour party, detailing the strengths
and weaknesses of their Ashes opponents. The file makes fascinating reading
as England face a humiliating defeat today. It offers advice on how the home
team can be attacked.
The trouble with
the dossier is that we all know that Langer is basically correct. None of
this should be a surprise. Opposing teams have been gathering information on
their opponents throughout competitive history.
Langer not only criticises England players — James Anderson is described as
“hugely improved but can be a bit of a pussy if he is worn down” — but also
inveighs against the culture. “English players rarely believe in
themselves,” he writes. “Many stare and chat a lot but ... they will retreat
very quickly. Aggressive batting, running and body language will soon have
them staring at their bootlaces rather than in the eyes of their opponent —
it is just how they are built.”
Langer retired from Test cricket in 2007 and has captained Somerset since
then and, before that, was a Middlesex teammate of England captain Andrew
Strauss, whom he calls “a very solid character and excellent bloke ... his
weakness is his conservative approach”.
Langer's verdict on England:
"England players work hard on shining the ball after the lacquer is gone.
They use Murray mints religiously to get it to shine up.
"English cricketers are great frontrunners. Because of the way they are
programmed, they will be up when things are going well but they will taper
off quickly if you wear them down in all apartments [sic]. Because they play
so much cricket, as soon as it gets a bit hard you just have to watch their
body language and see how fat and lazy they get. You can show this up by
running hard between the wickets and pressurising them in the field. They
are the best in the world at tapering off quickly when things go a bit flat
for them. This is also a time when most of them make all sorts of excuses
and start looking around to point the finger at everyone else. It is a
classic English trait.
"They love being comfortable. Take them out of their comfort zone and they
don’t like it for a second."
Langer's verdict on the players:
Andrew Strauss: "A very solid character and excellent bloke. His weakness is
possibly his conservative approach. He will tend to take the safer options
in most cases. Batting, he can be cramped up just outside the off stump."
Alistair Cook: "Doesn’t move his right leg towards the ball. Get him cover
driving and he won’t score and will also look vulnerable in the slips and
gully position."
Ravi Bopara: "He is a bit of a street fighter who is sure to wind the boys
up by his strutting around. He thrives on the chat and talk. I would leave
him alone and just bowl at him rather than letting our egos take away our
focus."
Matt Prior: "I would definitely bowl wide to him. He loves to score and will
go hard. He scores a lot of runs to third man. I would chip away at him
about his wicketkeeping and the pressure he is under to perform with the
gloves on. I am not sure he actually likes keeping that much and from all
accounts he has a massive ego."
Freddie Flintoff: "For the batsmen who haven’t faced him it takes time to
get used to his pace and bounce. He has to be worn down and, as we know, is
the key to their attack with James Anderson."
James Anderson: "Can swing the ball well but again can be a bit of a pussy
if he is worn down. His body language could be detrimental to them if we get
on top of him early."
Graeme Swann: "Another who is sure to wind us up with his ego and body
language. I am not sure he likes short-pitched bowling. His bowling is on a
par with Nathan Hauritz and he takes a lot of his wickets with balls that
don’t spin much."
There is now a 10
day break before the final test at the Oval. But the momentum is all with
Australia.
Thai government
orders opposition to petition
9 August 2009
Interior Minister
Chavarat Charnveerakul on Saturday asked village headmen and Kamnans
(sub-district chiefs) to explain to their villagers that the petition
seeking royal pardon for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was not
lawful.
Mr Chavarat was speaking at a seminar of representatives from local
administration organizations, leaders of local communities and religious
leaders at the parliament. The event was jointly organized by the ministry
and King Prachadiphoke’s Institute.
The minister called on the participants to help protect the royal
institution and to tell their villagers not to support Thaksin pardon
seeking move. The royal pardon for Thaksin campaign by the red-shirt people
group could affect the country’s high institution.
My petition is
bigger than yours!
8 August 2009
Its pathetic
really; watching grown men wave around bits of paper that will not change
anything. Earlier today Deputy Interior Minister Boonjong Wongtrairat
claimed that more than two million had signed their names in opposition of
the campaign to seeka royal pardon for former prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra.
