Guns Or Roses?



Why British police don’t have guns

The deaths of two female police constables have brought into focus the unarmed status of most British police. Why does Britain hold firm against issuing guns to officers on the beat?

It's the single most obvious feature that sets the British bobby apart from their counterparts overseas.

Tourists and visitors regularly express surprise at the absence of firearms from the waists of officers patrolling the streets.

But to most inhabitants of the UK - with the notable exception of Northern Ireland - it is a normal, unremarkable state of affairs that most front-line officers do not carry guns.

Unremarkable, that is, until unarmed officers like Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone are killed in the line of duty. There are always those who question why Britain is out of step with most of the rest of the world, with the exceptions of the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and a handful of other nations.

For a heavily urbanised country of its population size, the situation in Great Britain is arguably unique.

Film director Michael Winner, founder of the Police Memorial Trust, and Tony Rayner, the former chairman of Essex Police Federation, have both called for officers to be routinely armed.

But despite the loss of two of his officers, Greater Manchester Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy was quick to speak in support of the status quo.

"We are passionate that the British style of policing is routinely unarmed policing. Sadly we know from the experience in America and other countries that having armed officers certainly does not mean, sadly, that police officers do not end up getting shot."

But one thing is clear. When asked, police officers say overwhelmingly that they wish to remain unarmed.

A 2006 survey of 47,328 Police Federation members found 82% did not want officers to be routinely armed on duty, despite almost half saying their lives had been "in serious jeopardy" during the previous three years.

It is a position shared by the Police Superintendents' Association and the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The British public are not nearly so unanimous.

An ICM poll in April 2004 found 47% supported arming all police, compared with 48% against.

PDF download ICM poll (see page two)[106KB]

In 2007, the centre-right think-tank Policy Exchange found 72% of 2,156 adults wanted to see more armed police patrols.

For decades there have been incidents that have led to calls for issuing all officers with firearms. Cases like those of Sharon Beshenivsky, shot dead during a robbery in 2005, or of the three plain-clothes officers murdered by Harry Roberts in west London in 1966, or the killing of PC Sidney Miles in the Derek Bentley case of 1952.

Few expect the system to change even after widespread public horror at the deaths of PCs Bone and Hughes.

For one thing, incidents such as that in Greater Manchester are extremely rare. Overall gun crime, too, remains low.

In 2010-11, England and Wales witnessed 388 firearm offences in which there was a fatal or serious injury, 13% lower than the previous 12 months. In Scotland during the same period, there were two fatal and 109 non-fatal injuries during the same period, a decade-long low.

Additionally, officers, chief constables and politicians alike are wary of upsetting an equilibrium that has been maintained throughout Britain's 183-year policing history.

"There's a general recognition that if the police are walking around with guns it changes things," says Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

Arming the force would, say opponents, undermine the principle of policing by consent - the notion that the force owes its primary duty to the public, rather than to the state, as in other countries.

This owes much to the historical foundations of British criminal justice, says Peter Waddington, professor of social policy at the University of Wolverhampton.

"A great deal of what we take as normal about policing was set out in the early 19th Century," he says.

"When Robert Peel formed the Metropolitan Police there was a very strong fear of the military - the masses feared the new force would be oppressive."

A force that did not routinely carry firearms - and wore blue rather than red, which was associated with the infantry - was part of this effort to distinguish the early "Peelers" from the Army, Waddington says.

Over time, this notion of guns being inimical to community policing - and, indeed, to the popular conception of the Dixon of Dock Green-style bobby - was reinforced.

While some in London were issued with revolvers prior to 1936, from that date only trained officers at the rank of sergeant or above were issued with guns, and even then only if they could demonstrate a good reason for requiring one.

Today only a small proportion of officers are authorised to use firearms. Latest Home Office figures show there were just 6,653 officers authorised to use firearms in England and Wales - about 5% of the total number.

PDF download Home Office statistics on police firearms use, 2010-11[317KB]

None of which implies, of course, that the British police are somehow gun-free. Each police force has its own firearms unit. Police armed response vehicles have been deployed since 1991.

