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

02.01 Ibra 0 komentar

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

UK growth confirmed at +0.7% in last quarter -- business live

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 01:33 AM PST

Updated GDP data gives a clearer picture of how the UK fared in the last quarter of 2013.

Graeme Wearden

Why I support giving water cannon to London's police | Stephen Greenhalgh

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

The 2011 riots exposed the gap in the Met's ability to respond to serious outbreaks of public disorder. They need the tools for the job

Last week I hosted a public meeting at City Hall with the Metropolitan police to allow the public to express their views about the request the police have made to use water cannon. Boris Johnson has said he is minded to support the police but we want to listen to Londoners as we are doing until 28 February, before the mayor gives his views to the home secretary, who will ultimately make the decision.

The City Hall meeting and the many other forms of engagement we have conducted on this matter have revealed to me that the debate about introducing water cannon has become mixed up in two ways. It is seen either as a move to restrict the freedom of protest or as an escalation in the use of force by the police. Both views are wrong.

First, water cannons are tools for responding to serious public disorder, not for policing protest. Since the riots of 2011, the police have identified on a number of occasions that there is a gap in their current response to serious outbreaks of extreme or violent public disorder which, they think, water cannon would be a useful tool to fill.

The strict criteria for use could not be clearer. The police will only be able to use them in those situations where there is a significant risk of widespread destruction of property or the loss of life. Water cannon is neither a toy for the cops to bring out as a show of strength nor a tool to deploy at normal protest or public events.

The Met polices over 1,500 public order events every year, with the vast majority passing off peacefully. However, if and when legitimate protest is hijacked and turns into violent disorder, the public rightly expect the police to have the necessary tools to restore order and safeguard life.

Second, water cannons are not about an escalation of force. They are civilian vehicles, rather than armoured military machines. They are less harmful than a metal baton at close range, far less dangerous then firing baton rounds and more discriminating than horses charging into a crowd of people – all tactics that the police can lawfully use now.

Water cannons are not a panacea, but as Sir Hugh Orde, the former chief constable of Northern Ireland, has said, water cannons buy the police valuable distance and can help avoid the use of more extreme force. Their use in Northern Ireland has led to no reported injuries to date and the same rules of engagement would apply in London.

Will water cannons undermine confidence in the police? Clearly the improper use of police powers can undermine public confidence, but it is the absence of a proper police response that does the most damage.

When the police lose the streets, they lose the confidence of the public and Londoners' confidence in the Met plummeted by 11 points after the 2011 riots. And those who indulge in violence and wanton criminality – such as those who attacked Millbank Tower in 2010 – undermine the majority exercising their lawful right to peaceful protest.

Boosting confidence in the police is vital, and Boris Johnson is the first mayor to challenge the police to increase public confidence by 20% by 2016, because cutting crime is not enough.

Under the leadership of commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe the Met has done much to change its approach to disorder, both by training more officers and working harder with communities so that trouble is less likely to flare up in the first place. Performance on stop and search has improved, and the deployment of more officers in local neighbourhoods is helping restore the bond between the public and the police.

As a result Londoners' confidence in the police is now rising, but we know that this is a fragile state of affairs and the risk of riots has not gone away. We need the Met to continue to police protest in a proportionate way and not to escalate its use of force. But there is a need to ensure the police have the tools at their disposal to do the job we all require of them.

Stephen Greenhalgh

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Al-Jazeera English is not Al-Jazeera Arabic - but Egypt doesn't agree

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:49 AM PST

Many journalists have been asking why the Egyptian authorities have arrested staff who work for Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English.

Gregg Carlstrom, in a lengthy piece on the Foreign Policy website, has sought to provide an answer to that question.

He argues that "it is no coincidence that the charges are directed at a network that Egyptian security officials often describe as the media wing of an enemy state."

The problem is that the current Cairo political leadership views Al-Jazeera's home country, Qatar, as supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist leaders in Egypt.

Carlstrom quotes Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation, as saying:

"One of the things that leads to all of this is that Qatar is hosting, supporting, providing a place of refuge for Brotherhood leaders... and providing a platform through Al-Jazeera."

He points to the appearance of Essam Abdel Magid, who is wanted in Egypt on charges of incitement to murder, on Al-Jazeera Arabic. On air, he accused the Egyptian army of siding with "religious minorities," an ugly reference to Egypt's Coptic Christian population.

Other Islamist leaders supportive of the deposed president, Mohammed Morsi, have also appeared in recent weeks on both the Arabic channel and its Egypt affiliate, Mubasher Misr.

None of this content is broadcast on Al-Jazeera English (AJE), which is separate from its Arabic stablemate, with different management, different editorial lines, even physically separate buildings in Doha.

"It's accurate, balanced, fair," said Sue Turton, a Doha-based AJE correspondent and presenter. "We are a different channel."

A trio of AJE staff - Peter Greste, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed - were arrested on 29 December 2013. They were later charged with "spreading false news." In their absence more Al-Jazeera staff were charged, including AJE's Sue Turton. Carlstrom continues...

The recent arrests have undeniably had a chilling effect on the press. They are also part of a broader crackdown: more than 80 journalists have been arbitrarily detained in recent months.