Remember PM Abhisit said that his government were not obstructing the
petition movement. Yet The Interior Ministry had ordered (note ordered - not
voluntary) provincial governors and district chiefs nationwide to arrange
tables for people who want to sign to show disagreement with UDD petition
campaign.
Mr Boonjong said he expected that by late next week, his ministry would be
able to announce official number of people who disagree with the red shirts’
move to seek royal pardon for Thaksin. Is someone going to verify that these
are genuine signatures.
Better still can
you sign both petitions. And how much is a signature worth?
UDD leaders, Veera Musigkapong and Jatuoporn Promphan, had on Friday
insisted that they will submit the petition to the Office of His Majesty’s
Principal Secretary on August 17.
House Speaker Chai Chidchob (son of the balance of power controlling
Chidchob!) said he was confidence that the Ministry of Interior’s order on
the signatures collecting campaign against Thaksin pardon will not lead to a
severe social division because Thai people have the same beloved father—HM
the King.
Bizarre.
Is the era of free internet news over?
6 August 2009
Where Rupert
Murdoch leads others have usually followed. And yesterday the billionaire
media mogul who saw his global empire make a huge financial loss promptly
pledged to shake up the newspaper industry by introducing charges for access
to all his news websites, including the Times, the Sun and the News of the
World, by next summer.
Badly hit by the collapse in advertising revenue in this recession Murdoch
declared that the era of a free-for-all in online news was over. He now
expects to charge for all his news sites by Summer 2010.
The Australian-born press and television baron was speaking as his News
Corporation holding company slumped to a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for the
financial year to June, hit by huge writedowns in the value of its assets,
restructuring charges and a dive in commercial revenue.
Murdoch's newspaper holdings span the globe, from the Australian to the Wall
Street Journal and to his News International stable in London.
At present, only the Wall Street Journal charges a fee for online access and
until recently, received wisdom in the publishing industry was that readers
would not pay to read newspapers on the internet.
Murdoch said he had completed a review of the possibility of charging and
that he was willing to take the risk of leading the industry towards a
pay-per-view model: "I believe that if we're successful, we'll be followed
fast by other media." How right he is. But someone has to lead. And it is
usually Mr. Murdoch.
The charging model will be extended to his sex and gossip driven tabloids
such as the Sun and the News of the World. Murdoch said he was keen to
capitalise on the popularity of celebrity stories: "When we have a celebrity
scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical."
His biggest issue
will be copyright protection to prevent stories and photographs being copied
elsewhere.
Murdoch's British newspapers took a 14% drop in year-end advertising revenue
as the recession took its toll. Profits across News Corp's global newspaper
division fell from $786m to $466m. But note that it is still a profitable
business.
Elsewhere, Murdoch's empire was hit by huge reorganisation costs and
write-downs at its interactive media division, which includes the social
networking website MySpace.
News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox film studio recorded annual profits of
$848m, a drop from last year's $1.24bn, as films such as X-Men Origins:
Wolverine and the second instalment of the Night at the Museum series failed
to match releases such as The Simpsons Movie and Live Free or Die Hard a
year ago.
Earnings from cable networks rose by 31% to $1.67bn but the group's
television division, including its Fox stations in the US and Star networks
in Asia, saw profits fall from $1.12bn to $174m again impacted by
advertising.
How much of the
UK is owned by the UAE?
5 August 2009
The UAE has
diversified its investment portfolio in recent years by plunging billions of
dirhams into a variety of UK assets; many of them icons.
The investments stretch from premier league football clubs to prime pieces
of London real estate and from historic ships to budget hotels.
Interest in purchasing stakes in prolific English football clubs has also
rocketed, triggered most recently by the over-priced purchase of Manchester
City by the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008.
Former Hydra Properties chief executive, Sulaiman Al Fahim is now chairman
of Premier team Portsmouth FC. Although it is far from clear whether he has
actually completed the purchase of this club, which appears doomed already
to a relegation battle.
Real estate has always been a focus and property investment in the UK is in
the billions.
