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

Ukraine accuses Russia of 'armed invasion' after airport seizure - live updates
Charlotte Dawson memorial: stars pay tribute to late model and TV personality
Lack of bills leads to a build-up of hot air in the house, stifling the real issues
Russian spy ship docks in Havana during surprise visit to Cuba
Rescue in Antarctica: Australasian Antarctic Expedition in pictures
As Antarctica opens up, will privateer explorers be frozen out?
Rescue from Antarctica | Alok Jha
Fast ice: rescue from Antarctica - video
Hundreds of babies rescued as Chinese police smash four child-trafficking rings
Nigel Farage speaks at Ukip's spring conference: Politics live blog
Sex abuse victims 'deterred when NSW government threatened to pursue costs'
Woman turns herself in over Gold Coast bus attack on elderly man
Bali drug arrest: police have ‘strong’ case against Sydney woman
Racist Gold Coast bus attack – video
St George Illawarra's Craig Garvey stood down over alleged assault
Short on knowledge of Ukrainian literature? Read on
Women should not accept street harassment as 'just a compliment'
The EU needs the UK at its heart – but you need us too | Martin Schulz
Project blends Rotterdam knowhow with Ho Chi Minh City street smarts
Adelaide festival highlights: 10 things to see
Schapelle Corby programme will be aired at her own risk, says Indonesia
Australian summer melts records
Julie Bishop axes funding earmarked to save endangered Sumatran rhinoceros
Three dead and child seriously injured in Victoria truck and car crash
The French Intifada review – the 'long war between France and its Arabs'

Ukraine accuses Russia of 'armed invasion' after airport seizure - live updates

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:40 AM PST

Follow live updates as Ukraine accuses Russia of taking over two airports in Crimea

Haroon Siddique

Charlotte Dawson memorial: stars pay tribute to late model and TV personality

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:13 AM PST

Sisters bring ashes on stage in service which remembered Dawson for her kindness and passion for mental health issues

Amanda Meade

Lack of bills leads to a build-up of hot air in the house, stifling the real issues

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:03 AM PST

Despite a distinct lack of legislation to consider, those people quietly saying sensible things attract very little attention

Lenore Taylor

Russian spy ship docks in Havana during surprise visit to Cuba

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:02 AM PST

Arrival of Viktor Leonov SSV-175 warship follows announcement by Russia that it plans to increase military presence worldwide

A Russian spy ship has slipped into Havana for an unannounced visit, a day after the country's defence minister announced plans to expand Russia's worldwide military presence.

The Viktor Leonov SSV-175, part of the Vishnya class of intelligence ships, quietly entered Cuban waters this week and docked at a cruise ship terminal on Thursday, its crew casually taking in the view of the old colonial section of the Cuban capital as passersby looked on in surprise.

Russian warships have come and gone in Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union, usually with much publicity and the opportunity for Cubans to visit the ship. This time there was no mention in the Cuban state-run media.

On Wednesday in Moscow, the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said Russia planned to increase its military projection abroad, including in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The Russian navy intelligence vessel in Havana was commissioned by the Soviet Union in 1988 near the end of the cold war. It is outfitted with electronic surveillance equipment and missile defence systems and is a signals intelligence asset of the Russian navy, according to the Russian government.

The 94m(309ft) ship was receiving food, but no maintenance or fuel, port employees said.

A Russian embassy official described the visit as friendly, saying members of the crew joined Havana officials in laying a wreath at a monument to Soviet soldiers.

"It was scheduled to stay three or four days. It should leave tomorrow," said the embassy spokesman.

Cuban official media made no immediate mention of its port call.

Locals shrugged at the ship's appearance, as well as Moscow's announcement on Wednesday that it was seeking permission for naval vessels to use ports in Cuba and other countries in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere.

"I think every country has the right to live the way they want to live and defend themselves," said Armando Torres, a 54-year-old cook who passed by the ship on his way to work in the morning. "We are a country that has always been oppressed and blockaded for so many years."

The former Soviet Union and communist-run Cuba were close allies for decades, and the Soviets built a major intelligence base on the outskirts of Havana that was closed soon after the demise of European communism.

Rescue in Antarctica: Australasian Antarctic Expedition in pictures

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

Guardian documentary-maker, Laurence Topham, photographed the Australasian Antarctic Expedition as its ship sailed south towards Antarctica

Laurence Topham

As Antarctica opens up, will privateer explorers be frozen out?

