World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

---

• Teaching the US shutdown: news and resources round up
• If America is the world's greatest power, why the infantile politics? | Henry Porter
• Chris Bowen: Coalition's wedding claims show pattern of poor judgment
• Egypt releases two Canadians held without charge
• US forces target leading al-Shabaab militant in Somalian coastal raid
• Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez suffers brain haematoma
• US capture Libyan al-Qaida leader Anas al-Liby, officials say
• Worldwide vigils for Greenpeace activists held by Russian authorities
• Harbour masters: Prince Harry and the governor-general follow the fleet
• Found photographs in Lampedusa
• This week in books: James Bond, the Beatles and in praise of adultery
• Prince Harry farewells Sydney after day and night of celebrations
• How I bought drugs from 'dark net' – it's just like Amazon run by cartels
• Libya's coast is often the end of a painful road to despair
• Migrants tell of perilous journey that ended in tragedy at sea
• Nick Clegg attacks Conservatives' 'flawed' EU policies
• African gorillas are under threat from oil survey
• Ted Cruz: a maverick who keeps his heartlands happy
• Labour to create US-style consumer tsar
• Tobacco firms lobby against move to curb black market sale of cigarettes
• Daughters of Chile's bloody past to clash over their country's future
• The readers' editor on… the perils of misreading research | Stephen Pritchard
• The World of Extreme Happiness – review
• Sharks: feared or revered, but rarely understood – in pictures
• Sharks: feared or revered – but very rarely understood

Teaching the US shutdown: news and resources round up Posted: 06 Oct 2013 12:00 AM PDT What is the US federal government shutdown all about? This collection of news and teaching resources will help you delve into the questions and issues in class The US government has been shutting its non-essential services because US politicians on Capitol Hill haven't managed to agree new budget for the new US financial year (which started on 1 October). As hundreds of thousands of workers, from Pentagon employees to rangers in national parks, are told to take an unpaid holiday – and even the Grand Canyon is closed – here are the best news stories, multimedia, teaching resources and websites to explore and expand upon the issues in the politics, economics and citizenship classroom – and beyond. From the Guardian US shutdown: a guide for non-Americans The Q&A explains why the American government has begun shutting its non-essential services – and what that actually means. How will the US government shutdown affect the global economy? – video What are the ramifications of the US government shutdown? The Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliot provides a really clear explanation in this video. US shutdown – in pictures Images to share with your students of the countdown to the shutdown as the US government officially shuts for the first time in more than 17 years, after the Senate and the House of the Representatives failed to pass a federal spending bill to keep the government running. A short history of US shutdowns. This is the first shutdown of the 21st century, but it happened 18 times between 1976 and 1996 US shutdown hits Obama's climate agenda This article helps explain some realities of the shutdown: around 94% of the 16,205 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have been sent home on an unpaid 'holiday' as part of the US shutdown – which will disrupt the employees' lives and finances, prevent monitoring of air and water quality and also put back President Obama's climate change agenda. US shutdown: what does it mean for markets and the global economy? This Q&A simply explains how the dollar is down and a prolonged crisis could damage consumer spending, confidence and China's attitude to US debt. On the Guardian Teacher Network US crisis as government shutdown is triggered A news story on the US shutdown plus some triggers for debate are included in this resource from schools news service The Day. With the Grand Canyon closed and the Pentagon on a skeleton staff just how dangerous is this paralysis of the world's richest country? US political system explainer This resource was written for the US presidential elections of 2012 and explains a lot of need to know basics of US politics for students interested in the shutdown story, also see this accompanying PowerPoint of images. US civil rights workshop The shutdown has shed a light on vulnerabilities in the US system which could impact on people's civil rights, especially as the row over Obamacare is so central. This resource from the National Archives explores some historical events in US civil rights history through original documents. Summary of Obama's campaign issues For an insight into what gets up tea party activists' noses and prevents consensus from being reached, check out Barack Obama's original campaigning issues for the last election. Tips for holding a debate Some great ideas on how to engage your class in a debate, maybe someone could pass this on to certain US politicians whose inability to come to productive agreement has triggered this shutdown. The best of the web Why has the US government shutdown Nice work Leah from Newsround for explaining the situation in a way that a primary school students can grasp. Obama on Twitter Follow Barack Obama on Twitter for some great insights into this and other issues. You never know, your class might even get a reply if you send a tweet to the US President. How US shutdown is hurting individual states Fascinating post on Huffington Post with a state-by-state guide on how the shutdown is affecting people and projects in the US. What the government shutdown means for schools The High School Soup blog explains how this stalemate situation affects schools and school students. Six Qs about the budget standoff Interesting blog on the New York Time's Learning Network for schools, including questions and comments from school students. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next role? Take a look at Guardian jobs for schools for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs. Citizenship US federal government shutdown United States US politics Economics Teaching Secondary schools Primary school teaching resources Politics Emily Drabble theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

If America is the world's greatest power, why the infantile politics? | Henry Porter Posted: 05 Oct 2013 11:00 PM PDT The US is on the brink of disaster, brought to it by a movement unique in its startling lack of realism and rigour A perfectly normal looking couple come to sit opposite you on the train. They seem pleasant enough and you fall into conversation, but you soon note that the man is not making a lot of sense and foam is showing at the corners of his mouth. At every turn, he contradicts his partner or, more weirdly, himself, and you realise that inside he is seething with violent and paranoid fears. You conclude that this character is going to do serious harm to himself, and may hurt other passengers in the process, so you leave and find a seat in another carriage. That's our experience of living with the American right – the Tea Party activists who have brought the world's largest economy to the brink of catastrophe to make one last stand against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The world is powerless to persuade or intervene and we are at the mercy of what seems truly irrational behaviour. This is certainly some kind of high point in the Tea Party's mission to disrupt, but it cannot simply be written off as delinquency. The movement presents the symptoms of a prolonged infantile spasm, at the same time as a coherent belief that central government and especially Obamacare are inimical to the liberty of the individual and the freedom of individual states to determine their future. Liberals will describe this as a failure of consensus politics that has been driven by the lowest suspicion and prejudice available in American society, manipulated by big business, pandered to by lax or demagogic media companies, such as Fox News, and ridden by ambitious politicians who promise a fantasy land that they cannot deliver. That's mostly my view, yet I have to concede that it ignores the deep suspicion of centralised power in America that goes back to the founding fathers and is an essential part of national culture. The checks and balances designed by the authors of the constitution seem archaic in a world that demands swift executive action, but we shouldn't forget that even though Obamacare has been democratically scrutinised and passed by Congress, the restraints are being applied by the Tea Party or TPers – in the name of liberty. There is still a minority – 18-20 – of Republicans in the Senate who oppose the government shutdown and recoil from a default, which would mean the government would stop paying its bills when it reaches its debt limit on or after 17 October, and so cause a greater international crisis than anything we have seen in the last five years. It's obviously suicidal, but, for the moment, Tea Party representatives, such as Ted Cruz, the junior Republican senator for Texas who made a 21-hour filibustering speech attacking everything about the White House except Mrs Obama's vegetable garden, are calling the shots. But the strategy, if that is the word, is bound to fail, because President Obama cannot resile on the key reform of his administration and, at some point, the Tea Party has to swerve or risk the anger of the majority of the American people and so jeopardise the Republican party's chances at the next presidential election. The movement has placed itself in a position where it cannot win and that is going to be very damaging to its Republican host, which has already been greatly distorted by the invasive Tper micro-organism. As the Economist points out, Republican members of Congress have become more fearful of being challenged by their own extremists than losing at a general election. "Many pander to extremists on their own side rather than forging sensible alliances with the other," says the magazine's leader. A couple of weeks ago, writing about gun control in the US, I applied the ironic technique of treating America with the same condescension that America speaks about other nations. But those tropes would be pointless for the Tea Party, for there are few movements anywhere in the world that are so unrealistic or have such a startling lack of rigour. Satire and irony are useless when it comes to a movement that is pro-life on abortion but pro-death in the matter of executing people or the 32,000 yearly toll caused by privately owned firearms. Tea Party Republicans pepper their speeches with the words "freedom" and "liberty", but do nothing to oppose the government surveillance programmes that infringe the rights of all Americans. They rail against the power of big government, but never the malignancy of big business. They are all over the map. Their policies are like the diet of high fructose corn syrup that Tpers often favour – appetising, temporarily satisfying but ultimately a health hazard. We have our own political boobies, in Ukip and the Conservative party, (Jacob Rees-Mogg applauded the US government shutdown) but we are rarely exposed to the dazzling fanaticism of a man such as Cruz. He was elected last November but has already become a national figure and is being touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2016. Princeton and Harvard educated, with a Cuban father, he looks quite a bit like a young version of Senator Joe McCarthy. And indeed, shortly after arriving in Washington, his prosecutorial line of questioning of Chuck Hagel, Obama's nominee for defence secretary, with its references to possible ties to foreign enemies, reminded people of McCarthy. "Are you or have you ever been…" I recommend his filmed interviews, especially with Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune, because you will not see a more polished zealot. This is a man who agreed that social security was a Ponzi scheme on the grounds that it paid investors from their own money or the money invested by others. He regards many of his colleagues as "squishy Republicans" and repeats this refrain: "The federal government is engaged on a war on jobs and what is at stake is individual liberty and the constitution", which makes absolutely no sense, given the hundreds of thousands of government employees now on unpaid leave because of the shutdown. If you found yourself on a train with Cruz, you would be struck by his intelligence and confident manner, and initially you might buy his line that the constitution needs to be redrafted to beef up the 9th and 10th amendments, which he says would enhance individual liberties and the states' powers. But very soon you'd see none of it adds up and that his suspicion of government is far greater than his love of liberty. The constitution may need to be rewritten, but only to give the executive the power to govern the modern American state and bring order to the country's finances. For in all this no one mentions the elephantine figure in the room – America's debt, last estimated to be $16,699tn. Tea Party movement US politics Republicans Barack Obama Obama administration United States Henry Porter theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chris Bowen: Coalition's wedding claims show pattern of poor judgment Posted: 05 Oct 2013 10:41 PM PDT Tony Abbott, three ministers and a backbencher all under scrutiny after claiming expenses for travelling to weddings