International Hotel Investments (IHI) bought hotel and former government
office building, The Metropole, and the adjoining 10 Whitehall Place for
£130 million in 2005. The buildings will be revamped as a five-star hotel.
One of IHI's principal shareholders is Istithmar, the investment arm of
Dubai World.
Istithmar itself bought One, Trafalgar Place, also known as Grand Buildings,
in a deal thought to be worth around £155 million in 2005.
Dubai International Capital (DIC), controlled by His Highness Shaikh
Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE
and Ruler of Dubai, bought the budget hotel chain Travelodge in a £675
million deal in 2006. Travelodge operates 291 hotels in the UK, Ireland and
Spain.
DIC said it would invest in the chain to make it the UK's leading budget
hotel operator by the 2012 Olympics.
The Adelphi, one of London's best-known art deco buildings, was purchased by
Istithmar in 2006 for £300 million.
Borse Dubai also bought a 28 per cent stake in the London Stock Exchange as
part of a series of deals between Nasdaq and Borse Dubai.
The UAE also spent acquired the historic QE2 ship and P&O. Istithmar bought
the QE2 for $100 million (Dh367 million) in 2007 to start a new life as a
luxury hotel on Palm Jumeirah. However, the ship's future has changed course
as she is now heading off to South Africa to host visitors to the 2010
Football World Cup.
DP World already
owns P&O, the shipping and ports company.
DIC bought Madame Tussauds in 2005 for £800 million. It sold it to Merlin
Entertainments for £1 billion in 2007 but DIC kept a 20 per cent stake.
Merlin Entertainments also owns Legoland, the London Dungeon and the
aquarium chain Sealife Centre. Theme park Alton Towers was included in the
deal.
Dubai International Capital bought a one-third stake in the London Eye from
BA for £95 million in 2006.
Engineering group, Doncasters, which manufactures parts for Airbus, was
taken over by Dubai International capital for £700 million in 2005.
The pace of
investment has slowed down in the current recession but they make a very
attractive long term portfolio.
AirAsia X to Hub
in Abu Dhabi
5 August 2009 - The Khaleej Times
"Malaysia’s AirAsia X, one of the few budget airlines flying
inter-continental routes, has chosen to make Abu Dhabi its regional hub for
connecting flights to possible destinations in Europe, Africa and central
Asia.
AirAsia X ruled out Dubai, Sharjah and other cities in the Gulf in selecting
the UAE capital as an overseas hub, said Tony Fernandes, Chief Executive
Officer of AirAsia Bhd., the regional low-cost carrier that owns a stake in
AirAsia X. Both airlines are headquartered in Kuala Lumpur.
“We’re now looking at flying to Abu Dhabi. That will be our first point in
the Middle East,” Fernandes told Khaleej Times in a telephone interview on
Tuesday. “If things work out well, hopefully we could start flying there
toward the latter half of next year.”
Executives at Abu Dhabi Airports Company, operator of the city’s
international airport, were travelling and could not immediately be reached
for comment.
AirAsia X was among the first carriers to adapt the no-frills business
model, which typically applies to flights lasting no more than four hours,
to longer journeys of eight hours or more. Most of the other pioneers of
long-haul budget flights either dropped the idea because they couldn’t make
a profit, or, like Hong Kong Oasis Airlines, went bankrupt trying. AirAsia X
appears to be an except ion. Founded in 2007, the carrier’s wide-body Airbus
A330 and A340 jetliners fly routes to London, Taipei and to cities in China
and Australia. To support its expansion plans, AirAsia X announced an
aircraft order at the Paris Air Show in June for 10 Airbus A350s, a larger
and more fuel-efficient model that is still under development.
Frankfurt and Cairo are among the prospective destinations that AirAsia X
would like to serve from Abu Dhabi, Fernandes said. The airline is also
considering flying to cities in eastern Africa, possibly Nairobi. At the
moment, he complained, “You just can’t get to East Africa from Asia.”
As a hub, Abu Dhabi would be a place for AirAsia X planes to refuel and take
on new passengers before flying onward.
In a first step toward this network expansion, AirAsia X plans in October to
begin service between Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur. The carrier will start
later this month to sell advance tickets for these flights, Fernandes said.