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

The dramatic rescue of 52 people from a ship in the Antarctic has raised questions over who can explore the continent. Alok Jha, who was on the vessel, reports

Alok Jha

Rescue from Antarctica | Alok Jha

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

After a month aboard a Russian research ship, Alok Jha and Laurence Topham found themselves trapped in the grip of the ice – and an international row over whether the expedition should have been there in the first place

Alok Jha

Laurence Topham

Fast ice: rescue from Antarctica - video

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

Laurence Topham's dramatic behind-the-scenes documentary charts the rescue of passengers stranded on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which had become trapped in heavy ice off the coast of East Antarctica over Christmas

Laurence Topham

Alok Jha

Mustafa Khalili

Hundreds of babies rescued as Chinese police smash four child-trafficking rings

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:50 AM PST

Parents warned against kidnappers using internet or lying in wait at hospitals and schools as 382 infants rescued in crackdown

Chinese police have detained 1,094 people and rescued 382 infants in a nationwide crackdown on four online baby-trafficking rings.

Criminals prey on citizens who live under strict controls on the number of children a family can have. These have bolstered a traditional bias for sons, seen as the support of elderly parents and heirs to the family name, and led to the abortion, killing or abandonment of girls.

About 118 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world's most populous country, against a global average of 103-107 boys per 100 girls. The imbalance has created criminal demand for kidnapped or bought baby boys, as well as baby girls destined to be brides attracting rich dowries in sparsely populated regions.

The state news agency Xinhua quoted police as saying: "Child traffickers have now taken the fight online, using 'unofficial adoption' as a front. They are well-hidden and very deceptive."

The traffickers used websites with names such as China's Orphan Network and Dream Adoption Home, highlighting a trend towards online deals that make it harder to hunt down the criminals, Xinhua added. But it did not say what steps authorities were taking to reunite the rescued babies with their parents.

In a separate article, Xinhua warned parents to guard against kidnappers who could pose as nurses in hospitals or lie in wait outside school gates to bundle unsuspecting children into vans or speed off with them on motorbikes.

Last month, a Chinese court handed down a suspended death sentence for a doctor who sold seven newborns to human traffickers in a case that sparked public anger.

Zhang Shuxia, 55, an obstetrician in north-west Shaanxi province, was found guilty of selling the babies for as much as 21,600 yuan (£2,160) each between 2011 and 2013, the court said.

China, which has a population of about 1.4 billion, said last year it would ease family restrictions, letting millions of families have two children, in the country's most significant liberalisation of its one-child policy in about three decades.

Nigel Farage speaks at Ukip's spring conference: Politics live blog

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:45 AM PST

Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of the Ukip spring conference in Torquay, including Nigel Farage's speech

Andrew Sparrow

Sex abuse victims 'deterred when NSW government threatened to pursue costs'

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:37 AM PST

Abuse victim Wilma Robb said the state government of the time threatened to pursue costs if victims lost

Woman turns herself in over Gold Coast bus attack on elderly man

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:34 AM PST

Video footage shows man being punched, kicked, spat at and racially abused by two young women dressed for the races

Helen Davidson

Bali drug arrest: police have ‘strong’ case against Sydney woman

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:13 AM PST

New Zealand national Leeza Ormsby formally questioned by Bali police and could be detained for 40 days without charge

Racist Gold Coast bus attack – video

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:09 AM PST

An elderly man was punched, kicked, spat at and verbally abused in a racially motivated attack by two women on a Gold Coast bus on Tuesday. The attack, recorded by a 13-year-old, went viral after being posted to social media. The 77-year-old victim was helped back into his seat by other commuters and could be seen doubled over in pain.

St George Illawarra's Craig Garvey stood down over alleged assault

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:04 AM PST

No charges laid, but Garvey admits involvement in incident that left a man with suspected fractured eye socket

Short on knowledge of Ukrainian literature? Read on

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

We may remember some as Russian, but our guide to books by authors from Ukrainian territory give an insight into its psyche

Worried you can't get a handle on the continuing crisis in Kiev because you haven't read any Ukrainian writers? You've probably read more than you realise, if they're defined as authors born in places in present-day Ukraine. And many of this formidable lineup wrote on political themes…

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, 1842

A satire on tsarist bureaucracy and political corruption by one of the founding fathers of Russian literature – "we all came out from under Gogol's overcoat" said Nabokov.