But it's Al-Jazeera that has borne the brunt of this hostility, and not just from the government. On 25 January, two newspaper reporters were attacked by an angry mob in Tahrir Square that inexplicably decided they were Al-Jazeera employees.

Later that day, a police officer warned a cameraman from the MBC satellite channel to stop filming a pro-Morsi protest. Otherwise, he threatened to tell local residents that the crew worked for Al-Jazeera, then watch as they were attacked.

According to Carlstrom, though Turton and Heather Allan, AJE's head of news-gathering, do not blame their Arabic counterparts for this intense hostility, "they do not exactly defend their sister channel either."

He quotes Allan as saying: "I can talk for us. As far as we're concerned, we stand by our reporting... from across the road, it's their editorial line."

For many Egyptians, however, and certainly for the government, that distinction [between AJE and the Arabic channel] no longer seems relevant.

Source: ForeignPolicy.com

Roy Greenslade

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Adidas to stop selling Brazil World Cup T-shirts that 'encourage sexual tourism'

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:36 AM PST

Sportswear maker to stop selling T-shirts before World Cup after Brazil's ministry of women's affairs said shirts were offensive

Adidas agreed on Tuesday to stop selling two raunchy T-shirts months ahead of the World Cup in Brazil after the government complained that they associated the country with sexual tourism.

One shirt shows a bikini-clad woman with open arms on a sunny Rio de Janeiro beach under the words "Looking to Score". The other has an "I love Brazil" heart resembling the upside-down buttocks of a woman wearing a thong bikini bottom.

Adidas – the world's second-largest sportswear maker – said the shirts would not be sold any more, adding in a statement that they were from a limited edition that was only on sale in the US

The shirt designs touched a nerve in Brazil, where people often complain about foreign stereotypes of Brazilian sensuality. Brazil's government is campaigning aggressively to shed the country's reputation as a destination for sex tourism.

"Embratur strongly repudiates the sale of products that link Brazil's image to sexual appeal," the Brazilian tourism board said in a statement that asked the German multinational to pull the shirts from its stores.

The shirts went on sale in Adidas shops in the US while Brazil is preparing to host the World Cup soccer tournament, which kicks off on 12 June.

Adidas is one of the main sponsors of the event organised by soccer's governing body, Fifa, and the maker of its official ball.

Dilma Rousseff – Brazil's first female president – said her government would crack down on sex tourism and the exploitation of children and adolescents during the ccompetition, which is expected to draw 600,000 foreign fans.

"Brazil is happy to receive tourists for the World Cup, but it is also ready to combat sex tourism," she said in a burst of Twitter messages that included a hotline number to report cases of sexual exploitation.

The ministry of women's affairs said the shirts were not just offensive to Brazilian women but exposed them to the "barbarism" of sexual predators.

"This is all the more shocking in a country that just elected a women as its highest authority, which brought greater respect for women and zero tolerance for any form of violence against them," a ministry statement said.


theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

ABC's Media Watch backs down over claims of $50m losses at the Australian

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:33 AM PST

Paper's editor forces broadcaster to issue correction saying that Murdoch title is only going to lose $15m this year

Oliver Laughland

Evacuation plan drawn up for Victorian town as coalmine fire spews smoke

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:25 AM PST

Fire crews are hoping to put out blaze in open-cut mine within a fortnight as air quality plunges in Latrobe valley

Indian sailors missing after fire on submarine off Mumbai

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:24 AM PST

Seven navy sailors hospitalisted and two unaccounted for after incident during firefighting exercise on diesel submarine

Two Indian navy sailors are missing and seven others have been hospitalised after they were overcome by smoke during a firefighting training exercise on board a diesel-powered submarine off Mumbai's coast.

A navy spokesman, Captain DK Sharma, said a naval helicopter took the seven sailors to a navy hospital in Mumbai, but that two others are unaccounted for. He said an inquiry has been ordered into Wednesday's incident.

Sharma says the Russian-made submarine did not suffer any damage.

Last August, another of the navy's Russian-made diesel-powered submarines, the INS Sindhurakshak, caught fire after an explosion and sank at its home port in Mumbai, killing all 18 sailors on board.


theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ghostbusters III on track despite Harold Ramis' death

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:11 AM PST

Ramis due to have cameo role in third film in supernatural comedy series, but producers say production not affected

• Harold Ramis: Dan Aykroyd and others share their memories

Ghostbusters III remains on course for a release in cinemas despite the death of Harold Ramis on Monday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The new film, which has been locked in development for a number of years, was due to feature a cameo from Ramis and the other original Ghostbusters. The actor-director, who played Egon Spengler in the original films, would have appeared in character alongside Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd for the first time since 1989's Ghostbusters II.

"There will be some repercussions," a project insider told the US trade bible. "He was always great to bounce something off of, and that will certainly be missed. But it won't affect the script."

The new film would have seen the old guard handing over to a new generation of Ghostbusters. Aykroyd has been the project's biggest cheerleader, but there had been regular suggestions from Murray that he was less than interested in returning to the iconic role of Dr Peter Venkman. The Hollywood Reporter's confirmation that studio Sony is still planning to feature the veteran comic is therefore something of a turnaround.