AirAsia is older and bigger than its long-haul affiliate and has become one
of the world’s most successful carriers. Fernandes recognises that the UAE
is already home to two low-cost airlines — Sharjah-based Air Arabia and
Dubai’s flydubai, but he believes that the Gulf region has enough untapped
demand to support more no-frills carriers like AirAsia to fly short routes
in and around the Middle East.
Indeed, he might want to start one himself. “Given the right partners, yes,
we would,” he said. “It would be great to have a low-cost carrier out of Abu
Dhabi. I think there’s room, definitely.”"
Race to Dubai slowing down
4 August 2009
CNN is reporting
that the Race to Dubai is facing a severe reduction in the prize money as
the European Tour deals with a massive economic fallout at sponsors
LeisureCorp.
The total prize
money reduction looks like 25% and the world's richest tournament may turn
into just another event.
Add to that the
fact that the clubhouse at the new course will not be ready and the course
is not complete yet.
The original plan
was for the top 60 players on the European Tour's money list to compete each
year for a share of a $10 million prize fund in the season-ending Dubai
World Championship.
It was billed with great fanfare by the European Tour as the richest golf
tournament in the world. A further $10 million bonus pool for the top 15 on
the Race to Dubai list was also part of the concept.
When the Race to
Dubai was launched last year in China many top players, like American
Anthony Kim and Colombian Camillio Villegas, committed themselves to making
more appearances on the European Tour in order to qualify for the lucrative
tournament.
There are continuing rumours that the event will be a once off instead of
the original five year commitment. A three year compromise deal is also
possible with the event alternating between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Any changes will
come as a major embarrassment to the European Tour who had rebranded itself
around the sponsorship and described the launch of the Race to Dubai as the
most significant development in its history.
Expect changes to
be announced in the next week.
Abhisit's slow demise
4 August 2009
The campaign against the Thaksin petition has been unrelenting and has been
led by the Democrats in government.
Yet Thai PM Abhisit is quoted in the Nation as saying that - “There’s an
attempt to convince people that the government is obstructing the petition
movement…The government is simply trying to inform the public of the facts.”
It is sad to see the Thai PM sinking to outright lies. Of course the
government has been doing all it can to obstruct the petition.
Here is the
Straits Times from Saturday - "The government has been scrambling to
dilute the impact of the petition, saying the red shirts are being used by
Thaksin, and urging them not to sign or to withdraw their signatures if they
have. Senior government figures claim the petition breaks protocol and
embarrasses the monarchy by dragging it into politics."
Again, this is what
Channel News Asia reported the PM as saying on 30 July: "It's not
possible for people to sign up to seek a royal pardon," he said, adding that
those behind the document were "manipulating innocent people."
"We have to be cautious because these masterminds have complicated matters
and people could fall victim to their provocations," he said.
The coalition partner, the Bhum Jai Thai Party even organized taxi drivers
to oppose the petition.
All of this is well covered
in this blog so need not be repeated here.
I do wonder if Abhisit genuinely believes some of the things he says or
whether his strings are being pulled in so many directions that he gets all
entangled. It is sad. This fear of Thaksin and his influence pervades
everything in Thai politics almost three years after the coup that removed
him from office.
How long can
Abhisit last? The rumours of another coup continue.
Thailand's
tourist scams
2 August 2009
Be warned. Tourist scams in Thailand come in
all shapes and forms. Of course there are similar scams everywhere from
petty theft to organised scams. But this was reported in the Daily Telegraph
a couple of days ago and will have been widely read in the UK.
The writer to the
Telegraph was of course hugely foolish. But he thought he was being a good
samaritan.
More gloomy news
for the Thai tourism industry. Meanwhile the Thai police are focused on
jaywalkers. Priorities.
Drugged and
mugged in Bangkok - Daily Telegraph 31 July 2009
"On the morning of July 7 I left my hotel in Sukhumvit Road to walk into
central Bangkok. A young woman of perhaps 30 and a Filipino man of about 50
approached me in a friendly manner. Finding I was English, the man said that
his sister was coming to London to work as a hospital nurse.