Egypt releases two Canadians held without charge Posted: 05 Oct 2013 08:44 PM PDT Tarek Loubani and John Greyson had been detained since observing an anti-government demonstration on 16 August

US forces target leading al-Shabaab militant in Somalian coastal raid Posted: 05 Oct 2013 07:55 PM PDT Raid on coastal town fails, officials say, but wanted al-Qaida man is captured in Libya US forces launched raids in Libya and Somalia on Saturday, capturing a top al-Qaida figure wanted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, but failing to secure the target in Somalia, US officials said. Senior al-Qaida figure Anas al-Liby was seized in the raid in Libya, but no militant was captured in the raid on the Somali town of Barawe, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon confirmed US military personnel had been involved in an operation against what it called "a known al-Shabaab terrorist" in Somalia, but gave no more details. One US official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the al-Shabaab leader targeted in the operation was neither captured nor killed. US officials did not identify the target. They said US forces, trying to avoid civilian casualties, disengaged after inflicting some al-Shabaab casualties. They said no US personnel were wounded or killed in the operation. A US navy Seal team swam ashore near Barawe, southern Somalia, before dawn prayers, US and Somali officials told the Associated Press. They approaching a two-storey beachfront property in small boats, reportedly supported by a helicopter and naval gunfire. The raid was carried out by members of Seal team six, the same unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout in 2011, another senior US military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorised to speak publicly. This time the Seal team members encountered fiercer resistance than expected, and after a 15-20 minute firefight, the unit leader decided to abort the mission and they swam away, the official said. Seal team six has responsibility for counter-terrorism activities in the Horn of Africa. US navy commandos killed a senior al-Qaida member in the same town four years ago. The New York Times quoted a US security official as saying that the target was believed to have been killed, but later accounts called that into question. The New York Times quoted an unnamed US security official saying the raid was planned a week and a half ago and prompted by the attack on Nairobi's upmarket Westgate shopping mall two weeks ago in which at least 67 people were killed. The paper also reported that a senior Somali government official said: "The attack was carried out by the American forces and the Somali government was pre-informed about the attack." Claims by an al-Shabaab spokesman that the raid involved British and Turkish special forces and that a British commando had been killed were denied by a UK official. Other reports spoke of two boats landing on a nearby beach and the soldiers using silenced weapons. Nato, the French military and the EU's anti-piracy force denied launching the raid. Somali officials, speaking anonymously, said that the target of the raid was a high-profile foreign leader in al-Shabaab, with one source identifying him as a Chechen. Radio Shabelle in Mogadishu reported that one al-Shabaab fighter had been killed and others were injured. Somali security officials gave partly conflicting accounts. "We understand that French troops injured Abu Diyad, also known as Abu Ciyad, an al-Shabaab leader from Chechnya. They killed his main guard, who was also a foreigner. The main target was the al-Shabaab leader from Chechnya," an intelligence officer based in Mogadishu, who gave his name as Mohamed, told Reuters. Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, a spokesman for al-Shabaab's military operations, told Reuters: "Westerners in boats attacked our base at Barawe beach and one was martyred from our side. No planes or helicopters took part in the fight. The attackers left weapons, medicine and stains of blood. We chased them." There was immediate speculation that the target was the leader of al-Shabaab, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Ahmed Godane, who claimed responsibility for the four-day assault on the Westgate shopping mall. Godane said the Nairobi attack was in retaliation for Kenya's military deployment inside Somalia. Also on Saturday Kenya's military confirmed the names of four al-Shabaab fighters implicated in the Westgate mall attack. Major Emmanuel Chirchir said the men were Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and Umayr – names that were first broadcast by a local Kenyan television station. "I confirm those are the names of the terrorists," he said in a tweet to Associated Press. Publication of the identities supports CCTV footage from the Nairobi mall published by a private TV station that shows no more than four attackers, contradicting earlier government statements that 10-15 attackers were involved. They are seen calmly walking through a storeroom inside the complex, holding machine guns. One of the men's legs appears to be stained with blood, although he is not limping, and it is unclear if the blood is his. Westgate mall attacks Somalia Middle East and North Africa Africa Kenya Al-Shabaab Peter Beaumont theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez suffers brain haematoma Posted: 05 Oct 2013 07:43 PM PDT Fernandez in hospital and has been told by doctors to take a month off, forcing her to quit congressional election campaign

US capture Libyan al-Qaida leader Anas al-Liby, officials say Posted: 05 Oct 2013 06:20 PM PDT Al-Liby, on the FBI's most-wanted list with a $5m bounty on his head for 1998 embassy bombings, reportedly abducted in Tripoli

Worldwide vigils for Greenpeace activists held by Russian authorities Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:43 PM PDT Russian authorities shrug off controversy, saying group's protest at Arctic oil platform was 'pure provocation' Protests were held in cities across Britain and around the world on Saturday to show support for the 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists currently being held by the Russian authorities on charges of piracy. Even as the vigils were taking place, the Russian authorities shrugged off the controversy, saying that the group's protest at an Arctic oil platform owned by state-controlled firm Gazprom had been "pure provocation". Six Britons are among the group, drawn from 18 countries, being detained in jail in the northern Russian city of Murmansk after being seized at gunpoint last month along with their ship, the icebreaker Arctic Sunrise. Greenpeace says the activists had been protesting peacefully in international waters to highlight the environmental cost of drilling in Arctic waters. The global day of solidarity included a gathering of an estimated 800 people at the Russian embassy in London. Among the protesters were actor Jude Law and musicians Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon, who are all friends of Frank Hewetson, one of those being held; and the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Other protests took place in Spain, France, New Zealand, Russia and in Hong Kong, where a human banner was formed reading: "Free the Arctic 30." The government of the Netherlands announced on Friday that it would launch legal action to free the 30, two of whom are Dutch, and the vessel which is Dutch-flagged. The Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, said the Netherlands had applied to the UN's Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and that his country, the first nation to take legal action in the case, viewed the ship's detention as unlawful. "I don't understand why this could be thought to have anything to do with piracy, I don't see how you could think of any legal grounds for that," said Timmermans. Under the rules of the tribunal, the Netherlands can ask for the immediate release of the ship and its passengers, which include a British film-maker, Keiron Bryan, and a Russian photographer. The ship's captain is Peter Willcox – the veteran American environmentalist who commanded the Rainbow Warrior when it was sunk by French secret service agents in New Zealand in 1985. But the Russian deputy foreign minister, Alexei Meshkov, said Russia had repeatedly asked the Netherlands to halt "illegal activity" by the ship. "Unfortunately, this was not done. Therefore, we have far more questions for the Dutch side than they can have for us. Everything that happened with the Arctic Sunrise was pure provocation." Piracy carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years. Greenpeace International's executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said: "The activists were taking a brave stand to protect all of us from climate change and the dangers of reckless oil drilling in the Arctic. Now it's imperative that millions of us stand up with them to defend the Arctic and demand their immediate release." Greenpeace Russia Europe Activism Protest Arctic Vivienne Westwood Piracy at sea Tracy McVeigh theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Harbour masters: Prince Harry and the governor-general follow the fleet Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:40 PM PDT Sydney harbour may have looked packed on TV, but out on the water things seemed to happen rather far away David Marr

Found photographs in Lampedusa Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:39 PM PDT The residents of Lampedusa have been finding photographs, washed up on the beaches or abandoned in wrecks. These photographs were carried by migrants seeking a better life and show an image of the new world they hoped to reach. These are heart-breaking pictures of them or their families dressed in their best clothes were meant to be photographs to be treasured.