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad, 1911

Born in Berdichev in the so-called "Polish Ukraine", Conrad became British but saw himself as Polish. Like The Secret Agent – but set in Russia and Switzerland – this is a tale of spies and terrorists.

The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov, 1925-26

Best known for The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov also wrote this novel and play (set in Kiev in the aftermath of the Russian revolution), which, with its chaotic backdrop of serial regime change, offers parallels with recent developments.

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, 1932

Roth, from Galicia, uses the experiences of three generations of one family to tell the story of the decline of the Austrian empire, from the 1850s to 1918 – a sequel extends the saga into the Nazi era.

Maria by Isaac Babel, 1935

A successful journalist and short story writer from Odessa, Babel largely avoided direct criticism of Soviet evils until this play about corruption and the system's victims, which was scheduled for performance but banned.

The Astronauts by Stanisław Lem, 1951

Set in 2000, this novel imagines a utopia brought about through the wonders of communism and communist science. Lem, from Lwów, later repudiated it as "childish" and stuck to apolitical themes in his SF.

Requiem by Anna Akhmatova, 1963

Born near Odessa, the poet began her chronicle of the Stalinist terror (in which many close to her died) in the 30s, but was only able to publish it abroad in the post-Stalin thaw.

The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, 1964; and The Hour of the Star, 1977

Lispector was a baby when her parents emigrated to Brazil. Though not usually seen as political, she took part in anti-government protests, and these later works – respectively featuring a rich woman and a slum-dwelling typist – reflect a deeply divided society.

"Report from the Besieged City" by Zbigniew Herbert, 1983

Quoted in a Don DeLillo novel, extolled in a Guardian leader, this has become the best-known work by a poet once praised by Craig Raine as too cussed for a Nobel prize – "Existentially, temperamentally, poetically, he is a contrarian - the poetry is designed to disconcert us".

Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky, 2004

Her parents fled Kiev in 1917 for France, where she became a novelist. But her masterpiece – written in the early 40s, the first two books of a planned second world war epic – was only discovered more than 50 years after her death in Auschwitz.

John Dugdale

Women should not accept street harassment as 'just a compliment'

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

It's a myth that street harassment is just a bit of harmless fun. It's about about power and control – and, as I know from personal experience, can so easily turn to violence

Walking down a quiet street at around 7pm a few nights ago I noticed, without thinking anything of it, that there were two men coming towards me in the opposite direction. It being dark but for the street lamps, it wasn't until they came quite a lot closer that I started to notice the tell-tale signs. As they neared, the men were overtly looking me up and down, eyes lingering on my breasts and legs, before turning back to one another, saying something I couldn't hear, and sniggering. My heartbeat quickened, the hair rose on my arms, and I felt the usual emotions flood through me. Fear. Anxiety. Impotence. Anger. Frustration. Misplaced embarrassment and shame.

This is one of the things I think some men don't understand, the men who ask you what the big deal is about street harassment, say they'd love it if it happened to them, or suggest you just "take it as a compliment". It's not a simple, one-moment experience. It's a horribly drawn-out affair. The process of scanning the street as you walk; the constant alert tension; the moment of revelation and the sinking feeling as you realise what is going to happen. Countless women have written to me about the defence mechanisms they put in place – walking with keys between their knuckles just to feel safe – wearing their earphones so they can keep their head down and ignore it. The whole process of going out, particularly at night, can become fraught and difficult.

Why don't you just take it as a compliment?

Too late to cross the street, I braced myself for the moment of passing, muscles tensed, cold fists involuntarily clenched. I understand that this must sound like an overreaction. But it isn't. Because the way we think and behave is shaped by our previous experiences. Too many times, in my own experience, this situation has turned from leering to aggressive sexual advances, from polite rebuttal to angry shouts of 'slag', 'slut', 'whore'. Once, I was chased down the street. Once, I was trapped against a wall. Once, my crotch was grabbed suddenly, shockingly, in vitriolic entitlement. So yes, my muscles contracted and I drew into myself as they passed.

For a moment, they paused, and one glanced at my breasts before turning nonchalantly to the other. I was expecting the usual. "Look at the tits on that", or "I wouldn't say no". But what he actually said took my breath away:

"I'd hold a knife to that."