In addition, trained officers have had access to Tasers since 2004 despite controversy about their use. Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe called for police response officers to be routinely armed with the weapons in November 2011.

Particularly in London, the sight of armed officers at airports, embassies and other security-sensitive locations has become a familiar one, especially since the 11 September attacks.

However much firearms become an accepted part of British life, former Met deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick doubts police themselves will ever support a universal rollout.

For one thing, the sheer cost of equipping all personnel with weapons as well as providing regular training would be prohibitive at a time of public spending cuts, he says.

In addition, Paddick adds, front-line officers would not be keen to face the agonising, split-second decisions faced by their counterparts in specialist firearms units.

"In terms of the police being approachable, in terms of the public being the eyes and ears of the police, officers don't want to lose that," he says.

"Every case in which a police officer has shot someone brings it home to unarmed officers the sheer weight of responsibility that their colleagues face."

Cases like that of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead by a Met firearms officer after he was wrongly identified as a terrorist, illustrate Paddick's point.

For now, at least, that starkest of all distinctions between British officers and those abroad looks secure.

Additional reporting by Kathryn Westcott, Tom Heyden and Daniel Nasaw



Why Texas is closing prisons in favour of rehab

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30275026>

The US is known for its tough criminal justice system, with an incarceration rate far larger than any comparable country. So why is it that Republicans in Texas are actively seeking to close prisons, asks Danny Kruger, a former speechwriter for David Cameron.

Coming from London to spend a couple of days in Texas last month, I was struck most of all by how generous and straightforward everyone was.

Talking to all sorts of different people about crime and punishment, the same impression came across: We expect people to do the right thing and support them when they do. When they don't we punish them, but then we welcome them back and expect good behaviour again. It's not naive, it's just clear.

For years that straightforward moral outlook translated into a tough criminal justice system. As in the rest of the US, the economic dislocations of the 1970s, compounded by the crack epidemic in the 1980s, led to a series of laws and penal policies which saw the prison population skyrocket.

Texas, for instance, has half the population of the UK but twice its number of prisoners.

Then something happened in 2007, when Texas Republican Congressman Jerry Madden was appointed chairman of the House Corrections Committee with the now famous words by his party leader: "Don't build new prisons. They cost too much."

The impulse to what has become the Right on Crime initiative was fiscal conservatism - the strong sense that the taxpayer was paying way too much money to fight a losing war against drugs, mental ill-health and petty criminality.

What Madden found was that too many low-level offenders were spending too long in prison, and not reforming. On the contrary, they were getting worse inside and not getting the help they needed on release.

The only response until then, from Democrat as well as Republican legislators, was to build more prisons. Indeed, Mr Madden's analysis suggested that a further 17,000 prisoners were coming down the pipe towards them, requiring an extra $500m (£320m) for new prisons. But he and his party didn't want to spend more money building new prisons. So they thought of something else - rehab.

Consistent with the straightforward Texan manner, the Congressional Republicans did not attempt to tackle what in Britain are known as "the causes of crime" - the socio-economic factors that make people more disposed to offend. Instead, they focused on the individual criminal, and his or her personal choices. Here, they believe, moral clarity and generosity are what's needed.

Though fiscal conservatism may have got the ball rolling, what I saw in Texas - spending time in court and speaking to offenders, prison guards, non-profit staff and volunteers - goes way beyond the desire to save money.

The Prison Entrepreneurship Programme, for instance, matches prisoners with businesspeople and settles them in a residential community on release. Its guiding values are Christian and its staff's motives seem to be love and hope for their "brothers", who in turn support the next batch of prisoners leaving jail.

The statutory system is not unloving either. Judge Robert Francis's drugs court in Dallas is a well-funded welfare programme all of its own - though it is unlike any welfare programme most of the 250 ex-offenders who attend it have ever seen.

Clean and tidy, it is staffed by around 30 professionals who are intensely committed to seeing their clients stay clean and out of jail, even if that means sending them back to prison for short periods, as Judge Francis regularly does when required.

Every week the ex-offenders attend court and take a drugs test. Then, in the presence of 50 of their peers, they tell the judge what they've been up to before receiving a round of applause from the crowd.