This week in books: James Bond, the Beatles and in praise of adultery Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:12 PM PDT William Boyd's Solo and a major new Beatles biography reviewed, Hanif Kureishi on adultery, and Jon McGregor shuns email Bethanie Blanchard

Prince Harry farewells Sydney after day and night of celebrations Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:25 PM PDT Prince says he would have loved to stay longer, but 'can't get the time off work these days'

How I bought drugs from 'dark net' – it's just like Amazon run by cartels Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT Last week the FBI arrested Dread Pirate Roberts, founder of Silk Road, a site on the 'dark net' where visitors could buy drugs at the click of a mouse. Though Dread – aka Ross Ulbricht – earned millions, was he really driven by America's anti-state libertarian philosophy? Dear FBI agents, my name is Carole Cadwalladr and in February this year I was asked to investigate the so-called "dark net" for a feature in this newspaper. I downloaded Tor on to my computer, the anonymous browser developed by the US navy, Googled "Silk Road drugs" and then cut and pasted this link http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/ into the address field. And bingo! There it was: Silk Road, the site, which until the FBI closed it down on Thursday and arrested a 29-year-old American in San Francisco, was the web's most notorious marketplace. The "dark net" or the "deep web", the hidden part of the internet invisible to Google, might sound like a murky, inaccessible underworld but the reality is that it's right there, a click away, at the end of your mouse. It took me about 10 minutes of Googling and downloading to find and access the site on that February morning, and yet arriving at the home page of Silk Road was like stumbling into a parallel universe, a universe where eBay had been taken over by international drug cartels and Amazon offers a choice of books, DVDS and hallucinogens. Drugs are just another market, and on Silk Road it was a market laid bare, differentiated by price, quality, point of origin, supposed effects and lavish user reviews. There were categories for "cannabis", "dissociatives", "ecstasy", "opioids", "prescription", "psychedelics", "stimulants" and, my favourite, "precursors". (If you've watched Breaking Bad, you'll know that's the stuff you need to make certain drugs and which Walt has to hold up trains and rob factories to find. Or, had he known about Silk Road, clicked a link on his browser.) And, just like eBay, there were star ratings for sellers, detailed feedback, customer service assurances, an escrow system and a busy forum in which users posted helpful tips. I looked on the UK cannabis forum, which had 30,000 postings, and a vendor called JesusOfRave was recommended. He had 100% feedback, promised "stealth" packaging and boasted excellent customer reviews: "The level of customer care you go to often makes me forget that this is an illegal drug market," said one. JesusOfRave boasted on his profile: "Working with UK distributors, importers and producers to source quality, we run a tight ship and aim to get your order out same or next day. This tight ship also refers to our attitude to your and our privacy. We have been doing this for a long time … been playing with encryption since 0BC and rebelling against the State for just as long." And so, federal agents, though I'm sure you know this already, not least because the Guardian revealed on Friday that the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ have successfully cracked Tor on occasion, I ordered "1g of Manali Charras [cannabis] (free UK delivery)", costing 1.16 bitcoins (the cryptocurrency then worth around £15). I used a false name with my own address, and two days later an envelope arrived at my door with an address in Bethnal Green Road, east London, on the return label and a small vacuum-packed package inside: a small lump of dope. It's still sitting in its original envelope in the drawer of my desk. I got a bit stumped with my dark net story, put it on hold and became more interested in the wonderful world of cryptocurrencies as the value of bitcoins soared over the next few months (the 1.5 bitcoins I'd bought for £20 were worth £300 at one point this spring). Just under a month ago I was intrigued to see that Forbes magazine had managed to get an interview with "Dread Pirate Roberts", the site's administrator. And then, last week, came the news that Dread Pirate Roberts was 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a University of Texas physics graduate who, according to the FBI's documents, had not just run the site – which it alleges earned him $80m in commission – but had hired a contract killer for $80,000 to rub out an employee who had tried to blackmail him. If that sounds far-fetched, papers filed last Thursday show that he tried to take a contract on a second person. The documents showed that the FBI had access to Silk Road's servers from July, and that the contract killer Ulbricht had thought he'd hired was a federal agent. It's an astonishing, preposterous end to what was an astonishing, preposterous site, though the papers show that while the crime might have been hi-tech, cracking it was a matter of old-fashioned, painstaking detective work. Except, of course, that it's not the end of it. There are two other similar websites already up and running – Sheep and Black Market Reloaded – which have both seen a dramatic uplift in users in the last few days, and others will surely follow. Because what Silk Road did for drugs was what eBay did for secondhand goods, and Airbnb has done for accommodation: it created a viable trust system that benefited both buyers and sellers. Nicholas Christin, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who conducted six months of research into the site, said that what surprised him most was how "normal" it was. "To me, the most surprising thing was how normal, when you set aside the goods being sold, the whole market appears to be," he said. And, while many people would be alarmed at the prospect of their teenagers buying drugs online, Silk Road was a whole lot more professional, regulated and controlled than buying drugs offline. What's apparent from Dread Pirate Roberts's interview with Forbes and comments he made on the site's forum is that the motivation behind the site does not seem to have been making money (though clearly it did: an estimated $1.2bn), or a belief that drugs hold the key to some sort of mystical self-fulfillment, but that the state has no right to interfere in the lives of individuals. One of the details that enabled the FBI to track Ulbricht was the fact that he "favourited" several clips from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian Alabama-based thinktank devoted to furthering what is known as the Austrian school of economics. Years later, Dread Pirate Roberts would cite the same theory on Silk Road's forum. "What we're doing isn't about scoring drugs or 'sticking it to the man'," said Dread Pirate Roberts in the Forbes interview. "It's about standing up for our rights as human beings and refusing to submit when we've done no wrong." And it's this that is possibly the most interesting aspect of the story. Because, while Edward Snowden's and the Guardian's revelations about the NSA have shown how all-encompassing the state's surveillance has become, a counterculture movement of digital activists espousing the importance of freedom, individualism and the right to a private life beyond the state's control is also rapidly gaining traction. It's the philosophy behind innovations as diverse as the 3D printed gun and sites as mainstream as PayPal, and its proponents are young, computer-savvy idealists with the digital skills to invent new ways of circumventing the encroaching power of the state. Ulbricht certainly doesn't seem to have been living the life you imagine of a criminal overlord. He lived in a shared apartment. If he had millions stashed away somewhere, he certainly doesn't seem to have been spending it on high-performance cars and penthouses. His LinkedIn page, while possibly not the best arena for self-expression for a man being hunted by the FBI, demonstrates that his beliefs are grounded in libertarian ideology: "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind," he wrote. "The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments … the best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed … to that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a firsthand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force." Silk Road, it turns out, might have been that world. Anybody who has seen All the President's Men knows that, when it comes to criminality, the answer has always been to "follow the money". But in the age of bitcoin, that's of a different order of difficulty. Silk Road is just one website; bitcoin is potentially the foundation for a whole new economic order. Drugs Drugs trade United States Carole Cadwalladr theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Libya's coast is often the end of a painful road to despair Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT Migrants chasing a better life in Europe endure dangerous treks before they can hope for place on a boat The migration road from Africa to Europe's promised land has ended for one east African woman on a patch of concrete in a market in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Seated on a cushion, dressed in a black shawl, she sells mattresses in the baking heat amid stalls offering everything from mobile phones and bathroom fittings to electric stun guns and firearms. She won't give her name, or the country she comes from, but knows where she wants to go: Italy. "My three children are there already," she says. "But I can't find a boat." Libya's post-revolutionary chaos has made it the key route for migrants moving to Europe from a broad swath of Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Eritrea and Somalia in the east. It is a precarious and dangerous route, taking them north through Niger, Chad and Sudan across a border that is there in name only in the midst of the Sahara. From there, they endure a 1,000-mile journey through bandit-infested territory to Libya's coast. Those routes have now become battlegrounds for competing smuggling gangs, well armed from a country awash in weapons left over from the revolution that toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Once they reach the Mediterranean, the lucky ones are shepherded to a beach rendezvous with a smuggling boat. Even then, there is a precarious trip to the island of Lampedusa, a trip that last week claimed the lives of at least 200 migrants off the Italian coast. Many never get that far: like the mattress-seller, they are dumped in one of Libya's coastal cities and left to fend for themselves, often at the mercy of their smugglers. "A combination of continued civil unrest, disrupted shipping lanes and European coastal patrols have resulted in trafficked persons remaining in Libya," says the US state department's Trafficking in Persons report. "These networks use a variety of techniques to hold people in conditions of forced labour and forced prostitution." The mattress-seller makes a few pounds a day in the market, and counts herself among the lucky ones; in contrast, thousands more have been scooped up by the Libyan authorities and held in detention centres, which are packed to beyond their normal capacity. In one centre in Zlitan, Amnesty International found migrants from Eritrea and Somalia who had been held in cells for six months without access to the centre's courtyard. "They were in overcrowded cells without sunshine or access to fresh air," said Amnesty official Magda Mughrabi. "We have cases of women strip-searched by male guards; we've documented many cases in which the treatment amounts to torture." Amnesty says Libya has yet to sign the UN convention on refugees, meaning it does not recognise genuine asylum applicants, instead holding them indefinitely as illegal immigrants. The International Office for Migration, an intergovernmental organisation, said