As she was apprehensive about living in Britain, he asked if I would come to
his home to reassure her. I said I would be happy to help as, by
coincidence, my grandson was also a nurse in London.
He called a taxi and after 15 minutes we arrived at an attractive bungalow
set in a garden. I accepted a soft drink and the sister came and sat beside
me. I spoke to her about nursing in London and she listened politely.
Then the man asked me to come into another room, where he produced a pack of
cards and said he would educate me in the secrets of card play.
By this time I seemed to be floating in a dreamlike place. I started
giggling, which annoyed the man. He asked to see my wallet and roughly went
through it. Other people came and went. We played cards but I had no idea
what I was doing. He then took my camera and put it in a cupboard. I was
incapable of saying or doing anything.
Finally, I was told to get into a taxi and taken to a modern shopping
complex by the man and his "nurse" sister. I was told to hand my bank card
to a shop assistant. I remember signing the till printouts and seeing the
man and his sister head off with shopping bags. The taxi driver then took me
back to my hotel.
It was not until I reached my room that my brain seemed to clear and the
enormity of what I had done dawned on me. It was clear I had been drugged. I
phoned my bank to cancel my debit card but three transactions totalling
£2,550 had already been cleared and the money taken from my account.
The following morning the Filipino man rang my hotel room and made it clear
that I should tell nobody. He said if I told the police then we would both
go to a Thai jail (I had already informed the police and the British
embassy). Fortunately, I did not hear from him again.
It was such a frightening experience that I want to warn other travellers to
Bangkok. I will not be able to recover any of the £2,550 because I had
voluntarily signed for the sums being taken from my account."
Boeing's 7-late-7
2 August 2009
The Boeing 787 is
already two years late. It is now widely known as the 7-late-7. The
questions now are when and even if it should ever fly?
The 777 has been a
huge success for Boeing. An enhanced 777 may now be more realistic that a
brand new airplane.
In the Middle East
Qatar Airways has 60 787s on order (30 firm, 30 option) and is relying on
the model to continue with its expansion. Their CEO is fairly outspoken on
the continuing delays. "Unfortunately Boeing has lost its leadership," Al
Baker said. "The mess with this (787) program could have been corrected a
long time ago. If they had correctly focused management, they could have
seen this coming."
The latest news is that the wing damage that grounded Boeing's new composite
787 Dreamliner occurred under less stress than was previously reported;
and is more extensive.
An engineer familiar with the details told the Seattle Times that the damage
happened when the stress on the wings was well below the load the wings must
bear to be federally certified to carry passengers.
In addition the newspaper reported that the damage occurred on both sides of
the wing-body join — that is, on the outer wing as well as inside the
fuselage.
This apparently is one reason why Boeing canceled the first flight planned
for the end of June.
The damage on the fuselage side of the wing join adds to the complexity of
any fix and the time and cost involved in implementing it. The wings of the
787 are made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan.
The 787 is
deliberately constructed primarily of composite materials to make a lighter,
stronger airliner.
Boeing says that 10 Dreamliners have been completed, including two
ground-test airplanes. About 30 more are in various stages of production.
But the Dreamliner is already two years late. There is still no new schedule
for its first flight and delivery will be ready within the next two months.
And its first flight is now not expected until 2010.
Estimates by the two engineers of the minimum time needed to fix the problem
suggest the plane is now unlikely to fly until next year.
It total 850 Dreamliners have already been ordered. Many of the airlines
will not be too upset at the delays. In this economy many are delaying fleet
increases.
Dubai's opaque
bond plan leaves investors wary
1 August 2009 -
Reuters
"Foreign investors
are unlikely to tap into a $10 billion (six billion pounds) Dubai bond
unless officials give details such as whether it has federal backing,
raising the prospect the central government may intervene again to support
the emirate.
Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, propelled itself into the
spotlight as a tourism hub during a six-year oil-fuelled boom, but the
downturn rocked its foundations based on excess lending and a transient
expatriate population.
The UAE's central bank took up the first tranche of a $20 billion bond issue
in February and Dubai's new finance chief announced last week that the
second tranche would be open to local and foreign investors.