Immediate, comprehensible and proportionate sanctions are given for bad behaviour, plus accountability to a kind leader and supportive community. This is the magic sauce of Right on Crime.

Far from having to build new jails for the 17,000 expected new inmates, Jerry Madden and his colleagues have succeeded in closing three prisons.

I visited one by the Trinity River in Dallas, now ready for sale and redevelopment. They spent less than half the $500 million earmarked for prison building on rehab initiatives and crime is falling faster than elsewhere.

This, then, ticks all the boxes - it cuts crime, saves money and demonstrates love and compassion towards some of the most excluded members of society. It is, in a sense, what conservatives in America and Britain dream of - a realistic vision of a smaller state, where individuals are accountable for their actions and communities take responsibility for themselves and their neighbours.

It is a more positive version of the anti-politics - anti-Washington, anti-Westminster - tide that seems to be sweeping the West.

I hope that Right on Crime will catch on in Britain. Already there are positive steps towards establishing drugs courts, expanding rehab and opening up our prisons to the community groups which can make such a difference.

This is part of a major reform of outsourcing - some call it privatisation - of prisons and probation, which involves handing huge contracts to private companies who will, it is hoped, subcontract to the little guys.

The danger is that people distrust big corporations as much as they distrust central government. The ideal is a criminal justice system that is genuinely community-led - not directed by profit or by politics, but by local people and the professionals accountable to them.

Danny Kruger is a former speechwriter for David Cameron and now runs Only Connect, a charity for young people involved in, or at risk of, crime.


India's 'fightback' sisters and the video questions


Two Indian sisters have been in the headlines since video showed them fighting back against men allegedly sexually harassing them on a bus. Then a second video showed the pair apparently attacking a man in a park. BBC Hindi's Rupa Jha travelled to Haryana state to piece together an intriguing story.

'Abuse' and a belting on the bus

The incident happened in Rohtak district on 28 November when the two students, 22-year-old Aarti and 19-year-old Pooja Kumar, were on their way home on a state-run passenger bus.

Younger sister Pooja told BBC Hindi that the three men "threatened and abused us". She said she took out her belt and hit them in self-defence. The sisters say a pregnant passenger shot the incident on her mobile phone.

In the video, Pooja can be seen hitting one of the men, while a second man is partially hidden behind his friend. The third man is not in the frame - it is unclear whether he was already on the bus when the film was shot. The sisters say he boarded the vehicle after the two men rang him.

The video also shows a male passenger repeatedly trying to separate one of the men from the women, while most other passengers look the other way. The video went viral amid growing concern in India about sexual violence against women and generated a wave of support for the sisters.

The three men were arrested the next day and later bailed. They have been charged with sexual harassment and causing the women "grievous hurt". Police are still investigating the case.

The conductor who didn't see

Police say the driver and conductor of the bus have both given testimony. Local police chief Shashank Anand said the driver, Balwan Singh, had corroborated the account given by the sisters.

I met Labh Singh, the conductor, in his village - the driver was away.

"The sisters told me that some men were misbehaving with them on the bus, though I did not see the attack. I had asked the men to leave the girls alone," he said.

"I also offered to call the police after the bus stopped and the men and the sisters alighted. I did what I had to do."

But media reports say five other women passengers on the bus have testified to police that the fight was caused by a dispute about seats and that no sexual harassment was involved.

The pregnant passenger

Both the sisters and the bus conductor say a pregnant passenger took the video on her phone. The conductor says the woman was a regular passenger on the route.

The sisters say they were given the footage by the woman, who asked them not to disclose her identity. It is not clear whether the police have been able to speak to this woman.

Rajesh Singh, the father of the women and a government clerk, says the families of the accused men put pressure on him to withdraw the police complaint against their sons and "reach a settlement".

He says he released the video to the media after the "settlement failed".

Public sexual harassment of women, dubbed "Eve teasing", is rampant in parts of India and causes misery for women.