it could assist Libya. "This is a huge problem; what do you do with these people?" said IOM spokesman Chris Lom. "If the Libyans asked to help us build their migration capacity-building we would do it, but the Libyans would have to ask us." Immigrations gangs around Sabah are divided between often bitterly opposing Tuareg, Tobu and Arab tribes. They fight brutal battles for control of the smuggling routes. Under the regime of Gaddafi, border controls were tight, slowing the flow of immigrants. But since the revolution, those controls have lapsed. People and drugs are being smuggled into the country, while weapons are taken the other way. The big concern for western diplomats is that jihadists are using the same routes to move between Libya, Algeria and Mali. The US has opened a drone base in Niger to carry out unmanned flights over the vast empty desert region to augment Libya's efforts. Tripoli's government is itself overwhelmed with the problems of a country suffering political chaos, militia violence and fragmentation. It insists that it provides food and accommodation for all refugees. This is scant comfort for the mattress-seller. She says she is aware of the perils of the sea journey to Europe but is determined to make it. "I've been all around Libya, to Tobruk and Benghazi searching for a boat; reaching Italy is my dream." Libya Middle East and North Africa Migration Africa Europe Italy Chris Stephen theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Migrants tell of perilous journey that ended in tragedy at sea Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT Survivors who were rescued off Lampedusa had escaped war-torn Eritrea through the Sahara and endured hardship in Libya before their boat was ravaged by fire For the young Eritrean, the reason he is still alive is very simple. "I know how to swim," he said. "My friends on the other hand had never been in the sea." The teenager, who gave his name as David Villa, was among the 155 migrants pulled out of the water alive off the Italian island of Lampedusa on Thursday after their vessel – with around 440 packed on board – caught fire and sank, taking hundreds to their deaths and making it among the worst tragedies on a route where around 6,000 migrants have perished in the last 20 years. In the first accounts given to Italian newspapers, Villa, 18, and other survivors described their hellish journey from war-ravaged Eritrea through the Sahara and across the Mediterranean, and claimed a second ship was sailing alongside them to Italy. "They had given us a bottle of five litres of water for every three people, there were terrible waves and we couldn't move on the boat," said Villa, as he huddled in nothing but his underpants and a heat-retaining blanket at the packed and fetid migrant centre on Lampedusa, the holiday island that sits just 70 miles from the African mainland. When, after a two-day voyage from Libya, the boat came within view of Lampedusa, hearts on board lifted and trouble started, he recounted. "We started burning shirts and T-shirts," he told Corriere della Sera. "We waved them in the air, then the boat started to burn and there was an explosion. We knew there was another ship close to us which had left Misurata, which had almost always been next to ours. Many jumped in the water, but they didn't find it." After locating just 111 bodies in the sea, authorities were forced by bad weather to call off their search on Saturday for more than 200 migrants – mainly Eritreans – who may still be packed like sardines into the hold of the vessel, now resting on its side at a depth of 40 metres. On Saturday morning a fishing boat flotilla threw a single bouquet of yellow flowers into the sea at the site, after Italy held a national day of mourning for the disaster on Friday. Lampedusa, a tiny speck in the Mediterranean, has long been a promised land for thousands of Africans fleeing war and poverty who aspire to new lives, usually in northern Europe. "The rules are you get asylum in the country you are identified in, and since many don't want to stay in Italy, they refuse to be fingerprinted here," said a UN official who declined to be named. Villa, who was likely using the name of the Atlético Madrid footballer to conceal his identity, said his horrific sea voyage was just another chapter in a months-long odyssey that started in the spring of 2012, in a village near Keren in the Eritrean desert, where he was the oldest of eight children. Paying over his parents' $3,000 in savings he boarded a truck heading across the Sahara to Libya. "We couldn't breathe, there were people crying and coughing," he said. "By day, when we stopped, they tied us up, and I was convinced I would die, I wouldn't make it." In Libya, Villa and a friend, Kijwa, who also made it to Lampedusa with him, worked for months as painters, sleeping in their employer's shack alongside their tins of paint. "Beatings, many beatings," said Kijwa. "The Libyans are bad," he added. "Mafia, mafia," Villa told La Stampa. "They treated me like a slave." The pair were lucky not to be locked up in one of the 22 detention centres set up in Libya and run by corrupt officials where inmates are beaten up, where they must pay up to $1,000 to be released and where the UN has limited access. "We have a small office in Libya which is not recognised by the government," said Federico Fossi, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are tolerated, not recognised," he added. Italian police are meanwhile holding a Tunisian man who has been identified by passengers as the ship's navigator, who insisted on being called "the Doctor" and was part of a trafficking gang that made about €500,000 from the crossing. After surviving the desert, Libya and the crossing, Villa and Kijwa were rubbing shoulders this weekend with Syrians who have fled the war in their own country. At the holding centre, which is fit for 250 people and where more than 1,000 are now sleeping, Syrian and Eritrean children were playing football and together sketching pictures of boats being tossed by waves. "We like the same teams, Juventus, Real Madrid, Inter," one child told La Stampa. "The Syrians have been sailing from Egypt, but now embark in Libya too," said Fossi. "They tend to be middle class and relatives are often at the port ready to pick them up and take them out of Italy." As for the hundreds of Africans whose journey ended for ever half a mile from Lampedusa, they are now lined up, nameless, in a hangar at the island's airport, where a specialist team of medics formed in Italy after the Sri Lankan tsunami has been taking DNA samples in a bid to identify them. Meanwhile, local people have long been finding photographs carried by the migrants washed up on the shore or left aboard wrecks – heartbreaking images showing them, or their families back home, dressed in their Sunday best or posing like rappers in front of backdrops featuring a Mercedes or Hollywood-style mansions, an image of the new world they hoped to reach. "Lampedusa is the new Checkpoint Charlie between the northern and southern hemispheres," said Italy's interior minister, Angelino Alfano, after the disaster. Cecile Kyenge, Italy's first black minister, who has pushed for looser immigration laws, said migrant boats needed better monitoring at sea while asylum seekers from Africa's warzones merited better treatment. "Lawmakers need to imagine that it could have been them on the other side," she told the Observer. Having made it across alive, Villa said he was now heading for Switzerland. "I want to study, I want to become a nurse," he said. And he had a message for his parents. "Mum and Dad, I want to tell you that there was wind, a huge wave and I fell in the sea. But don't worry about me, I'm fine." Italy Refugees Europe Migration Tom Kington theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Nick Clegg attacks Conservatives' 'flawed' EU policies Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT Liberal Democrat leader says Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher did better job in shaping EU Nick Clegg will launch a far-reaching assault on the chancellor and prime minister this week in a landmark speech on Europe, negatively comparing David Cameron's leadership within the EU to that of Tony Blair. The deputy prime minister will turn on his most senior coalition colleagues, accusing George Osborne of endangering the British economic recovery by issuing threats of an exit. He will describe Cameron's promise to repatriate powers and then hold a referendum on continued membership of a reformed EU by the end of 2017 as a deeply-flawed "political fix" to "plaster over their [the Tories'] internal divisions on Europe". In stark contrast to what he describes as Cameron's short-sighted political calculation, Clegg will point to what he describes as the successes of Blair and Margaret Thatcher in leading and shaping Europe. The Liberal Democrat leader, in some of his strongest language yet on the crucial issue, is expected to say: "The promise of unilateral repatriation was made when the Conservative party needed a way to plaster over their internal divisions on Europe. They needed a position that, in the lead up to the election, all sides can get behind – a policy fix. "But it's a short-sighted political calculation that could jeopardise the long-term national interest. It is playing with fire and, if we go down this track, it is Britain that will get burned." Clegg, a former MEP, who insists that Cameron's policy of pandering to his Eurosceptic wing is "bound to unravel", is expected to add, referring to the coalition's dealings with Europe: "Our experiences only prove what we have seen with every government for the last 60 years: if you want Europe to deliver for Britain, you have to lead. Margaret Thatcher led when she helped pioneer the single market. Tony Blair led when he and Jaqcues Chirac launched EU defence and security co-operation." During his speech on Tuesday, at the London headquarters of Swiss technology company, the Buhler Group, Clegg will reassert his party's commitment to an in/out referendum on Europe – but only at the time of a transfer of power from the UK to the EU. The Liberal Democrats are keen to plant in the public mind that Labour is the only party not signed up to a referendum. But he also wants to emphasise the dividing lines with the Conservatives ahead of European elections in May. Clegg, while pledging to seek reform of the EU where it is wasteful, intrusive or unfair, will warn of the damage done to British interests by the anti-European rhetoric employed by some ministers, including Osborne. And he is expected to throw doubt on those who believe that hardline Tory Eurosceptics can be won round by a reform of EU powers, saying the "process is just a smokescreen for exit". Clegg will claim that Cameron and others are playing a dangerous game that threatens the UK with "economic suicide". He will add: "Senior – and usually moderate – voices in the Conservative party have now openly flirted with the idea of leaving; the mayor of London insisting we should be ready to walk away; the chancellor issuing threats of exit in German newspapers. That rhetoric has been toned down more recently. I expect they've realised that threatening to flounce out of the EU is hardly the best way to appeal to British business. "But the threats certainly haven't been forgotten in Europe's capitals. The hardliners have been stoked up. And next May the Euro elections are bound to become a proxy for the bigger question of in versus out – a debate that will play out in the 2015 general election too. "Our economy is finally turning a corner, but the recovery is fragile. We should be focusing on finishing the job and laying the foundations for long-term growth, not entertaining the idea of an EU exit that would throw our recovery away. Let me be absolutely clear: leaving the EU would be economic suicide. You cannot overstate the damage it would do to British livelihoods and prosperity." Nick Clegg Liberal-Conservative coalition Conservatives Liberal Democrats European Union Europe David Cameron George Osborne Daniel Boffey theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