The other man laughed, and they walked away without giving me a second glance.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't take it as a compliment. Because it's not a compliment. It's a statement of power. It's a way of letting me know that a man has the right to my body, a right to discuss it, analyse it, appraise it, and let me or anybody else in the vicinity know his verdict, whether I like it or not. It's a power that is used to intimidate and dehumanise members of the LGBTQIA community, who suffer disproportionate levels of street harassment. It's a "right" that extends even to the bodies of the 11- and 12-year–old girls who have written to the Everyday Sexism Project in their hundreds, describing shouted comments about their breasts and developing bodies as they walk in their uniform to school. Street harassment is no more about compliments than rape is about sex. Both are about power, violence and control. That's why, when women have the temerity to reject the advances of street harassers, they so often turn, in a moment, to angry outbursts of abuse. Because that rejection disrupts their entitlement to our bodies, which society has allowed them to believe is their inherent right.

This doesn't mean the end of compliments. It doesn't mean you can't flirt, or be attracted to a stranger, or make a polite approach and strike up a conversation. Those are all completely different things from commentary about your body that is directed at you, not to you, the dehumanised discussion of your parts by a group of passers-by, not caring that you can hear, or a scream of "sexy" or "slut" or "pussy". Those aren't compliments. They're something else. I believe that the vast majority of people know the difference. If you're really not sure, err on the side of caution.

This is not to suggest that every woman is a cowering victim, or that we're all too scared to go about our business on a daily basis. Just that it would be nice if those people who think street harassment is "just a compliment" recognised the very real and enormous impact it has on victim's lives – not just in the moment, but day-in, day-out. A compliment doesn't make you rethink your route the next time you walk down the street. Many women, including Doris Chen, who grabbed hold of a man on the underground after he ejaculated on her, have bravely confronted their harassers. But the point is that they shouldn't have to. Nobody knows how they will react in that situation until it happens. Often, victims report feeling frozen with shock. Sometimes it isn't safe to respond. Instead of telling victims how to react, we should focus on preventing it from happening in the first place. And we can start by debunking the myth that street harassment is just a bit of harmless fun. So stop telling women to "just take it as a compliment".

Laura Bates

The EU needs the UK at its heart – but you need us too | Martin Schulz

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

It's fine to want to reform the union – I do too – but talk of an exit will be disastrous for the UK and weaken us all

Despite the ravages of the global economic crisis, Europe remains the world's principal trading bloc, its biggest economic power and an area of unparalleled democracy and freedom where the rule of law is upheld. It is worth remembering this when we consider the upheaval that has been taking place on our eastern borders in Ukraine with the EU flag flown proudly by many protesters.

I firmly reject those who claim that Europe's continued decline is inevitable. But I also believe that only by changing course now can we ensure our future and regain trust in the eyes of voters. What needs to change? Some 5.5 million young Europeans (nearly a quarter of all Europe's youth and more than half in Greece and Spain) have no work. Within the EU budget ceiling we must increase financial support for job-creation programmes while gearing all EU policies and funds towards the fight against youth unemployment.

We also need to strengthen the single market and extend it to key sectors not yet covered, such as the digital economy, transport and energy networks. We risk a race to the bottom in social standards. Some EU directives such as the rules on the posting of workers abroad are being used to lower wages and this has to stop. I would favour a European system of national minimum wages related to GDP in each member state as the best way to overcome the chronic problem in some countries of low pay and the "working poor".

Austerity is being applied so harshly by some governments that it is creating a social crisis and stifling economic growth prospects. Structural reforms in many of our economies are overdue and accumulating debt for future generations has no place on a progressive agenda. But it also makes sense to borrow for productive job-creating investment. I would propose that measures to boost investment in innovation and to lift educational standards should be excluded from the European commission's excessive deficit calculations. Governments that carry out high quality investment should be encouraged, not penalised.

Europe's future economic strength lies in smart reindustrialisation and investment in the new digital economy. To ensure that this transformation benefits European business and not just our competitors requires public support for major new infrastructure. I support the establishment of a trans-European electric network – an EU energy grid that allows states to share the energy they produce, guaranteeing security of supply and more leverage in international negotiations. This would be funded by EU budget guarantees and the European Investment Bank.

The scandal of corporate tax evasion is a Europe-wide problem depriving public finances in Europe of €1tn per year. This money is needed desperately for investment and to cut our deficits. I will put specific proposals on the table to fight VAT fraud, savings tax avoidance and to shed more light on tax havens and corporate taxation.