The footage in which they appear is far from unique. India has some 915 million mobile phone subscribers and call and data charges are among the cheapest in the world - videos are constantly being uploaded, many purporting to show women fighting back against men.

Since a fatal gang rape in Delhi in 2012 crimes against women have received greater scrutiny. No wonder then that the sisters' fightback gripped India.

Miss Talented and Miss Fresher

The two women live with their parents and two other siblings in the village of Thana Khurd, some 40km (24 miles) north of India's capital, Delhi.

Haryana is one of India's more prosperous states. Thana Khurd, unsurprisingly, is more urban than rural - the streets are lined with shops and its brick and concrete homes have running water and electricity.

When I met the sisters, they said they were "tired of talking to the media".

Days after the incident, outdoor broadcasting vans were still parked outside their home, and messages of support have been pouring in on social media. Women from neighbouring villages have flocked to their homes to show their solidarity.

The sisters, who study IT, have won a host of college competitions - they proudly show me two certificates declaring them winners of Miss Talented and Miss Fresher. Pooja says she loves to dance.

They appear spirited young women, and have the backing of their family in the largely patriarchal society they live in.

And they are definitely going to keep on taking public transport.

"We will hit back again if men misbehave with us. We will not take it lying down," they say.

That other video

When I ask them about the emergence of another video showing them apparently attacking a man in a park in Rohtak, they dismiss suggestions that it casts doubt on their story.

"Let them say what they want to say. They have got used to beating girls. Now they are coming up with weird allegations," Arti says.

"I wish I had known about the new video earlier so that I could have filed a police complaint against this man as well."

Indian TV channels say the second video was filmed about a month ago. There is no evidence of the sisters being harassed in the footage.

The video was reportedly released by the father of one of the men accused of harassment on the bus.

He told The Indian Express newspaper the video "arrived at their doorstep under mysterious" circumstances.

"We cannot reveal how it reached us. But we do not know who the boy [in the video is]. Maybe, his family does not want him to get into trouble."

Police chief Shashank Shekhar says the new video has not "changed the line of investigation".

Claims of innocence

The men live a few miles away, in village of 6,000 inhabitants called Aasan. All three are students and in their early 20s.

Police patrol vans are doing the rounds when I visit and all is quiet.

Two of them have passed physical education exams for jobs in the army. Some media reports suggest these jobs might now be at risk.

"The allegations are all fabricated," the sister of one of three men tells me.

"These women have a habit of alleging harassment by men and then demanding money [from them]. I know my brother is innocent. We demand a proper investigation into the incident."

The families blame the media and the police for taking sides, and framing the men.

Police deny the charge, saying that they have registered a complaint from the men's families as well, and are investigating it.

Studies, jobs and... marriage?

Many men in both villages accuse the sisters of being "women of easy virtue".

One young boy in their village told me the "girls are characterless".

When I asked him what that meant, he said: "They are too smart. Please don't ask me anything more."

Deepak, a student in the village, said he was angry that the women had "become celebrities".

"Are they the only girls who have been molested? You cannot have a media trial."

Such reactions are not uncommon in a state which has one of India's lowest gender ratios and is dominated by men.

But the women are not budging from their version of events, and are confident they will be vindicated.

"We will continue our studies. We will take up jobs. We are not sure whether we will marry," says Aarti.

"In any case, who will marry us now?" she says, bursting into laughter.




Viewpoint: Why the shadow of WW1 and 1989 hangs over world events

<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483873>

Many of today's global problems are hangovers from bad, ungenerous decisions at the end of previous conflicts, writes Jeffrey Sachs.

This has been a year of great geopolitical anniversaries. We are at the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, an event that more than any other shaped world history during the past century. We are at the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening chapter of the demise of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. Yet we know that painfully we observe something far more than a mere remembrance.

As William Faulkner remarked, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." WW1 and the fall of the Wall continue to shape our most urgent realities today. The wars in Syria and Iraq are the legacy of the closure of WW1, and dramatic events in Ukraine are unfolding in the long shadow of 1989.

1914 and 1989 are "hinge moments", decisive points of history on which subsequent events turn. How nations both great and small behave at such hinge moments determine the future course of war and peace.