African gorillas are under threat from oil survey Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT UK and conservationists express opposition towards drilling in Virunga National Park Controversial aerial surveys aimed at finding oil under Africa's oldest national park have been started by a British company amid fears that drilling in the area could seriously threaten the world's last sanctuary for mountain gorillas. The moves towards possible oil exploration in Virunga national park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have been condemned by the UK government and by the World Wildlife Fund. This week the WWF is launching a campaign, Draw the Line, against the exploitation of the park, which was established in 1925 and designated a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1979. Soco International, whose headquarters are in London, has defended its aerial survey, saying it was being governed and monitored under the terms of the Environmental Acceptability Certificate issued by the DRC's ministry of the environment, nature conservation and tourism. But earlier this year the Unesco world heritage committee called for the cancellation of all such Virunga oil permits and appealed to two concession holders, Total and Soco International, not to undertake exploration in world heritage sites. Total has since agreed to respect Virunga park's current boundaries, leaving Soco as the only oil and gas company planning to explore inside the park's 7,800 sq km. It claims its area of interest is not near the gorillas' habitat. Rangers and wildlife experts disagree. Virunga is already in a fragile state, thanks to poachers. In addition, it sits close to the DRC's borders with Uganda and Rwanda and has been affected by influxes of refugees and militias during both the Congo civil war and the Rwandan genocide, as well as ongoing skirmishes with rebel groups. It is home to 200 of the endangered mountain gorillas, a quarter of the world population. Although recent years have been a success story for the park, thanks to the efforts of conservationists and local rangers and the number of mountain gorillas has more than doubled in the past decade, many park staff have been killed by poachers and militias. Virunga is temporarily closed to visitors because of the violence. Last year the UK government expressed its opposition to drilling inside the park. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The UK opposes oil exploration within Virunga national park, a world heritage site listed by Unesco as being 'in danger'. We urge any company involved, and the government of DR Congo, to respect the international conventions to which it is a signatory." Drew McVey is the regional manager for East Africa at WWF in the UK and has just returned from the region. He said: "Virunga has been a fantastic success in the past few years. We've seen the population of gorillas jump and tourists are starting to come to see them. In terms of the local people, they understand the importance of the mountain gorillas to their future prosperity, and we have even had reports of rebel groups in the park no longer poaching, but making money pretending to be authorised tour operators. Ironically that is a sign of how important these big mammals are. "Virunga has the most biodiversity in all of Africa … it is heavily populated around the park, so there's a massive demand on the park and its resources. The conflict that has gone on in the area adds another dimension of fragility. "But now to have this terrible threat hanging over it of oil exploration is just so disturbing." Democratic Republic of the Congo Wildlife Africa WWF Tracy McVeigh theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ted Cruz: a maverick who keeps his heartlands happy Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT The Texan agitator orchestrated the shutdown - and doesn't care if he's not winning friends on the Hill As an appetiser before helping to send the US government into famine mode, Ted Cruz railed against Obamacare on the Senate floor last month in a publicity-seeking speech that lasted more than 21 hours and included a Darth Vader impression and reading Dr Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his daughters, who watched on TV. While the grandstanding was largely symbolic, Cruz has been more than just a figurehead for the Republican showdown over Obamacare that has prompted a government shutdown. The first-term senator from Texas has emerged as an unofficial envoy between conservatives in the House of Representatives and Senate, spending hours with Tea Party supporters such as congressman Justin Amash to plot what, with hindsight, has been a highly orchestrated plan of attack. It began over the summer with television ads reminding grassroots conservatives that it was not too late to block Obama's four-year-old Affordable Care Act by cutting off its funding. With expectations raised, Cruz ruffled feathers among mainstream Republicans by helping to bounce House speaker John Boehner into a confrontational stand-off over the normally routine continuing budget resolution. Cruz is used to mainstream Republican opprobrium – John McCain famously described him and fellow conservative Rand Paul as "wacko birds" – but he briefly became the most hated figure in Congress when he then failed to follow through on his strategy by winning enough support in the Senate, leaving Boehner blamed for shutting down the government. "[Cruz] pushed House Republicans into traffic and wandered away," sniped tax campaigner Grover Norquist in an interview last week. Since then, however, "Cruz control" has begun to look more sure-footed again. His strategy of blaming Obama for the shutdown by refusing to negotiate is unlikely to succeed in persuading anyone who has been following proceedings closely, but may confuse ordinary voters enough to blame both sides equally. Republicans have also boxed the White House into a corner by selectively offering to fund ideologically favoured bits of the government such as the military and national monuments. Angrily dismissed as a gimmick by the administration which blocked most of these piecemeal measures but was forced to accept others, this tactic has succeeded in making it look as if Obama wanted to keep as many hostages in the room as possible. Eventually, Boehner may have to cut a deal with moderate Republicans and Democrats that would end the standoff without scrapping Obamacare, but for now the conservative grassroots could not be happier. Battling the federal government on almost any issue is a crowd-pleasing tactic in Texas, the most stubborn and independent-minded state in the union. "I think he's doing great," said Beth Cubriel, executive director at the Republican party of Texas. "He's a voice for people who are so frustrated that as long as the president has been in power the conservative view has not been covered." Cruz won an underdog victory in the Texas Republican primary last year, preaching a fiery rightwing gospel that made his establishment-backed opponent, David Dewhurst, seem moderate and mainstream. As a Latino, Cruz helps Texas Republicans to woo an increasingly important and left-leaning demographic while retaining traditional conservative values – even though he comes across as an upstart outsider. "He ran very effectively as an anti-establishment candidate, however counter-intuitive that seems for a Harvard-educated lawyer," said Jim Henson, director of the Austin-based Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. "We couldn't be prouder of Ted Cruz," said Julie Turner, president of the Texas Patriots PAC, a Tea Party group. "Ted Cruz is the tuning fork for the conservative movement." Turner fondly recalled an impromptu pre-election rally near Houston with Cruz and his wife giving speeches from the back of a pick-up truck: "They spoke our values then he went to Washington and followed them." While Cruz's rise to fame was sudden, Felicia Cravens of the Houston Tea Party Society said that it was carefully planned: "He's been making the circuit of Tea Party events since 2009. He'd go to meetings of any size, speak to as few as 10 people. He put in the shoe leather early on to make contact with people who could be influence-makers." The 42-year-old was born in Canada, the son of a Cuban father and American mother. He grew up in Houston and went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, where he was seen as brilliant but arrogant. Then he worked on George W Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. After a period in Washington, Cruz returned to Texas to become solicitor general, overseeing appeal cases and taking on high-profile supreme court battles on topics such as gun rights, abortion and religious symbols. In one of his proudest moments, he helped to persuade the supreme court that Texas had the right to execute a Mexican national convicted of murder, despite opposition from President Bush and the International Court of Justice, which ruled the case should be reopened. Polls this year suggest that a quarter of Texans adore him and a similar amount loathe him. On Thursday, several dozen department of defence workers protested outside Cruz's San Antonio office, wielding placards with slogans such as "Ted – go furlough yourself". Bob Comeaux, a Democratic activist, joined them. "I think he is a very fine advocate for the seven or eight per cent of crazy people in the state of Texas," he said. "I have a niece who's a firefighter who's required to go to work for no pay. What kind of a country is that requires people to work for no pay? In Texas it used to be we'd elect politicians to get something done. Now there's a mentality to send people up there [to DC] to make sure nothing gets done." A meeting of Senate Republicans on Wednesday turned into an anti-Cruz "lynch mob", according to the New York Times. Alienating colleagues is hardly a recipe for longevity in the Senate, especially if Texans conclude Cruz is more interested in his own future than theirs. "The shelf-life of a very conservative member of the Senate is short," said Brandon Rottinghaus, associate politics professor at the University of Houston. "It's hard to govern if you're outside the boundaries of your party and your tactics are explosive." But by the time his Senate seat is up for grabs again in 2018, Cruz presumably hopes his cowboy-booted feet will be on the desk of the Oval Office, a maverick intellectual improbably carried to ultimate power by those who love to hate big government. It would be quite a story to tell. US federal government shutdown Republicans John Boehner John McCain Tea Party movement Barack Obama US Senate US House of Representatives US politics Texas United States Dan Roberts theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Labour to create US-style consumer tsar Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:06 PM PDT Party aims to create role of ombudsman with power to bring class actions against companies Labour is planning to set up