"Investors in the region know this $10 billion will be used to support
infrastructure and liquidity of government related entities (GREs)," said
Nish Popat, ING's head of fixed income in the Middle East. "But will it be
$10 billion? Will there be a federal guarantee? Will there be a rating, and
if so will there be greater transparency in finances of the country?
"There are more questions than answers for investors."
The UAE, and Dubai in particular, has been hit hard by the downturn.
Construction projects were cancelled or postponed after the global credit
crunch robbed developers of access to cheap finance while a slump in oil
prices slashed state revenues across the region.
The emirate will not identify firms who receive help, leaving it up to each
entity to disclose its dealings.
"The reality is Dubai still has significant measures to take in order to tap
financial markets independently," said Mohieddine Kronfol, managing director
at Dubai-based fund manager Algebra Capital. "Either generous pricing,
federal involvement or some other credit enhancement is required to place
substantial amounts with foreign investors."
The support fund, created to administer proceeds from the issue, does give
investors a better idea of the type of structures to be used for the
proceeds, which so far only the troubled developer of Dubai's palm-shaped
manmade islands Nakheel has admitted to receiving.
"The problem with Dubai is the lack of details, numbers from both corporates
and sovereigns," said a debt fund manager in London after returning from an
investment trip to Dubai. "You can only buy things on the assumption they
will be bailed out by Abu Dhabi. There is no reason for optimism any time
soon."
"NO REASON FOR OPTIMISM"
The emirate and state-linked firms have outstanding debt of about $80
billion. The perceived default risk of holding debt issued by Dubai entities
had receded substantially after the emirate sold the first $10 billion to
the central bank.
But investors are once again becoming wary of Dubai debt with little news on
the restructuring of a $3.52 billion Islamic bond issued by Nakheel, which
matures in December.
Dubai risk is trading between 500 to 1000 basis points (bps) over the London
Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), according to Reuters data, with government
unrated notes trading at about 500 bps.
"Given where Dubai names trade, it is unlikely the proposed bond will be
sold in a public offering. It is currently more cost effective to raise
funds with government subsidies of one type or another, whether federal
guarantees or central bank underwriting," said Kronfol.
The first bond was fixed-rate paper, yielding four percent a year with a
five-year maturity. The next bond would need to be decidedly more attractive
to appeal to international markets.
"You need high yields for a credit where the business model is basically
broken," the London banker said. "I'm assuming that we won't get these
yields as this is a sovereign credit. If you are positive on Dubai, you
would buy the corporate debt that is already trading at distressed levels in
the secondary market."
WELL-RESPECTED
In recent months foreign investors have shown an appetite for debt from the
world's third largest oil exporter, especially for Abu Dhabi, which holds
more than 90 percent of the UAE's oil reserves. But neither the central
bank, federal government or Dubai officials are willing to comment on
whether Dubai debt would be backed federally -- if so, it would be the first
time the UAE government had backed a bond issue from one of the emirates.
The primary concern for investors remains a transparent process. The
dismissal of Dubai's former finance chief, who was well-regarded in the
financial community, did little to inspire confidence. He was surprisingly
removed a day after leading a panel at the World Economic Forum on the
future of the emirate.
No reason has been given for his dismissal. Most analysts believe he was too
open, but unless the new finance minister is also communicative, Dubai may
still grapple with recovery.
"It's not as if Dubai is the only place investors are looking at," said
ING's Popat. "There are other countries in the Gulf and quasi government
entities with bond issues that are very attractive and trade well in the
secondary market. People tend to focus too much (on the idea) that the Gulf
is just Dubai.""
SQ cuts
salaries after Q1 loss
31 July 2009
The big question
in Dubai is will Emirates follow Singapore Airlines by cutting salaries
after an estimated 12,000 non-management staff at Singapore Airlines (SIA)
were told of a pay cut of 10 per cent for at least three months starting
from August 1.
This comes after the carrier posted a S$271 million loss at the company
level in the first quarter.
As a group, SIA's net loss was S$307.1 million for the three months ended
June 30, compared to a net profit of S$358.6 million a year earlier.