I participated directly and personally in the events of 1989, and saw this lesson in play - positively in the case of Poland and negatively in the case of Russia. And I can tell you that as I carried out my own tasks as an economic adviser during 1989-92, I kept a constant and always worried gaze on 1914. I carry that same sense of worry today.

In 1919, at the end of WW1, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes taught us invaluable and lasting lessons about such hinge moments, how decisions of victors impact the economies of the vanquished, and how missteps by the powerful can set the course of future wars.

With uncanny insight, prescience, and literary flair, Keynes's 1919 The Economic Consequences of the Peace predicted that the cynicism and shortsightedness at the core of the Versailles Treaty, especially the imposition of punitive war reparations on Germany, and the lack of solutions to the roiling financial crises of the debtor countries, would condemn the European economies to continuing crisis, and would in fact invite the rise of another vengeful tyrant in the coming generation.

Keynes's cri de coeur is one of those remarkable outpourings of genius that speaks across generations. That book and its lessons proved to be a formative guide for me in my own career as policy adviser and analyst.

As a newly minted economist some 30 years ago, I suddenly found myself charged with helping a small and largely forgotten country, Bolivia, to find a way out of its own unmitigated economic disaster. Keynes's writings helped me to understand that Bolivia's financial crisis should be viewed in social and political terms, and that Bolivia's creditor, the US, had a shared responsibility of resolving Bolivia's financial anguish.

My experience in Bolivia in 1985-86 soon brought me to Poland in the spring of 1989, at a dual invitation of Poland's final communist government and the Solidarity trade union movement that strongly opposed it. Poland, like Bolivia, was financially bankrupt. And Europe in 1989, like Europe in 1919, was at a great hinge-moment of history.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
  • Educated at Eton and Cambridge University, where he read mathematics - part of the cultural circle known as the Bloomsbury Group
  • Joined the Treasury during WW1, and in the wake of the 1919 Versailles peace treaty, published The Economic Consequences of the Peace, criticising exorbitant war reparations demanded from Germany, claiming they would harm the country's economy and foster a desire for revenge
  • Best-known work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) made Keynes Britain's most influential economist
  • Led 1944 British delegation to Bretton Woods conference in US, playing an important role in planning of World Bank and International Monetary Fund

A Point of View: What would Keynes do?

Keynes v Hayek: Giants of economics

Mikhail Gorbachev was in power in the Soviet Union, and was prepared to see Europe reunited in peace and democracy. This great man desired similarly to move his own country to a new democratic order. Poland was the first country in the region to move towards democracy in that momentous year. I quickly became the main outside economic adviser to the new Polish government. Once again, drawing from Keynes, I championed the kind of international assistance that I felt to be vital for Poland to make a peaceful and successful transition to post-communist democratic rule.

Specifically, I appealed to the White House, 10 Downing Street, the Elysee and the German Chancellery, for enlightened aid to Poland as a key step in building a new united and democratic Europe.

These were heady days for me as an economic adviser. My wish, it seemed on some days, was the White House's command. One morning, in September 1989, I appealed to the US Government for $1bn for Poland's currency stabilisation. By evening, the White House confirmed the money. No kidding, an eight-hour turnaround time from request to result. Convincing the White House to support a sharp cancellation of Poland's debts took a bit longer, with high-level negotiations stretching out for about a year, but those too proved to be successful.

The rest, as they say, is history. Poland undertook very strong reform measures, based in part on recommendations that I had helped to design. The US and Europe supported those measures with timely and generous aid. Poland's economy began to restructure and grow, and 15 years later it became a full-fledged member of the European Union.

I wish that I could stop my reminiscing here, with this happy story. But alas, the story of the end of the Cold War is not only one of Western successes, as in Poland, but also one of great Western failure vis-a-vis Russia. While American and European generosity and the long view prevailed in Poland, American and European actions vis-a-vis post-Soviet Russia looks were much more like the horrendous blunders of Versailles. And we are paying the consequences to this day.