It's because I'm a convinced European that I believe the EU must undergo a radical transformation. I am standing as a Socialist to be the next president of the European commission because I wish to contribute to this change. But the commission itself needs reform. I would only place legislative proposals on the commission's agenda if I am convinced that national, regional or local authorities can't act more effectively. I will assign responsibilities to Commissioners according to priority areas where the lead is taken each time by groups of Commissioners working together. Where EU legislation hampers job creation or adds undue burdens for business, and particularly for SMEs, it must be recast or repealed.

The majority of people in the UK want change and reform of the EU. So do I. When David Cameron's government puts specific reform proposals on the table I will support them if they contribute to making the EU work better. The UK plays a big role in the internal market, in our new common foreign and security policy, in EU peacekeeping and in development aid. But Britain risks a lot by toying with exit in a referendum. The UK should be at the negotiating table when the EU and the US negotiate the largest multilateral trade deal of all time, a deal which would increase the size of the EU economy by around €120bn (or 0.5% of GDP) and the US by €95bn (or 0.4% of GDP) meaning each British family would save around £500 a year. Britain is better off in the EU and the EU is better off with Britain at its heart.

There is no doubt a reformed EU requires new leadership and courageous ideas. If not, the current generation of young people could be the first since the second world war to be worse off than the generation that went before it, undermining the European union's very raison d'être.

Martin Schulz

Project blends Rotterdam knowhow with Ho Chi Minh City street smarts

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

Flood defence and water management are top of the agenda in this unique cross-planet collaboration between river delta cities

Rotterdam is Europe's largest port, a gritty Dutch metropolis with a long history as a commercial hub and a flair for modern architecture. Ho Chi Minh City, half a world away in Vietnam, is a fast-growing megacity clogged with motorbikes; an extraordinary mixture of old and new, rich and poor.

Different as they seem, the two cities have something crucial in common. Both sit on river deltas, and are defined – and increasingly threatened – by their relationship with water. Perched near coasts astride major rivers, with tributaries running through neighbourhoods, these two port cities are on the front lines of climate change.

Now they are coming together in an unusual partnership, sharing coping strategies as their positions grow more perilous. Rotterdam, with long experience in flood management, is advising Ho Chi Minh City on the development and implementation of a climate adaptation plan to help the Vietnamese city avoid disaster as sea levels rise and the frequency and severity of storms increases.

This east-west collaboration could hold important lessons for flood-threatened cities around the world. Ho Chi Minh City and Rotterdam are both seeking to strike a balance between the two main approaches to flood protection: bolstering expensive, hard protections while also "making room for the river" – creating space for water to run without damaging developed areas. Added to the mix are new ideas such as dotting flood zones with playgrounds that can hold run-off water when needed.

For all the cities' differences, says Alexandra van Huffelen, Rotterdam's vice-mayor for sustainability, Ho Chi Minh City "really felt the same [as us]; the same issues arose". Its leaders initially sought Rotterdam's advice because, she recalls, they saw the Dutch city was also grappling with "more water coming down the river at unexpected times, problems with extreme rainfall, rising sea levels, salinisation levels and issues with groundwater – exactly the same issues they were facing."

In truth, Rotterdam and Ho Chi Minh City share similar DNA, each bustling with the energy typical of a business-minded shipping hub. Unlike other Dutch cities, whose streets are lined with graceful, centuries-old homes, Rotterdam was nearly flattened in the second world war, and it has rebuilt itself with a modern sensibility. Rem Koolhaas's new De Rotterdam megatower is the latest example of its architectural ambitions.

Ho Chi Minh City has also known war, of course. Its wide French boulevards and elegant but decaying old buildings mix with communist-era blocks and modern shopping malls and skyscrapers. While the Dutch are famous for the carefully engineered dikes, sea walls and other barriers that protect their low-lying home from the sea, the Vietnamese have learned to live with water, building floating buildings and homes on stilts, and selling goods from longboats in the Mekong delta's floating markets, south of Ho Chi Minh City.

"It's a more traditional way that they are using," says Van Huffelen. "They come from a more natural way of protecting themselves; we come from a more infrastructural way. We're meeting each other halfway. They're learning from us about storm surge barriers and dikes and things like that, and we're learning from them [that] you need to work with nature, and let nature help you protect the coastline."