Ghostbusters III will be based on a screenplay by the US The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and directed by Ivan Reitman. The latter oversaw both 1984's Ghostbusters, which was a huge critical and box office hit, and its less well-received sequel. Both films were written by Ramis and Aykroyd.

It is not the first time the series has been forced into rewrites by the untimely demise of a main player. Ghostbusters was itself retooled after the death of John Belushi, who had been expected to take a role.

• Hadley Freeman: Ghostbusters' Dr Egon Spengler was comedy's GrandDude

Ben Child

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Hey Dad! actor whispered 'good girl' as he assaulted her at his house, court told

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:11 AM PST

Robert Hughes accused by witness via video-link of forcing her to perform sex act during sleep-over

Asylum seeker Reza Barati died from 'multiple head injuries', PNG police say

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:08 AM PST

Police report states Barati's death could have been caused by a "heavy object" during rioting at Manus Island detention centre

Paul Farrell

Syria crisis: will humanitarian access improve? Live panel discussion

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

The UN has passed a security council resolution demanding improved humanitarian access to civilians in Syria. Will it work?

Maeve Shearlaw

Sick cities: how to beat pandemics that spread like we live in one big metropolis

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

Fast diagnosis and good sanitation are our best weapons in the uneven fight against a rapid outbreak of disease

Amoy Gardens is a cluster of 19 tower blocks in Hong Kong, home to no fewer than 19,000 people – enough to populate several rural villages. In 2003, it became the dramatic focus of the world's attention when 321 residents were diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars.

The rapid accumulation of cases, particularly in block E, caused panic. Police and medical staff in protective suits were stationed at the entrance to prevent anybody leaving or entering. The entire block was quarantined. The outbreak was a conclusive riposte to anyone who still believed that infectious diseases were history, or that they were restricted to improverished or conflict-torn countries. And it showed how cities can be terrifying incubators.

From bubonic plague in the middle ages to bird flu or Sars in the 21st century, infectious diseases have spread horrifyingly fast in cities, where people live in close proximity and sometimes crowded together. For all that face masks have become common apparel in Asia, citydwellers simply cannot guard their own health independently of their neighbours.

On the contrary, cities need careful planning for health. While infectious and contagious diseases are the most obvious hazard, it is now recognised that the urban environment also has a major part to play in chronic illness. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer rates are rising, fuelled by unhealthy lifestyles; fast food restaurants proliferate in our cities; convenience or fear of busy roads stops us cycling or walking; and there is little green space for active leisure or children's play.

The Amoy Gardens outbreak also pointed to another factor that even rich cities find hard to master: sanitation. The official investigation found that the breeding ground for the Sars coronavirus in the Amoy blocks was the toilet system. Each block had eight vertical soil stacks to take waste from toilets, basins and baths, but too little water was passing through to flush it all away. Contaminated water droplets were blown back in by the bathroom air-extractor fans.

Sanitation is a huge issue for cities in low and middle-income countries, and the Amoy Gardens experience shows just how important and difficult it can be even in the rich world. Dr Arpana Verma, director of the Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health, and a World Health Organisation expert, says that because monitoring and surveillance of infection is so good in the UK, many British people feel as though we already have a fundamental human right to clean water and sanitation – which indeed is something the WHO's next set of millennium development goals may set out.

"Even though we have a high population density in the cities, we have the infrastructure in place to monitor and prevent and control the outbreaks that happen elsewhere and we used to see," she says.Key to this is good hospitals and labs to test the contacts of people who fall ill.

In the slums and shantytowns that have mushroomed around every major city in the developing world, it is a different story. Half of Mumbai's 11.2 million people live in slums. Most must use public toilets or defecate in the open. Because the city's slumdwellers have little space, no money and no right to the land they live on, there is no chance of a conventional sewage system being built – certainly nothing to match the one in the richer part of Mumbai that was constructed by the Victorians in the 1860s.

Instead, the World Bank is funding a huge toilet-block building project, which aims to provide one toilet for every 50 people. The toilet blocks are administered by the community, but families pay a charge for using them – and such is the poverty that some still cannot afford it and defecate in the open.

Persuading city authorities to put in clean water and sanitation for unregistered slumdwellers is a delicate task, says Verma. "Some of the slum housing is phenomenal: three or four floors made out of the flimsiest of materials, with an open toilet that's shared, which is close to the drinking water and where they clean their clothes. Just a few metres away is a huge tower block. There is the juxtaposition of the incredibly poor with the incredibly rich in cities," she says.

Arguing that infection could spread from slum to apartment block is dangerous, however: authorities sometimes simply decide to clear the slum, rather than upgrade it.

Britain suffers the same health gap between rich and poor, Verma says. It is the homeless and the vulnerable of British cities who, just like the slumdwellers of Mumbai, suffer most frequently from TB.

But cities also have health advantages over rural areas. They tend to be richer places, and there is better access to healthcare even for those who are poor.

Children have a greater chance of being vaccinated. A city-health commission set up by the Lancet medical journal and University College London reported in 2012 that citydwellers are healthier than rural residents. But the vast inequalities and their impact on people's health will not just sort themselves out, the report emphasised. Cities need to be designed and expanded with the health of their citizens in mind.