In 1990 and 1991, Gorbachev's government, seeing the emerging positive results in Poland, asked me to help advise it on economic reforms. Russia at the time was facing the same kind of financial calamity that had engulfed Bolivia in the mid-1980s and Poland by 1989.

In the spring of 1991, I worked with colleagues at Harvard and MIT to assist Gorbachev to obtain financial support from the West as part of his efforts at political reform and economic overhaul. Yet our efforts fell flat - indeed they failed entirely.

Gorbachev left the G7 summit that summer of 1991 and returned to Moscow empty-handed. When he returned to Moscow with no results, a conspiracy attempted to oust him in the notorious August Putsch, from which he never recovered politically. With Boris Yeltsin ascendant, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union now on the table, Yeltsin's economic teamed again asked me for assistance, both in the technical challenges of stabilisation, and in the quest to obtain vital financial assistance from the US and Europe.

I predicted to President Yeltsin and his team that help would soon be on the way. After all, emergency help for Poland was arranged in hours or weeks. Surely the same would happen for the newly independent and democratic Russia. Yet I watched in puzzlement and growing horror that the needed aid was not on the way.

Where Poland had been granted debt relief, Russia instead faced harsh demands by the US and Europe to keep paying its debts in full. Where Poland had been granted rapid and generous financial aid, Russia received study groups from the IMF but no money. I begged and beseeched the US to do more. I pleaded the lessons of Poland, but all to no avail. The US government would not budge.

In the end, Russia's malignant financial crisis overwhelmed the efforts at reform and normality. The reform government of Yegor Gaidar fell from grace and from power. I resigned after two hard years of trying to help, and of accomplishing very little indeed. A few years later, Vladimir Putin replaced Yeltsin at the helm.

Throughout this debacle, the US pundits blamed the reformers rather than the cruel neglect by the US and Europe. Victors write the history, as they say, and the US felt very much the victor of the Cold War. The US would therefore remain blameless in any accounts of Russia's mishaps after 1991, and that remains true today.

It took me 20 years to gain a proper understanding of what had happened after 1991. Why had the US, which had behaved with such wisdom and foresight in Poland, acted with such cruel neglect in the case of Russia? Step by step, and memoir by memoir, the true story came to light. The West had helped Poland financially and diplomatically because Poland would become the Eastern ramparts of an expanding Nato. Poland was the West, and was therefore worthy of help. Russia, by contrast, was viewed by US leaders roughly the same way that Lloyd George and Clemenceau had viewed Germany at Versailles - as a defeated enemy worthy to be crushed, not helped.

A recent book by a former Nato commander, General Wesley Clark, recounts a 1991 conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the Pentagon's policy director. Wolfowitz told Clark that the US had learned that it could now act with impunity in the Middle East, and ostensibly in other regions as well, without any threat of Russian interference.

In short, the US would behave like a victor and a bully, claiming the fruits of Cold War victory through wars of choice if necessary. The US would be on top, and Russia would be unable to stop it.

In a recent speech in Moscow, Putin has described US behaviour in almost the same terms as Wolfowitz. "The Cold War ended," said Putin, "but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards. This created the impression that the so-called 'victors' in the Cold War had decided to pressure events and reshape the world to suit their own needs and interests."

By making these observations I do not mean to exonerate Putin of responsibility for Russia's recent illegal, cynical, and dangerous acts of violence in Ukraine. But I do mean to help explain them. The shadow of 1989 looms large. And Nato's continued desire, expressed again just recently, to add Ukraine to its membership, thereby putting Nato right up on the Russian border, must be regarded as profoundly unwise and provocative.

1914, 1989, 2014. We live in history. In Ukraine, we face a Russia embittered over the spread of Nato and by US bullying since 1991. In the Middle East, we face the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, destroyed by WW1, and replaced by the cynicism of European colonial rule and US imperial pretentions.

We face, most importantly, choices for our time. Will we use power cynically and to dominate, believing that territory, Nato's long reach, oil reserves, and other booty are the rewards of power? Or will we exercise power responsibly, knowing that generosity and beneficence builds trust, prosperity, and the groundwork for peace? In each generation, the choice must be made anew.