a consumer tsar or adviser in government with US-style powers to prosecute class-action cases against companies accused of ripping off customers. The type of person Labour would like for the role is said to be a combination of television presenters such as Anne Robinson, Nicky Campbell and Mary Portas, yet with the gravitas of MP Margaret Hodge, who has been targeting tax avoidance on her public accounts select committee. It is estimated that consumers are losing around £3.3bn every year to companies through misleading and aggressive sales practices alone. A media-friendly ombudsman will be asked to act as the public face for consumer protection, appearing on television to educate consumers about how to fight for their rights, while also having the powers to take up class actions on behalf of consumers against companies or the government. Labour is also looking at establishing a dedicated consumer affairs minister based in the business, energy and environment departments. The shadow minister driving the plan, Gareth Thomas MP, will launch the idea this weekend in his role as chairman of the Co-operative party, a division within the Labour party. The policy was first mooted in 2009 by the Labour government but did not come to pass. Critics point out that there are already plenty of public bodies to help consumers, from trading standards offices to Directgov. But Thomas said he believes that creating an independent ombusman with class-action powers and a responsibility to highlight consumer concerns to parliament would make it easier for people to claim compensation if they were affected by issues such as payment protection (PPI); hidden fees for pensions, savings and credit cards; energy price increases; the PIP breast implant scandal; excessive bank charges; and airline charges that are not disclosed upfront. Thomas said the impact of such problems on consumers had been compounded by the usually very slow response, poor complaints-handling and inadequate redress from the offending companies. He said: "If markets are to be fair and to work for everybody, then consumers need to be properly protected from poor service and ripoff behaviour. An independent ombudsman and stronger ministerial interest will help to enforce the standards all of us as consumers should have a right to expect. "A number of other countries already have a strong consumer ombudsman able to take action against poor treatment of customers. It's time Britain caught up with best practice overseas." The plan is the latest attempt by Labour to put itself on the side of the consumer in the public mind, following Ed Miliband's announcement that he would freeze energy prices for 20 months if Labour wins the next election. Prime minister David Cameron is expected to fight back with a series of announcements from next month, including cuts to the cost of rail commuters' season tickets and a curb on bank fees. After his speech at the Tory party conference last week in Manchester, Labour said Cameron was failing to address the "cost-of-living crisis" and offered a land of opportunity "for just a privileged few". During the 50-minute speech, Cameron had contrasted his own party's philosophy with that of the opposition, saying: "If Labour's plan for jobs is to attack business, ours is to back business." He added: "It's all sticking plasters and quick fixes cobbled together for the TV cameras – Red Ed and his Blue Peter economy". Consumer affairs Consumer rights Payment protection insurance Labour Breast implant scandal Plastic surgery Daniel Boffey theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tobacco firms lobby against move to curb black market sale of cigarettes Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT Failure of EU legislation will allow continuing profit by criminal gangs and terrorist organisations, warn anti-smoking groups Moves that would stop cigarettes being sold on the black market by terrorist groups and criminal gangs are in jeopardy following intense lobbying by the tobacco industry. The European parliament will this week hold a crucial vote on the European tobacco directive that would compel EU member states to introduce an independent "track-and-trace" system for cigarettes, as well as imposing larger health warnings on packs and a ban on thin cigarettes, popular with young women. Customs agencies, including HMRC, are alarmed that billions of cigarettes a year are being sold by tobacco companies to third parties who then sell them to other distributors, who ship them from high-tax to low-tax areas and even into countries in breach of international sanctions. The complicated distribution network makes tracking cigarettes extremely difficult. As a result, the agencies see a new, independent track-and-trace system, which would give each pack of cigarettes its own unique identity stored on a government controlled database, as crucial. The Observer reported two years ago that a dossier compiled by tobacco giant JTI's then head of brand integrity, who was later fired after reporting his findings, alleged that its distributors were smuggling cigarettes across more than a dozen countries to avoid tax. Much of the product, it was suspected, went to Iran. There were also claims that JTI product was being smuggled from Russia into the more heavily taxed EU. JTI strenuously denied any wrongdoing and all the cigarette companies are adamant they do not connive with the distributors to bypass tax regimes. But plans to introduce an independent tracking system have met with ferocious lobbying by the tobacco giants who want to use their own alternative, called Codentify, which has been strongly criticised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health. The four tobacco giants have, unusually, come together to press the case for their own system which is supported by Interpol, the international policing organisation that has received more than ¤15m from the tobacco giant Philip Morris International. A document leaked to the Observer, outlining the German position on the "track and trace" component of the directive, suggests its officials are preparing to endorse the tobacco industry's proposals to retain its own tracking system. The tobacco lobby is strong in Germany where several of the political parties are well funded by the industry, a significant employer in the country. Anti-smoking groups fear continuing with the status quo means cheap cigarettes will continue to be smuggled across borders – depriving national exchequers from legitimate revenue and allowing tobacco to fall into the hands of terrorists and organised criminal gangs. "If the European parliament doesn't get a final version of the tobacco directive agreed before the European elections next spring, then to all intents and purposes the tobacco industry will have won and the revised directive will be dead in the water," said Deborah Arnott, chief executive of health charity ASH. Tobacco industry European Union Lobbying Europe Jamie Doward theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Daughters of Chile's bloody past to clash over their country's future Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT Divided by ideology following Agusto Pinochet's coup, presidential candidates Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei are on opposite sides again If a novelist had submitted the script for the coming presidential election in Chile, the plot might well have been dismissed as too perfectly symmetrical to be plausible. The two leading candidates – Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei – are both daughters of air force generals. As girls, they played in the same military barracks and their fathers were friends. But when the country was ripped apart in the 1973 coup by General Augusto Pinochet, their families were on opposite sides of a murderous divide. One father was promoted to run the air force. The other was tortured and died in prison. Forty years on, the two women are still on opposite sides, but this time in an election campaign that looks set to usher in major changes – of the constitution, abortion law, tax and education – in one of South America's most dynamic economies. The timing could hardly be more sensitive. Chile has just marked the 40th anniversary of the CIA-backed coup with sombre memorials to the 3,000 victims who were killed or "disappeared" in its aftermath. And Santiago, for all its growing wealth and maturing democracy, is still frequently racked by student protests, workers' strikes, teargas and water cannon. As much as the two leading candidates would like to look to the future, much of the coverage of the campaign has focused on their close but very different pasts. In part, this is because the race almost seems to be over before it has begun. Ahead of the vote on 17 November, polls suggest Bachelet – the Social Democrat candidate – has the support of 38% to 44% of voters, compared with 12% to 27% for her rightwing rival Matthei. But the throng of other candidates means she is not yet certain of a conclusive first-round victory. The Observer met the former paediatrician who was Chile's first woman president from 2006-2010 at her party's campaign headquarters in a refurbished factory near the centre of Santiago. The mood among her staff is ebullient, though no one is taking victory for granted, least of all Bachelet. "It's like football, even if you are ahead the game is not won until the last minute," she tells me in fluent English. "I also need a parliament that will support me to make the structural changes that are needed." Despite the parallels with Matthei, she would prefer the election to be seen as a contest between different visions of the future, but acknowledges that Chile still needs to face some of the unresolved issues from the past. I ask whether she feels the air force, and in particular Matthei's father, Fernando, could have done more to help her father, Alberto. "If they hadn't seen us as enemies, probably they would never have tortured and violated our human rights as they did," she says. "The problem was that the national security policy meant people on the left were seen as enemies, not adversaries … Could they have done more? Yes. They could have not taken him into prison, not tortured him. But more than that, I want to know how we avoid repeating what happened in the past." The two generals were close colleagues before the coup. But she emphasises that the two men had no more in common in their personalities and beliefs than their daughters. "My father and her father were good friends, but they were very different. My dad spoke a lot and laughed a lot. I'm like him. Matthei is more German. She's quiet," Bachelet says. "They have tried to show us as clones, but we are not clones … My family really believed in social justice and were open-minded. That was seen as strange in the military of the time. That is why we have completely different visions." The contrast became even more marked after the coup. Bachelet worked covertly as a courier for the