In the rainy season some parts of Ho Chi Minh City flood twice a day, with waters rising almost knee high when the tide comes in. Residents are forced to learn resilience, says Chantal Oudkerk Pool, a Rotterdam climate adaptation expert who is closely involved with the Ho Chi Minh City effort. "You have no choice but to protect your home by elevating the ground floor," Oudkerk Pool says. "They all have tiles on the floor. Here, we have expensive wooden floors, and if the water comes, we have thousands of euros in damage. They just mop the floor and it's done. Very simple, but very effective."

Ho Chi Minh City's flooding problems are likely to get worse as the impact of climate change intensifies and the city's fast growth continues; its population of roughly 8 million is expected to reach 12 million by 2020. A third of Ho Chi Minh City suffers regular flooding now, and if expansion into low-lying areas continues unchecked, two-thirds could be vulnerable in a decade.

According to one of the intercity collaboration's advisors, Ho Long Phi, over the past 10 years the Vietnamese authorities have installed $1bn (£600m) worth of protection measures for the city's centre, reducing flooding even as peak tides have risen and intense storms have become more frequent. But in that time, says Phi, who is director of Vietnam National University's centre of water management and climate change, the population of the low-lying suburbs has boomed, and they now require $3bn in new protection measures.

It is this cycle of haphazard planning that Phi hopes the Dutch will help local officials break. Rotterdam, widely viewed as a world leader in resiliency planning, developed a climate adaptation strategy in 2008; a year later, officials from the two cities first encountered each other through Connecting Delta Cities; a network founded by Rotterdam which also includes Tokyo, Jakarta, London, New York and New Orleans. After months spent researching the scope of Ho Chi Minh City's challenges, the two cities signed a memorandum in 2011 appointing a consortium of public and private sector experts to begin work on the plan.

Their efforts culminated in the delivery of a major adaptation strategy last year, laying out six broad goals such as increasing water storage and drainage capacity, and making sure flood risk informs development decisions. The Vietnamese then signed Rotterdam on for phase 2 of the effort (now just beginning), in which the Dutch will help local planners apply the ideas more concretely.

The Dutch government has put €1.4m (£1.15m) into the project, and corporate participants hope to profit from their presence in Ho Chi Minh City in a setup the teams refer to as "Vietnamese ownership, Dutch partnership".

For the first six months, Giao Lan Phuong – a Ho Chi Minh City-based project manager from the engineering consultancy Grontmij – served as a translator. Now, however, the Vietnamese participants have improved their English so much that interpretation is rarely needed, Phuong says. "We understand each other and we learn from each other. Of course, we have different cultures, [but] all the people from both sides are very open and we talk to each other."

Jeroen Aerts, professor of water management and risk at Amsterdam's VU University – another part of the Ho Chi Minh City consortium – stresses the need to pay attention to cultural cues to make such a collaboration work. While the Dutch are used to speaking directly in meetings, Aerts explains, "in Vietnam it's different. If you are in a workshop with a high official, other people wait for them to say something. You need to understand how it works, and if you understand it then you really can do something."

Like many flood-prone areas, Britain included, both Rotterdam and Ho Chi Minh City are debating when to build expensive protection infrastructure and when to retreat, letting the water take some areas so that others can stay dry.

In Rotterdam, a few neighbourhoods have been designated as occasional flood zones, with resilient homes that feature measures like electrics placed high off the ground. "You can't protect everything, and you need to give the river its room," Van Huffelen says.

Rotterdam has come up with some clever solutions which could be tweaked to fit the needs of its Vietnamese partner, Oudkerk Pool says. These include measures like "water squares" – patches of land that serve as playgrounds or parks in good weather but become holding basins for runoff when floods come. Beneath some of its underground car parks, Rotterdam has installed storage tanks that play the same role, releasing excess water only when the city's drainage system can handle it.

The Dutch experts are urging Ho Chi Minh City officials to plan carefully as the city's population booms, ensuring that newly developed areas include lots of green space, which can act like a sponge during deluges, and special pavements that absorb water rather than speed its runoff.

Not everything that has worked in Rotterdam can be transferred directly to Ho Chi Minh City, in part because it is a far poorer city, and its governing institutions are less effective.

"You can't just copy and paste. You have to base it on your real capacity – and the Dutch people cannot understand us as well as we understand ourselves," Phi says. "We have to match our abilities with our vision – the vision could be the same, but the way is totally different."