This is, after all, in the interests of the entire planet. Sars did not stay in Hong Kong, any more than it had originated there. It was first seen in mainland China, and travelled from one major city to another and another. Cities are now linked not by mule paths, but by fast aircraft used by millions of people. As far as viral infections go, it is almost as if we all live in the same city now.

At the time of the Sars outbreak, Dr David Heymann was executive director of the WHO communicable diseases cluster that dealt with the crisis. Now head and senior fellow of the centre on global health security at Chatham House and a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he says cities are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases not just because of their population density, but also because they have major airports. Sars spread from China around the world because people travelled from one city to another.

Ironically, however, the real key to the spread of such infections is the people trying to save the lives of those who suddenly fall sick. Sars in China and Ebola in Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 were both spread by unfortunate hospital workers, who were infected before they realised what they were dealing with. The best protection for a city, Heymann says, has nothing to do with airport screening or special vehicles or technical equipment – the best protection is to ensure good hospital practices. "If health workers get infected, they are a conduit out. What is important is what is done in the hospital."

In cities with high standards of care and expertise, like London, the policy is to take no risks. "You isolate anything you don't know. There is no excuse," he said. If there is a vaccine, as there was with swine flu in 2009, then health workers are the first priority – they must have it as quickly as possible to protect themselves and those they treat.

Because you can't usually know who is infected until people fall ill and need treatment, the next step is to hospitalise anyone with symptoms – or ask them to stay home and keep away from everybody, which was the case with swine flu, when all infected people were asked to stay home and avoid the GP for fear of infecting others. A phone line was set up to get the antiviral drugs and people were asked to send a friend to the pharmacy rather than leave the house.

Sars may not have made it to London, but the similar virus Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome) did, since it was identified in 2012 – a virus which scientists now claim may be linked to camels. Those who fell ill were isolated in hospital and treated with the utmost care and caution; all their contacts were traced and tested. There was no question of quarantine, and no need – lab tests can quickly establish whether anybody has the virus.

Sars faded as quickly as it began. By the end of the epidemic in the summer of 2003, 8,096 people had been infected and 774 had died. In Hong Kong, 1,755 were infected and 299 died. Amoy Gardens suffered disproportionately, with 329 sick residents and 42 deaths. After 10 days in quarantine, the residents of block E were evacuated to three government holiday camps while their flats were disinfected – though the stigma was harder to wash away. While the actions of authorities may have saved lives, the name of Amoy Gardens is now synonymous with one of the worst viral outbreaks of recent times – and proof, if we needed it, that excellent healthcare and proper surveillance are vital in protecting cities even as they become more interconnected and vulnerable than ever before.

Sarah Boseley

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Hong Kong ex-editor stabbed as fears grow for media freedom

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:59 PM PST

Kevin Lau Chun-to in critical condition after being attacked in street days after thousands march for press freedom

A former editor of a major Hong Kong newspaper known for its critical reporting has been stabbed and seriously wounded in an attack likely to fuel concern among journalists about what many see as an erosion of media freedoms.

A man in a helmet attacked Kevin Lau Chun-to – ex-chief editor of the Ming Pao daily – slashing him in the back several times. The assailant rode off on a motorcycle with an accomplice.

Lau was in critical condition in hospital after managing to summon police himself.

Police said they had so far no clues as to who might have carried out the attack. No one has been detained.

The attack took place days after 6,000 journalists marched to Hong Kong's government headquarters to demand the city's leaders uphold press freedom against what they see as intrustions from mainland China.

The motive for the attack was unclear and an incident of such brutality is unusual in the former British colony, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.

The Hong Kong Journalists' Association denounced the incident and called on authorities to "pursue his attackers and those malignant forces behind them without fear or favour. The attackers must be brought to justice as quickly as possible to allay public fears."

Hong Kong is a capitalist hub with a high degree of autonomy and freedom, but Beijing's Communist party leaders have resisted public pressure for full democracy.

Beijing has agreed in principle for the city to hold direct elections in 2017, but no specific rules have yet been set on whether open nominations for candidates will be allowed.

Lau was recently replaced by a Malaysian Chinese journalist with suspected pro-Beijing leanings who takes up his duties this week.

His removal prompted a revolt in the Ming Pao newsroom by journalists who suggested the paper's editorial independence might be undermined.

"We hope the police can swiftly prosecute the culprit as many cases of attacks against the media in the past have ended up being unsolved," said Phyllis Tsang of the Ming Pao Staff Concern Group. "This attack will damage perceptions of Hong Kong as a safe city and its reputation for media freedoms."

Lau has since been moved to an online subsidiary of the same media group. Co-founded by martial arts novelist Louis Cha, Ming Pao is owned by colourful Malaysian media baron, Tiong Hiew King, through his Media Chinese International.

Hong Kong's chief executive leader, Leung Chun-ying (known as CY Leung), said the city would not tolerate such violent acts. Democracy activists denounce Leung as a Beijing loyalist.