Under current union agreements, a pay cut is automatically triggered if the
airline suffers a net loss of S$50 million at the company level in any given
quarter.
The quantum is determined by the amount of losses. The pay cuts start at 2.5
per cent if the carrier loses S$50 million at the company level, and go up
to as much as 10 per cent if the losses exceed S$200 million.
The 10 per cent pay cut involves non-managerial staff, as managerial staff
have already taken pay cuts ranging from 10 to 20 per cent, according to an
SIA spokesman.
The salary cut affects cabin crew, pilots and ground staff employed in
Singapore.
The SIA spokesman told Channel NewsAsia that the pay reduction may continue
beyond November even if the carrier posts a profit in the second quarter.
This is because the losses are calculated accumulatively throughout the
financial year.
On my flight into
Birmingham two Emirates crew in the rear galley were loudly (too loudly)
discussing a 20% salary reduction. One of the crew had heard the news from a
friend who heard it from her cabin crew manager.
Thus are rumours
started. But with Singapore Air implementing a salary reduction Emirates may
not be far behind and there are no air crew unions in the UAE to argue such
an action.
Pilots tell the
miracle on the Hudson
31 July 2009
"All pilots say
that any landing they can walk away from is a good one.
"We needed a boat," Jeff Skiles told a packed crowd at EAA AirVenture
Thursday afternoon.
Actually, several boats were needed to carry the 155 passengers and crew
members of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 to shore after they miraculously
survived a landing in the Hudson River last January. Canada geese were
sucked into both engines shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport.
Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who served in the Air Force, said he got
a letter from a Navy pilot friend who told him the water landing was pretty
good for an Air Force pilot, "but a Navy pilot would have tied it up at the
pier."
For more than an hour, the "Miracle on the Hudson" cockpit crew talked and
joked with a rapt audience of aviation enthusiasts about their five-minute
flight on Jan. 15 and how much their lives have changed since then.
Skiles, who lives in Oregon, Wis., has spent much of the week at AirVenture
and has been coming to the EAA gatherings each summer since his parents, who
are both pilots, began bringing him in the 1960s. This is Sullenberger's
first visit to AirVenture.
Dressed in jeans and khakis, the pilots joked that they have spent so much
time together - they had never met before the January trip - that "pretty
soon we'll be like an old married couple finishing each other's sentences,"
Sullenberger said.
When asked if, in hindsight, they would have done things differently, Skiles
said he would have ditched in the Hudson in July, when it would have been
warmer.
As first officer, Skiles was at the controls when the plane took off Jan.
15. Everything was normal until the plane reached 3,000 feet and Skiles
looked out the window to see a line of birds in front of the Airbus 320. He
was relieved to see them descend below the cockpit windows, figuring the
plane would fly over them.
Then the engines began to make a terrible noise and almost immediately went
to idle, meaning they were no longer providing thrust to the 150,000-pound
plane. It was supposed to be the last leg of a four-day trip for the flight
crew.
"I was the guy who flew the plane into the birds. So I'd like a little
credit for making Sully Sullenberger the (hero) he is," Skiles said as the
crowd laughed.
Almost immediately after hitting the birds, Sullenberger said "my aircraft"
- signaling that as captain he was taking over control - while Skiles tried
to restart the engines. Both pilots had taken off from LaGuardia many times
and knew that if they couldn't return to the airport, which Sullenberger
quickly ruled out because he didn't think the plane had enough altitude and
power, they faced a horizon filled with skyscrapers and roads.
The only other option was the Hudson.
As the smell of dead birds wafted into the cockpit, Sullenberger looked
outside at the banks of the river rapidly rising up to meet them while
Skiles called out altitude and air speed. After they splashed down and
scooted to a stop, the pilots turned to each other "and almost at the same
instant we said, 'Boy, that could've been a lot worse,' " Sullenberger said.
When Skiles walked back to the water-filled cabin, most of the front rows
had already emptied, but he saw a man coming up the aisle who had stripped
down to boxer shorts and socks, planning to swim to shore. But within four
minutes, tugs and ferries arrived to rescue the passengers and crew -
including one tug captained by a man who told Skiles, a lifelong Packers
fan, that his name was Vince Lombardi.