Beth Gardiner

Adelaide festival highlights: 10 things to see

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:59 PM PST

David Sefton, the director of the South Australian arts festival, gives us his picks, from six-hour interactive Shakespeare to a career retrospective of avant garde legend John Zorn

Alex Needham

Schapelle Corby programme will be aired at her own risk, says Indonesia

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:58 PM PST

There will be 'sanctions' if the show violates parole conditions, says Bali official

Australian summer melts records

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:53 PM PST

Scorching spells in Victoria and South Australia set new records, but weather was mixed across country

Julie Bishop axes funding earmarked to save endangered Sumatran rhinoceros

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:46 PM PST

$3m pledged by Labor cancelled in move conservationists say is 'devastating' to the 100 rhinos still believed to be in the wild

Helen Davidson

Three dead and child seriously injured in Victoria truck and car crash

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:36 PM PST

Nine-year-old boy only survivor in a car so badly burned that specialist unit has been brought in to identify the victims

The French Intifada review – the 'long war between France and its Arabs'

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 11:30 PM PST

Andrew Hussey has written a disturbing, overly simplistic book about colonisation and its modern consequences

This is a disturbing book, in two very different ways. The first does credit to the author, Andrew Hussey, dean of the University of London Institute in Paris. It recounts in vivid detail the long, painful history of the relations between France and the Muslim populations that it conquered and subjugated in the 19th century, and between France and its present-day Muslim minority. Hussey is a talented writer, and knows his subject. He captures in arresting phrases both the poor, heavily Muslim cités, or council estates, of suburban France ("designed almost like vast prison camps"), and the great capitals of North Africa ("walking through Algiers is like walking through the wreckage of a recently abandoned civilisation"). He deftly weaves personal anecdote with historical research. After an initial section dealing with alienated young Muslims in France, he takes on Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in turn, in each case moving from the first encounters with French imperialism through postwar decolonisation, down to the present day.

Going well beyond news reports, the book shows just how hot and fierce a vein of hatred for France runs through the Muslim populations that have experienced French rule. More than half a century after the North African states achieved independence, France remains an object of deep loathing for many of their citizens, who often associate the former imperial overlord with oppressive French-speaking elites. Even the Moroccans who carried out the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Hussey argues, ultimately linked Spain with these elites, and thus with "the hated nation of France". Meanwhile, in the book's striking opening scene, Hussey describes how young Muslims he encountered at a riot at Paris's Gare du Nord in 2007, most presumably born on French soil, broke into a chant in colloquial Arabic: "Na'al abouk la France" – "Fuck France!"

But if The French Intifada is disturbing for these revelations, it is even more so because Hussey has written so carelessly, and in so needlessly inflammatory a manner. He repeatedly makes large, highly questionable generalisations without anything resembling evidence. "For most French people," he asserts, "Tunisians … had the same supposed racial and cultural defects of all North Africans, ranging from stupidity, criminality and a taste for violence." Most French people? How does he know? Or: "The British were mostly interested in money and therefore mainly indifferent to the cultures of the 'natives' they colonised." Hussey seems not to have encountered the relentless British campaign to ban suttee in India, or to have noticed that an imperialist writer such as Kipling, for all his faults, was not exactly "indifferent" to Indian culture.

The subtitle of Hussey's book makes for a strange generalisation, since many of the people he discusses are Berber, or black African, not Arab. He also makes numerous factual errors, mostly trivial, but which collectively do nothing to bolster the reader's confidence. Napoleon did not invade Egypt "in the early 1800s" but in 1798. The Algiers expedition of 1830 was not the largest French force assembled since the Napoleonic wars (France invaded Spain in 1823 with a larger one), and it did not promise Algerians "democracy". Thousands of Jews did not die in the 1942 "Vel d'Hiv" roundup itself, but afterwards, in German extermination camps. And so on. Hussey's historical research is thin, with his account of the Algerian war of independence taken largely from Alistair Horne's classic, but now woefully outdated, A Savage War of Peace.