Media outlets have periodically been subject to attacks in Hong Kong. The offices of a small independent media outlet were recently ransacked and a car rammed into the front gate of the home of Jimmy Lai, publisher of Hong Kong's popular anti-Beijing newspaper, the Apple Daily.


theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Sick cities: how pandemics spread – video

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:59 PM PST

Physicist Dirk Brockmann's idea is that in an interconnected world, it is airport connections that represent the fastest way for diseases to spread

Chris Michael

Asylum seekers on Christmas Island start hunger strike over Manus death

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:57 PM PST

Group of 40 begins protest after killing of Reza Barati and to try to prevent their transfer to Nauru

Oliver Laughland

Bill Shorten accuses ministers of 'faux patriotism' in asylum cover-up row

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:35 PM PST

Parliament descends into uproar after motion moved to condemn Stephen Conroy's 'slur' on general leading boats operation

Daniel Hurst

Drought assistance worth $320m unveiled – as it happened

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:29 PM PST

Tony Abbott to unveil a multi-million dollar drought package, as the assistant health minister Fiona Nash faces an estimates hearing to answer conflict of interest allegations.

Katharine Murphy

Pam Ann: 'I only know three straight people: mum, dad and my brother'

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:22 PM PST

As she gets set to play her ninth Mardi Gras, Australian comic Caroline Reid tells Jane Howard about camp, being offensive – and having to compete with Grindr

Jane Howard

Michael Taylor executed by Missouri using compounded pentobarbital

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:08 PM PST

State fends off legal challenges and goes ahead with lethal injection using unofficial version of drug from unnamed source

Maidan, Ukraine … Tahrir, Egypt … the square symbolises failure, not hope | Simon Jenkins

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

The lesson of Egypt for Ukraine is that defiant crowds may destroy an old regime – but they seldom build a new one

The experience was eerie. I was watching a documentary, The Square, on Netflix about the 2011 Tahrir Square occupation when the lead character, Ahmed, let out a cry of delight, "The revolution has been won." At that very moment my radio blurted out a voice live from a different square, Kiev's Maidan. "The revolution has been won," it repeated.

Squares are famously potent political theatres. This year is a second showing for Ukraine's revolution, and a third for Egypt's. Western TV viewers have cheered them all on. We thrill to see young people hurling rocks at power. Fire, smoke, bloodstained flags, broken heads, water, gas and sinister paramilitaries are Les Misérables for slow learners. We can sit with a front seat in the auditorium of history. It beats polling booths any day.

Tahrir and Maidan squares thus join Istanbul's Taksim, Tehran's Azadi, Beijing's Tiananmen, Prague's Wenceslaus, Athens's Syntagma, London's Trafalgar and a dozen other urban spaces the world over as icons of modern revolutionary politics. Their furniture is the barricade, their tipple the Molotov cocktail, their tonic the tear gas canister. They gather people in their thousands to sacred forums and invite the world to witness the latest trial of strength with a supposedly oppressive regime. Sometimes they even win.

If I were a dictator I would build shopping malls over these places right away, as Turkey's Recep Erdoğan tried to do last year in Taksim's Gezi Park. At the very least, I would learn the message of Tiananmen: that a crowd once formed in a square is fiendishly hard to remove, and creates worse publicity worldwide than a dozen provincial massacres.

Vladimir Putin reportedly damned Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych for failing immediately to remove crowds from Maidan, at whatever cost in brutality. It is hard to imagine Putin allowing an occupation of Red Square.

Such gatherings have long fascinated philosophers. Crowds demonstrate what Durkheim called "a collective effervescence". To Freud, they released "deep historical convulsions". Even today, regimes do not tremble when confronted by millions on Facebook or Twitter. If "virtual politics" had power, no politician would leave his desk.

What social media can do is old-fashioned, acting as a means of communication, a means to an end. That end is live, human congregation. The square is where political actors put their bodies on the line, where their demands are expressed in flesh and blood. Once more, the play is the thing "wherein to catch the conscience of the king".

Yet such crowds are anarchic and chaotic. Their motives are essentially negative, those of opposition to power. Crowds destroy but seldom build. In Taksim Square, the performance artist Erdem Gündüz simply stood silent. His message was nothing but defiance. In Kiev a protester told the Guardian that Yanukovych's repression was "unbelievable in the centre of a civilised European city": he should be dragged to the square so everyone could line up "and spit in his face".

Many of today's activists are students and offspring of an urban professional class. They may claim the legitimacy of street power, but they have no accountability to other classes or regions of their country. Observers felt that was why Tiananmen Square saw no imitators outside Beijing, and why the protest was so easily if ruthlessly suppressed. In Belgrade at the time of the downfall of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, the protesting crowds were relatively ineffective until joined by busloads of workers from the provinces. In Ukraine, what is said to have shaken Yanukovych was signs that the Maidan protest was spreading nationwide.

To Elias Canetti, author of Crowds and Power, a crowd "needs direction if it is not to lose mass and die". The Cairo documentary constantly paraded the naivety of the protesters, brave as they were. They could wield the power of occupation, but it exerted little more than a veto on each new twist in the crisis. They seemed tossed this way and that by forces beyond their control, notably the well-organised Muslim Brotherhood. They could summon what they were to claim was "the largest demonstration in history"; but all they could chant was "power to the people". The argument had not advanced since the Bastille. As one parent said, "You think a tent and a blanket can solve all your problems."