underground socialist movement, concealing documents in her fridge. She was caught, placed in a secret jail, blindfolded and maltreated. Her father was jailed and tortured, eventually dying in detention of a stroke. "I'm from the victims' side, from the painful side," Bachelet says. "The best I can do is to contribute to the construction of a more democratic country." Matthei's fortunes were very different. She was studying in London at the time of the coup and her father was promoted to commander-in-chief of the air force. Now the candidate for the rightwing Alianza coalition, she was not available for an interview. However, in the past she has said she should not be blamed for events that happened when she was young, and paid homage to her father as a man who raised himself up from humble beginnings. "My father could not go to college, there was no way to pay for it. He entered the air force, which he served to his best," she told supporters when she was chosen as the ruling party candidate. While Bachelet pledges radical change, including free university education, Matthei is running on a promise of continuity – to keep delivering the growth seen under the current centre-right president, Sebastián Piñera. "Looking back now, we can be proud. No country in Latin America has progressed as far as Chile in reducing unemployment, raising wages, cutting poverty and almost eliminating extreme poverty. We are on our way to becoming a developed country," she said. But her association with Pinochet looks likely to undermine a campaign already damaged by splits in the ruling camp and the last-minute withdrawal of its leading candidate because of depression. Matthei campaigned for Pinochet in the 1988 referendum that saw the general ousted from power and has appeared reluctant to criticise the excesses of his regime. This does not play well in an anniversary year when local television stations are filled with dramas and documentaries about the horrors of the dictatorship's death squads and "Caravan of Death". Bachelet and Matthei are not the only candidates from families shaped by the coup. Marco Enríquez-Ominami, currently fourth in the polls, was born months before Pinochet grabbed power. His father, the Marxist guerrilla leader Miguel Enríquez, was executed a year later. His grandfathers – one of whom founded the Christian Democratic party – were tortured, and his half-brother and two uncles were killed. The future presidential candidate was taken by his mother to Cuba, where he spent 13 years in exile. Enríquez-Ominami says: "I was born into a nightmare and that's why I have the right to dream." Young and charismatic, the former film-maker is running for the Progressive party on a leftwing platform that promises free university education and a more liberal policy on abortion and same-sex marriage. "Bachelet lacks conviction," he says. "We may have a similar biography – her father was killed and so was mine. But her father was a general, mine was a revolutionary." If she wins, Bachelet has vowed to push forward with greater equality for same-sex couples and a loosening of Chile's prohibition on abortion. She also wants a revision of the tax code and major constitutional reform to make it easier to pass legislation, to improve the rights of women and aboriginal groups, and to extend the presidential term limit (currently four years with no consecutive re-elections). This may ring alarm bells in some quarters. Other leftwing leaders in Latin America, namely Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, reformed their countries' constitutions to allow their re-election, prompting concerns that they had become addicted to power. But Bachelet says there is "no chance" she will follow their example. "I'm not doing this for myself. When I was president last time, I had approval ratings of 75-80% and people asked me to change the constitution so I could extend my time in office. I told them 'over my dead body'," she says. "Only two leaders didn't do it: [Brazil's] Lula and me." Chile is determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Bachelet knows this more than most. "There was a time when I had so much pain and rage. Things were polarised," she says. "All these years later, what I want to understand is what happened in my country and to ensure it does not happen again." Additional reporting: Jonathan Franklin Chile Michelle Bachelet Americas Augusto Pinochet Jonathan Watts theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The readers' editor on… the perils of misreading research | Stephen Pritchard Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT Commenters on an opinion piece complained that an academic report had been misquoted I'm going to tiptoe into the minefield of the misogyny/misandry debate, not because I have any wish to join it but because a recent example provoked some of the most vivid and aggressive comments to appear below the line on our website, and also illustrated the dangers of relying on other newspapers' reporting when trying to frame an argument. A recent opinion piece, headlined "Man hating? Women just aren't up to the task" attracted 976 comments, some displaying predictably boorish prejudice, others complaining that the paper was trying to stir up a row to increase hits on the site. More significant were those that claimed the author had seriously misinterpreted some new academic research to bolster her thesis. Barbara Ellen had written how the term misandry (hatred for, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men) had become the riposte of choice to accusations of misogyny. Accusations of misandry were made, she wrote, whenever concerns were raised about domestic violence, parliamentary representation or pay gaps. However, she believed that misandry would never reach the level of misogyny because "it hasn't got the rage". Painting a picture we can all recognise, she continued: "I've never known a woman to carry that chilling aura of compressed perma-rage against the opposite sex that hangs around certain men. The relentlessly churning core of hostility, condescension, entitlement and resentment." Some of the commenters below the line would certainly belong in that contemptible category and can be ignored, but others who challenged the central pillar Ellen chose to support her argument are not so easily dismissed. She claimed a recent study from the University of Florida had said: "Men are far more likely to secretly want their wives or girfriends to fail, to be less successful than they are, because it boosts their own sense of self-worth." But the report doesn't say that. One commenter pointed out that the research simply states that the men in the study suffered from low self-esteem when their partners succeeded. It had nothing to say about men actively desiring their wives or girlfriends to fail. Ellen went on to describe the research as "a study about male rage, swirling around women everywhere, even in their personal lives. How else would you describe these men needing women to fail to make themselves feel better?" However, the report doesn't mention anything about rage. It examines how men feel about themselves and their relationship, not the attitudes they have to their female partner directly. So how then had these erroneous conclusions been reached? Ellen told me she had not seen the study but had instead relied on several press reports, including a Daily Telegraph piece headlined: "Men secretly want their wives to fail". "Ultimately, the study wasn't the main deal for me. I wanted to widen it out to misandry – and how it is so often overused to counter all sorts of issues around misogyny, to the point where any debate gets automatically and rather tediously squashed. I also wanted to write about male rage and how I'd personally never encountered an equivalent phenomenon in women. "This is why I led with these subjects and only later brought up the study. Really, it could have been any study of its ilk. Certainly I didn't need it to 'suit my prejudices' [as some had claimed]. I'd have quite happily written the column without the study, my main point being that misogyny is very deeply embedded, in myriad ways, and the current vogue for claiming 'misandry!' everywhere is mistaken, to put it politely, and stifles debate. And I made it clear that I was talking about misogynists, not all men." I asked Professor Kate Ratliff, co-author of the report, if the Telegraph's headline and the Observer piece were a fair reflection of her study. "I would definitely say that's not a fair reflection," she replied. "Some of the headlines have been outrageous. What we found is this: men who think of a time that their romantic partner succeeded at something, compared to thinking about a failure, experience gut-level, subconscious negative feelings about themselves. Women do not show such a reduction in their implicit self-esteem. "This study provides no evidence whatsoever that men want their partners to fail. It concerns what happens to men's feelings about themselves, not about what happens to men's feelings about their partners." reader@observer.co.uk • Comments will be turned on later this morning Gender The Observer Newspapers National newspapers Newspapers & magazines Stephen Pritchard theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The World of Extreme Happiness – review Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT The Shed, the National, London The human cost of China's growth is scrutinised in a damning but somewhat one-dimensional play There is a great drama to be written about Chinese migrant workers quitting the countryside in their millions to power their country's unstoppable economic growth. This play by the young American dramatist Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, following the picaresque adventures of migrant worker Sunny (Katie Leung), has a good stab at being that drama. Cowhig examines the nasty underside of China's economic boom, taking in everything from female infanticide to the high suicide rates among factory workers, while skewering the self-help-book platitudes that keep so many believing better luck is around the corner. Leung, of Harry Potter fame, is very watchable as Sunny, and Chloe Lamford's design, with its dirt-rimmed stage and neon rainbow, offers a dynamic setting. But several of the scenes lack pace, and the characters are one-dimensional. That may well be part of Cowhig's point: that the combined effect of ferocious industrialisation and a repressive regime is to turn workers into living dolls, like the toys churned out by Sunny's factory. But it doesn't make for the most enjoyable two-and-a-half hours of theatre. Rating: 3/5 Theatre China Laura Barnett theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Sharks: feared or revered, but rarely understood – in pictures Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT For some, sharks are the stuff of nightmares. Perhaps it is time to think again about how we treat these beautiful creatures, writes Thomas Peschak