Little did Sullenberger and Skiles know, that as soon as they left the plane
their lives were really about to change.
Five days later, they attended the presidential inauguration, followed by
the Super Bowl and a number of other events, as well as numerous press
interviews. Sullenberger was invited to the Airbus headquarters in France,
where he was given a chance to the fly the new A380, the world's largest
passenger airliner, and dined with Airbus executives, wryly noting that he
was served goose paté.
While Sullenberger has become almost instantly recognizable, Skiles said
good-naturedly that he's now used to getting out of the way of crowds
pressing to see the captain and is often handed cameras by fans who want
their picture taken with Sullenberger. Skiles noted that as the pilots and
three flight attendants were looking for their seats at the inauguration, he
spotted a chair with Sullenberger's name on it next to his chair, which
simply said "crew."
The affection and warmth between the two men forever linked by a chilly
January morning in New York was apparent throughout the session Thursday
afternoon. Skiles, who returned to work several months later, said he will
be proud to fly with Sullenberger when he returns to the cockpit in
September and he hopes to fly with him on his last flight whenever
Sullenberger retires.
Sullenberger quickly returned the praise.
"This was about more than one person," Sullenberger said. "This gentleman
was sitting next to me in the crucible of the cockpit as we were fighting
for our passengers' lives and the lives of our crew," he said."
Thaksin
paranoia hurts Thai government
31 July 2009
The Thai
government is paranoid. Not of swine flu. Not of the dwindling economy. But
of the exiled man that they ousted from power 3 years ago.
The red shirted
supporters of ex Prime Minister Thaksin have been running a petition to get
signatures on a plea for a royal pardon for Thaksin. The red shirt United
Front for Democracy against Dictatorship which claims to have gathered close
to a million signatures.
The petition is expected to be submitted to the Office of His Majesty's
Principal Private Secretary on Aug 7.
The over reaction
from the Democrats is predictable and foolish.
In Thailand
tonight there is a TV program tonight to denounce the signature campaign.
The Interior
Ministry has asked Village Heads throughout the country to set up stalls so
people can withdraw their names; there is a Bhum-Jai Thai lead campaign for
the reds to stop - see this New Mandala guest post by Nick Nostitz and this
short Matichon article (where taxi drivers said they were forced to go by
the taxi owner) to see how voluntarly their attendance was.
(For the Bhum-Jai Thai campaign read here).
The government
says that the campaign is illegal, improper and/or inappropriate - seemingly
they can't make their mind up what to do about it.
The most astounding claim is that the campaign the monarchy in politics and
that this is somehow wrong. The royal pardon system does this precisely as
it was set up to show benevolence and this is the very purpose of it!
Needless to say
the same people outraged today are the same ones who petitioned HM the King
under Article 7 in 2006 to remove Thaksin. But of course that was a "good"
petition unlike this one which is reported as "evil". And the trouble is so
many of the elite do not see the irony of their position.
Even Abhisit himself has resorted to harsh rhetoric: "It's not possible for
people to sign up to seek a royal pardon," he said, adding that those behind
the document were "manipulating innocent people." He says that "we have to
be cautious because these masterminds have complicated matters and people
could fall victim to their provocations."
There is a long
tradition of Thai people petitioning the king. There really is no reason why
a free people cannot petition their own King on any matter that they choose.
The government's over reaction just makes the red-shirts look ever stronger.
Meanwhile the
Democrat party's propaganda machine is in full flow; on Prime Minister
Abhisit's birthday, August 3, a performance report will be released,
along with the launch of a month-long publicity campaign.
About 10,000 copies a book with the dubious title of, "Six Months, 100
Measures, 10 Million Happiness", will be handed out to media, MPs and
senators. A second book titled "Stories from the Fence: Thai People's
Happiness is the Government's Goal" will be printed and distributed to the
public through village funds, school libraries, universities and government
banks.
The Democrats may
be forgetting that they are in a coalition and survive only with the support
of the Newin faction.
- also
worth a read is this
Asia
Times article - on the colour coded contest for Thailand's north!