Romantics sometimes refer to the "wisdom of crowds", and why "we are smarter than me". They ignore the capacity of totalitarians to manipulate the masses to their will. They forget the hysteria and cruelty of which programmed crowds are capable. Even a spontaneous gathering is unmediated and unstable, inherently dangerous, as much a gift to demagogues as to aspiring democrats. Crowds rarely display judgment.

Last week seemed a case in point. The EU mediators in Kiev had negotiated with government and opposition, and then offered the Maidan crowd a package to resolve the crisis and lead to a disciplined transfer of power. Yanukovych would have a semi-dignified climbdown, a process that Putin would have had trouble rejecting. Yet the crowd would have none of it. They howled down the messengers and refused to leave the square. Yanukovych lost his nerve and fled.

Ukraine is fortunate in having a democratic parliament, representative of the whole nation. That institution will now be tested to the full. But, as in Egypt, the fact remains that a duly elected leader was toppled by a mob. That leader may have deserved all he got. He may have been corrupt, grotesque and murderous, a puppet in the hands of Russia. But he still wore the threadbare tatters of electoral legitimacy, which the demonstrators did not. His supporters are unlikely to forget it.

A crowd in a square is not some ritual of democratic purification. It is the most primitive human response to a threat. It suggests a collapse of political institutions, a failure of law and order, a usurping of party, association and leadership. A crowd can blow the fuse of a weakened regime and plunge the state into darkness. It seldom turns on the light of democracy.

Any upheaval can offer the hope of better times. But history is always a sceptic. Just a month ago another large crowd gathered in Tahrir Square, in an exercise in irony. It celebrated the army's return to power after three years of chaos. Sometimes even crowds crave order.

Simon Jenkins

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Seal deaths caused by propellers break environmental law, ministers warned

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Wildlife groups write to UK and Scottish parliaments seeking a ban on covered propellers blamed for horrific 'corkscrew' injuries

Ministers are breaking environmental law by failing to prevent harbour seals from being sliced to death by ships' propellers, according to a coalition of 13 wildlife groups.

The groups have written to the UK and Scottish governments demanding immediate area bans on the covered propellers blamed for inflicting horrific "corkscrew" injuries on hundreds of seals and porpoises.

Declining populations of harbour seals on the east coast of Scotland could be wiped out, they warn. This would expose ministers to multimillion pound fines for breaching the European habitats directive, that gives the seals legal protection.

More than 80 seals – including 32 harbour seals - have been confirmed to have been killed by corkscrew injuries in Scotland, most of them in the last four years. The National Trust has also counted more than 50 seal deaths at its Blakeney nature reserve on the Norfolk coast, including six in December and January.

Scientists suspect that there are many more victims whose bodies are never found. All the deaths are caused by a characteristic deep gash in the flesh spiraling around the body.

Researchers at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University have concluded that the wounds are caused when seals get trapped between propellers and their covers. These ducted propellers are widely used by ships working for many offshore industries.

The 13 wildlife groups have asked ministers to impose immediate restrictions on the propellers in the areas where harbour seals are most at risk. "We are failing seals," said Sarah Dolman, from Whale and Dolphin Conservation.

"The Scottish government needs to act on existing evidence to prevent their deaths or iconic harbour seals will disappear from the east coast of Scotland in just 20 years."

Dolman co-ordinated the joint letter to the Westminster and Holyrood governments. Among the other signatories are the National Trust, the Wildlife Trusts, Marine Conservation Society and the animal rights group OneKind.

The Scottish government, however, insisted that not enough was yet known to justify bans on ducted propellers. "Good progress is being made narrowing down the cause, but we do not yet have conclusive results," said a government spokesman.

"We are also closer to establishing which types of ducted propeller might be responsible for these mortalities, but have discovered that such propellers do not cause mortalities in all circumstances, and therefore need to establish the specific circumstances in order to consider the most appropriate mitigation measures."

The UK Chamber of Shipping is planning to meet researchers in St Andrews in the spring. "We hope these discussions will help find a practical solution and quickly reduce these deaths and horrific injuries to marine mammals that no seafarer would wish to see happen," said the chamber's environment director, David Balston.

Rob Edwards

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Senegal's firebrand fisheries minister turns his ire on foreign factory ships

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Activist turned politician Haïdar el Ali derides countries that deplete stocks of local food staples and then donate aid

Donor countries are acting at cross purposes by tolerating, and in some cases registering, giant trawlers whose fishing techniques undermine west African food security, according to Senegal's fisheries minister.

"The giant ships, like the Kiyevska Rus that we are currently pursuing for illegal fishing, trawl small pelagic fish and grind it into animal feed," Haïdar el Ali said. "Small pelagics [fish that swim near the surface] are a food staple in the entire Sahel region. In a single day those ships can trawl what an artisanal crew takes in a year. Countries like Russia, Ukraine, Korea but also Spain are depleting one of our staples and at the same time some of them are giving us aid. It does not make sense."