Sharks: feared or revered – but very rarely understood Posted: 05 Oct 2013 04:05 PM PDT Human activity has driven many species of shark into decline. Perhaps it is time for us to rethink our relationship with these beautiful creatures In pictures: Thomas Peschak's remarkable photographs of sharks I saw my first shark when I was 16 years old, drifting in the deep off the southernmost tip of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. A huge school of barracuda circled like an overcrowded carousel along the wall of Shark Reef. Weaving in and out of the mass was a trio of blacktip sharks. I tried to get close, but the current held me at a distance. In my photographs of this first encounter, the sharks were mere specks, but the seed was planted. I wanted to get closer. My first face to face (literally) with a shark occurred a decade later, in 2002. Lying face down on the swim platform of the boat I was on, my arms submerged, I gripped my underwater camera housing more firmly than usual. I was so close to the waterline that I had to raise my head to watch the towering dorsal fin pass. The 3.5-metre white shark made several close passes before she stopped swimming and hovered just centimetres from me. She raised her head out of the water to inspect me and for a split second the signature hollow blackness of her eyes revealed a piercing blue iris that can only be seen up close. The shark repeated her routine for almost half an hour – passing and hovering, passing and hovering. I shot maniacally until I ran out of film. When sharks rise vertically out of the water headfirst, as she did, it's called spyhopping, a behaviour more commonly seen in orcas and humpback whales. With their vision as good out of the water as in, white sharks are thought to spyhop as a way to help them assess prey, such as seals on a rocky haul-out. Despite my training in marine science, I like to remember my encounter with this shark through a more anthropomorphic lens. I wanted to believe that her actions were motivated purely by curiosity rather than by her calculation of a way to knock the strange-looking seal off the swim platform. Whatever her reason, my heart still pounds with humility and maybe just a healthy smidge of instinctive fear when I remember the episode. Historians have traced the fear of sharks as far back as the civilisations of Greece and Rome. There is also compelling evidence that sharks trailed slave ships across the Atlantic and feasted on human remains thrown overboard. The shark functioned as an integral part of a system of terror utilised by the slave ship captains. The abolitionists then successfully used shark imagery in what would become a successful public campaign against the horrors of the slave trade. Even Winston Churchill had an opinion about sharks: "You may rest assured that the British government is entirely opposed to sharks." Negative press for sharks has been par for the course since the advent of pen and paper and the printing press – until recent decades. In the 1980s, any literature on shark conservation was still a rare find. The few articles and books I unearthed in my late teens revealed the existence of cultures that held sharks in high esteem, as animals to be celebrated and not feared. Several years later, I visited one of those shark-revering peoples – the Solomon Islanders. In that remote parcel of the Pacific Ocean, dolphins were rounded up and killed in drive hunts. Dolphin meat was consumed locally and their teeth were used as traditional currency, with one tooth worth two Solomon Island dollars. Sharks, on the other hand, were celebrated and believed to harbour the souls of the dead. When a shark was regularly seen along a reef near a village, it was believed to shelter the soul of a local person's recently departed relative. Floats baited with hermit crabs were set at sea and any fish caught were fed to the shark as an offering. A local legend said that if a fisherman's boat capsized, he could call on a shark to rescue him by towing him back to shore, a task ascribed only to dolphins elsewhere in the world. Even the coat of arms of this Pacific island nation proudly displays a shark, along with a saltwater crocodile, as the nation's protectors. In stark contrast to the reverence displayed towards sharks in the Solomon Islands and a handful of indigenous societies, my western culture portrays the shark as a malevolent, man-eating monster. The fear of sharks has led to violent retribution against these animals, which have been pursued with everything from explosives to rifles to gill nets and hooks. As a photographer and marine biologist, I have spent many hundreds of hours in the company of the most feared fish in the sea and they are a low rung on my ladder of danger. Compared with many large terrestrial predators, I believe sharks to be remarkably tolerant and forgiving. Every winter, when I photograph large bronze whaler sharks ripping into bait-balls of fish during the sardine run off South Africa's east coast, I'm often just inches away from the sharks as they charge into the mass of silvery fish. Now imagine running with a wide-angle lens right next to a lion as it charges and pulls down a zebra. Sharks are not as dangerous as people make them out to be, but some are truly formidable predators. Their wildness is real and I treat each shark encounter with humility and a generous dose of respect. Trophy sports fishermen pay handsomely to fight and land a "monster shark" with a rod and reel, but it is shark fins that make fishing for them profitable. Shark fin soup, one of the most expensive seafood dishes in the world. The demand for this "delicacy" drives shark fishermen to sail to all four corners of the planet and results in the death of more than 38 million sharks every year. Largely because of the fin trade, many species of shark are now listed as endangered and some populations have declined dramatically. If people viewed sharks in the same way they do pandas or humpback whales, would sharks be in such dire straits? I believe that until this culture of fear can be transformed into understanding, appreciation, and respect, then sharks may be on a narrow and finite path to oblivion. For who in their right mind wants to protect something they fear? Yet there is hope, because a shift in the way we perceive sharks is under way. Shark tourism has matured from its pioneering days in the 1970s, now funnelling tens of millions of dollars into island and coastal economies and ushering in the notion that sharks are worth more alive than dead. Through organised shark encounters, people are experiencing sharks in their natural habitat and that has triggered a more enlightened way of perceiving these animals. We now understand that sharks are an integral link in the ocean food web and an indomitable force in shaping the sea. There is striking scientific evidence on the vital role of sharks and the dramatic imbalance that could occur if sharks were to disappear. We humans are as dependent on thriving oceans as the myriad sea creatures within them and a well-balanced marine biosphere needs healthy populations of sharks. This newfound knowledge, combined with the economic incentives of shark tourism, has led to the introduction of many shark conservation measures, from the proclamation of shark-focused marine reserves to the inclusion of shark species in international wildlife trade agreements such as Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). As awareness of the plight of sharks has spread, public outcry has led to many restaurants and hotels taking shark fin soup off their menus. Shark trophy-fishing tournaments are less common and many that remain operate on catch-and-release principles. Some marinas have even outlawed the landing of any sharks. The idea for photographing and writing a book about the relationship between sharks and people came to me more than a decade ago. While sitting in a seedy bar along the South African coast night after night, I chipped away at a book I was writing about white sharks. As word spread of what I was up to, I found myself spending most of my evenings talking to people about sharks. There was a hunger for knowledge about these animals and especially how they relate to our lives. From burly bikers to grandmothers, I conversed with all types about sharks until the wee hours of the morning. I soon realised that many people have an abundant desire to talk about sharks, but there is also a plethora of misinformation, which feeds into the culture of fear surrounding these popular predators. So I set out to create a book that investigates and truthfully reports on the complex and contentious relationship between "Jaws" and us. As a marine biologist, I was compelled to tease out the latest technical knowledge about sharks hidden in the scientific literature and present it in an engaging manner. But the book is also a retrospective of my decade-long photographic relationship with sharks. Travelling to the last remaining hotspots where sharks flourish as apex predators, I have had the privilege to capture rarely seen moments in their lives. One thing I have learned during my decade documenting sharks is that they resonate in a different way with each person. To the fin dealer in Hong Kong or the fishermen on a longliner, sharks are a means of feeding their families or paying for their children's education. To the surfer whose best friend was tragically killed or to the mother whose child died in an attack, sharks are deadly beasts and symbols of loss. For the researcher, sharks are wells of biological data that have only begun to be tapped. For a child visiting an aquarium, sharks represent a window on the wild. Very few people are indifferent to sharks as they have an uncanny way of inciting our attention, often in a profound manner. To those who are already enchanted with sharks, I hope my work strengthens the bond and builds on your understanding. For the uninitiated, I hope your view of sharks transforms from that of dark, menacing creatures into animals worthy of respect and protection. © 2013 by Thomas Peschak. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from Sharks and People: Exploring Our Relationship with the Most Feared Fish in the Sea by Thomas P Peschak, published by the University of Chicago Press Marine life Fishing Wildlife Conservation Food Animals Thomas Peschak theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

You are subscribed to email updates from World news and comment from the Guardian | theguardian.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610