More serious a problem is his inflammatory style when discussing violence. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that when he describes violence committed by the French, he mostly gives quick, summary accounts, but when he turns to violence committed by Muslims, he cannot resist lurid detail. He describes scenes of an eight-year-old child being shot through the temple, of the chopping off of fingers, ears and lips, of babies being tossed into ovens, of bodies doused with petrol and set alight, of train lines "scattered with bloodied, limbless trunks, arms, legs, and severed heads". "One frequent act of sadism," he writes, apropos of the treatment meted out by Algerians to compatriots who had served the French (the Harkis), "was to burn the victim alive, feeding the cooked flesh to dogs". He quotes an account of Muslim killers "gripped with a frenetic laughter" while smashing (Muslim) children's heads against concrete pillars. At one point, he defends this approach by insisting that "a flavour of the viciousness of the violence is given not by the figures but by the details", and then proceeds to tell the story of Algerian terrorists who beheaded a teacher (also Algerian) in front of a class of small children, and then placed her severed head on her desk. "This is not warfare," he comments, "but psychosis."

To be fair, Hussey's overall argument is that "France's Arabs", as he calls them, collectively suffer from a psychological trauma. Invoking Frantz Fanon, he speaks of "the devastating psychological effects of colonialism", and traces the hatred that seethes in both the French cités and the North African countries to this same cause. The disaffected young Muslims who hate France do so in large part, he explains, because the legacy of colonialism has destroyed in them "all sense of authentic identity, all sense of self, to the extent that they don't feel that they properly exist". Whether in Algiers or France, they have the impression of living in a giant prison, and strike out viciously against the "colonisers" whom they hold responsible.

This approach, however, has the unintended effect of reducing the complex histories of these different societies to a single French-Muslim dialectic. Even Islam enters the story mostly as a vehicle for subaltern rage, as in the story of a Tunisian man who, frustrated in his request for a French work visa, moves towards fundamentalism. Hussey quotes him: "I can't get to France. There's nothing else here now. Why not fight for God?" The book gives little sense that some currents of Islam might appeal to contemporary Muslims for reasons that have little to do with France, or the colonial past – for reasons that are shared across the breadth of the Islamic world, including parts of it that experienced very different forms of European rule, or no European rule at all. Hussey also largely ignores the fact that millions of North African Muslims have forged satisfying and successful lives for themselves in France. The angry rioters of the cités do not represent the whole of the French population of North African descent.

So focused is Hussey on the legacy of colonialism that he pays little systematic attention to what is, in fact, one of the book's most striking and disturbing themes: Muslim antisemitism. As he notes, hatred of Jews now runs deep in Muslim populations, including in France and North Africa. In France, the worst examples of individual violence committed by alienated Muslim youth have been against Jews, notably the torture and killing of the mobile phone salesman Ilan Halimi outside Paris in 2006, and the shooting of four Jews, including three children, in front of a Hebrew school in Toulouse in 2012. In this sense, present-day Muslim violence against France can indeed be called an "intifada". But why the hatred of Jews, especially since – as Hussey also notes – French imperialists in North Africa were not exactly philosemitic? (The only actual killings of Jews during the Dreyfus affair took place in Algeria, at the hands of white settlers.) The role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the formation of contemporary Muslim identities, and the way that Jews have come to stand, in much of the Muslim world, for the worst tendencies of the "west", and even of modernity, deserve more analysis than Hussey provides.

He knows the story amounts to more than just trauma and "psychotic" reaction. In one of the book's most eloquent passages, he writes: "There has been a long history of complicity and intimacy between France and Algeria. This is not the straightforward binary relationship between coloniser and colonised; the question of Algerian identity, for Muslim and non-Muslim, has always been fraught with double binds and contradictions." In other words, the relationship between France and "its Arabs" is not just a "long war", and at moments The French Intifada does provide the sensitivity and subtlety the subject deserves. Hussey includes, for instance, a fascinating short chapter on European homosexuals and their exploitation of Arab youths in "Queer Tangier", being careful to provide the youths' own perspective. His portrayals of Arab independence leaders, notably Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba, are nuanced and persuasive. But more often, the lurid accounts of torture and massacre simply overwhelm the attempts at subtlety.

Hussey is right that the colonial past still haunts the French present, like the "ghosts in daylight" whom Baudelaire saw as haunting 19th-century Paris. But he concludes, overly enchanted with the metaphor, that perhaps "what France needs is not hard-headed political solutions or even psychiatry, but an exorcist". Hardly. Hatred does not always need violent excision. It can be leeched away by constructive policies, by greater understanding between communities and simply by the passage of time. The situation of Muslims in France, while volatile, is hardly as desperate as Hussey suggests. Portraying it as irredeemably cursed does not help.

David A Bell