The loquacious activist turned minister has just been greeted like a pop star in the bustling fishing port of Mbour, south of the capital, Dakar. He turned his back on his furniture-trading Lebanese family to become an environmental campaigner in the 1980s, and is the fishermen's David to the trawler industry's Goliath. In January, in a first for a Senegalese fisheries minister, El Ali brought ashore the 120-metre Russian trawler Oleg Naydenov and kept it in Dakar for three weeks. "The ship was carrying 1,000 tonnes of fish and it all rotted," he said with a giggle.

El Ali's passion leads to un-ministerial outbursts. He catches himself sounding more like the passionate diver and global militant he is than the minister he has become. "Small pelagics are a food resource from Sierra Leone to Morocco. They desperately need protecting all along the west African coast." He thinks neighbouring Mauritania should not tolerate huge ships that literally suck fish out of the water but "Mauritania is a sovereign country and the ships are there under a European Union agreement", he said.

Some people say complaints from the timber industry led to El Ali being moved to fisheries last September from the environment portfolio, which he had held since April 2012. But, if anything, the shift was a promotion in a country with a 435-mile (700km) coastline and an estimated 2 million people dependent on the sea for income.

After 20 years running his environmental charity, Oceanium, El Ali says he went into politics as a result of his frustration with the fisheries ministry. "The political will was lacking to stand up to the industry, which has considerable power to corrupt. I will stay in politics for as long as it takes to put the environment on to the African political agenda."

He chews on a seed from a moringa tree. "This is like a miracle energy tablet. We are planting it all over Senegal," he said, dropping in a plug for Oceanium and its 300 community bushfire-fighting units, bamboo-growing schemes and a mangrove-planting programme that he claims is the biggest in the world.

He is full of praise for militants of the waves, such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and scornful of mainstream environment charities. "The World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature are just seminar organisers. It's a disgrace that they stuff their faces while our firefighters have to beat back flames with tree branches."

Even in his day job, El Ali has plenty on his plate. He wants radar stations all along the coast. The Senegalese navy has only two frigates, and it depends on weekly French air force flights for photographic evidence of fishing incursions by "a good 50 ships".

He wants harsher fines that are a real deterrent. "The Ukrainian Kiyevska Rus is in and out of our waters. It can hold 3,000 tonnes of fish. In one trawl it can board fish worth 50m CFA francs [$100,000]. It can trawl 10 times in a day. Yet the maximum fine we can impose at the moment is 200m CFA francs. I have written to the Ukrainian foreign ministry, but it is difficult to arrest a vessel. I'm working on a new fisheries code that will give us the power to jail the captains and make the vessels Senegalese property. We will sink them. We need a few artificial reefs to combat coastal erosion."

Earlier in Mbour, El Ali had been greeted with drumming and dancing, but he was not moved by it. In a short speech he managed to wipe the smiles off every face in the crowd. He told them: "On the shore this morning I saw 15kg sea bass alongside 500g sea bass. That 500g bass hasn't finished breeding. He should be thrown back in the water. How do you expect me, as a minister, to be the guardian of your resource if you are fishing like amateurs?"

In interview, however, he makes it clear that the industrial ships are by far the biggest villains. But, he says: "We are all responsible. You can look at the sea and think it is eternal. Regrettably it is not. It is a living thing, just as was the tropical forest we today call the Sahara desert. The sea must not become a desert."

Alex Duval Smith

theguardian.com © 2014 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 Necessary War; Strippers – TV review

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Max Hastings' case for the first world war was strong. At least to this ignoramus of the whys and wherefores of global conflict

Max Hastings set out in The Necessary War (BBC2) to explain that Britain's participation in the first world war was not an ill-advised involvement in a bloody mass of indiscriminate slaughter and tragic sacrifice. No, it was the right thing to do once the unstoppable clash between German bellicosity and ambition and Franco-Russian determination not to become annexes to the Rhineland had been set in motion by the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo.

He did (as far as I, an almost complete ignoramus regarding any global conflict, though always up for some ugly crying over any of the poetry that results, could tell) a fine job of laying out the causes of war and made a persuasive case for the necessity of British involvement. In brief: you can't let any country disturb the balance of power in Europe, threatening its social, economic and political stability in general, and your trade routes and naval dominance in particular; and you especially can't let one full of bloodthirsty soldiers led by a mad Kaiser do so by jackbooting its way across a tiny little country of whose neutrality you are one of the guarantors. The only way for Britain to keep the long-term peace and maintain the moral standards expected of a Top Nation was to put the bloody Boche back in their bloody Boche box, what? I paraphrase. But not much.

Thus did what had been seen as a little local difficulty (over by Christmas, of course) become a global conflict leaving 20 million dead (including 900,000 British soldiers), nations bankrupt, and a world full of depthless grief and changed for ever.

How persuasive his version will remain once I've digested the full panoply of dishes television is serving up during this first-world-war centenary year we shall see. I am terribly biased towards any history that is, as here, delivered to me in the epistemologically proper manner – by tall, patrician men chatting to learned chums in groves of academe and/or genteelly-faded drawing rooms lined with ancestral prints of horses (or possibly prints of ancestral horses – you know what the upper middle class is like) with carefully non-urgent conviction. Niall Ferguson is next up, on Friday, with his version of events in The Pity of War. Apparently, Britain was to blame for the whole thing. Has he got the height, the vowel sounds to convince? We'll see.

The first of a three-part documentary series Strippers (Channel 4), about some of the women working in various Scottish lapdancing clubs, began last night in Diamond Dolls, Glasgow. We met Kim, who had started working there for lack of any proper job after she fell out with her parents a few years ago; Laevena, a nurse in her native Estonia who has spent two years working her way round Europe as a pole dancer to try and pay off her college debts; and 20-year-old drama-school graduate Danielle, who still lives at home but keeps her job secret. Her mum still does her washing and the amount of lingerie is becoming increasingly difficult to explain.

The three of them were lively, articulate, charismatic and entirely ill-served by the programme, which, not content with stuffing itself full of shots of the women and their colleagues at work, also only ever interviewed them in their bras and knickers. No doubt this was done in the name of that weasel word (and foundation of more specious arguments than the Diamond Dolls have wet wipes) "empowerment", but the decision was emblematic of the programme's shoddy approach all round. No one was pressed for details – about their finances, working practices (as important a part of the potential for exploitation Strippers purported to be investigating as the physical aspects of the job) or challenged in any way.

Instead of embedding their world within a wider social and economic context to look at how genuinely free people are to make certain choices at certain times in their lives, or how representative these three were of dancers' experience, the script was full of pusillanimous inanities and avoidance tactics such as "all types of women are attracted to stripping and they all have their own reasons for starting".

I've got a terrible urge to get Max Hastings to present the next one. It couldn't be worse and we might learn something useful. Who's with me?

Lucy Mangan

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mark Duggan's mother lodges legal challenge against judge

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 10:59 PM PST

Pamela Duggan seeks leave for judicial review over Judge Keith Cutler's jury directions, claiming he acted unlawfully

The mother of Mark Duggan, whose fatal shooting by police provoked the 2011 riots, has lodged a legal challenge against the judge who presided over the inquest into her son's death, which ended with a jury making a majority ruling that he was lawfully killed.

Pamela Duggan is seeking leave for a judicial review, accusing Judge Keith Cutler of acting unlawfully in his directions to the jury in the case.

After hearing three months of evidence at the end of last year, the inquest jury was asked to consider whether Duggan was killed lawfully, unlawfully or whether an open verdict should be returned.

Last month eight of the 10 jurors said Duggan had no gun in his hand when he was fatally shot, but eight of those jurors also ruled that Duggan was lawfully killed by the police.

Cutler was appointed assistant deputy coroner for the inquest.

The Duggan family's legal team are asking the high court to declare the coroner's directions to the jury unlawful. They are asking for a court order to quash the lawful killing verdict and replace it with an open verdict. Alternatively they are requesting an order quashing the inquest's conclusions and ordering a fresh inquest.

The Duggan family's legal team argue that Cutler should have directed the jury that if they decided Duggan did not have a gun in his hand they could not return a verdict of lawful killing. They say that this direction to the jury was necessary to avoid an inconsistent conclusion for which there was insufficient evidence.

V53, the police officer who fired the shots that killed Duggan, told the inquest that he clearly saw a gun in Duggan's hand.

However, in the documents lodged in the High Court, the Duggan lawyers argue "V53 could not have known what the gun looked like. V53 must have been making these details up after the event, having later seen the gun".

They argue that V53's belief that Duggan was holding a gun was mistaken. "V53 had a clear, unobstructed and prolonged view of what Mark was holding. There was no evidence V53 had any good reason to think Mark was holding a gun."

The Duggan family were visibly shocked after the inquest jury delivered its verdict. Duggan's aunt, Carole Duggan, said she believed her nephew had been "executed" by the police.

After the inquest verdict the family's lawyer, Marcia Willis Stewart said: "The jury found that he had no gun in his hand yet he was gunned down. For us that is an unlawful killing."

In the papers lodged at the high court seeking leave for a judicial review of Cutler's directions to the jury, the Duggan family's legal team say: "This is a matter of intense public interest. The apparent inconsistency in the jury's findings is a matter of widespread public concern." They added that public confidence in state agents' use of force was at stake.

Pamela Duggan said: "We have asked the court for permission to challenge the inquest's findings as part of our continuing quest for justice for Mark. I am particularly distressed that the officer who killed Mark can return to work. I don't want to see any other mothers losing their sons at the hands of the police in the way that I lost Mark."

Following the inquest verdict Metropolitan police chief Mark Rowley said that the jury had concluded that the way the police had stopped Mark in Ferry Lane, Tottenham, on 4 August 2011, minimised to the greatest extent possible recourse to lethal force. He added that the jury found that Mark Duggan had a gun and that V53 had an honest and reasonable belief that Mark Duggan still had that gun when he was shot.

Diane Taylor

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tony Abbott announces drought relief package – video

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 10:42 PM PST

Australia's prime minister, Tony Abbott, announced a $320m package to help drought-stricken farmers, particularly in western Queensland and New South Wales


About the author

Life is Inspiration

Saya senang blogging, untuk sharing apa yang saya fikirkan. Saya menganggap setiap perjalanan hidup memiliki keunikan..

Posting Komentar

Langganan: Posting Komentar (Atom)