Updated 5:09 PM, Dec 14, 2014

How the 2004 tsunami brought peace to Aceh

<http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/asia-pacific/indonesia/78020-2004-aceh-tsunami-brought-peace>

'It's terrible to say that the tsunami was a blessing in disguise, but probably it was'

DEVASTATED. Aerial view of the town of Meulaboh, Aceh province, on January 6, 2005. Almost 170,000 Indonesians were killed as the country took the full force of the huge earthquake and tsunamis that swallowed entire coastal villages. Photo by Mast Irham/EPA

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – When a tsunami engulfed Indonesia's Aceh a decade ago, it not only killed tens of thousands of people but also wiped the slate clean in the conflict-racked, poverty-stricken province and paved the way for peace.

The province on the northern tip of Sumatra island was ill-prepared when disaster struck – in ruins, mired in poverty and with barely any functioning infrastructure after almost three decades of conflict.

Rebels in Aceh had spent years fighting against the central government for an independent state, a conflict that left at least 15,000 people dead, and a heavy military presence kept the area cut off from the outside world.

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, triggered by a huge undersea earthquake off Sumatra on December 26, 2004, there was only a chilling silence from Aceh and it was not until several days later that the full scale of the destruction became clear.

Almost 170,000 people were killed in the archipelago, the vast majority in Aceh, by far the biggest death toll in any single country. More than 220,000 people died in countries around the Indian Ocean, with Thailand and Sri Lanka also hard hit.

The disaster triggered a huge global relief and reconstruction effort that has been a success in Aceh. But just as importantly, it finally persuaded the rebels and Jakarta to strike a peace deal that has held to this day.

"It's clear that the tsunami hastened the peace process," said Sidney Jones, director of Jakarta-based think-tank the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), adding that "the chances of returning to conflict are very, very, very small."

Prospects for peace were already looking better before the tsunami, with a new government in Jakarta that seemed more determined to resolve the conflict and signs the rebels were growing weary, but the disaster provided the final push.

Under the deal between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and Jakarta, which was signed in Helsinki in August 2005, the rebels agreed to give up their demands for independence in exchange for greater autonomy.

The GAM fighters laid down their arms and Jakarta withdrew non-local troops and weapons and police from Aceh, and granted an amnesty to rebels and political prisoners.

'Blessing in disguise'

After a decade of post-tsunami reconstruction and 9 years of peace, Aceh has been transformed. Provincial capital Banda Aceh is a pleasant, mid-size Indonesian city with few visible scars remaining from the disaster.

BEFORE AND AFTER. The image above of a partly damaged mosque in the Lampuuk coastal district of Banda Aceh taken on January 16, 2005. Almost 10 years later, the renovated mosque is surrounded by new houses and a rebuilt community. Photos by AFP

While many remain poor, there are signs of increasing affluence that has accompanied years of stability and former rebels have been brought into mainstream politics.

Aceh's governors are now directly elected by the people and both the current one, Zaini Abdullah, and his predecessor, Irwandi Yusuf, previously held senior positions in the rebel movement.

"We had no freedom and lived in fear during the conflict," Ridwan, a bicycle rickshaw driver in the fishing community of Meulaboh, which was one of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami, told AFP.

"It's terrible to say that the tsunami was a blessing in disguise, but probably it was," added the 56-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Nevertheless, problems undoubtedly remain. The former rebels set up their own political party and have kept a stranglehold on power, with critics accusing them of being more concerned with bettering their own lot than helping ordinary Acehnese.

"We've had 10 years of really lousy governance in Aceh," said IPAC's Jones, pointing to problems in the education system, rising infant mortality rates and growing drug problems.

Violence still flares between local political parties formed as part of the peace deal, with several people killed in attacks before elections last year.

Critics also point to the strengthening of sharia laws in conservative Aceh, the only province in Indonesia allowed to implement Islamic regulations, such as one passed in September that makes gay sex punishable by 100 lashes of the cane. (READ: Aceh's strict new Sharia law applies to non-Muslims)

For many Acehnese, there has also been a failure to bring closure after years of conflict, Amnesty International said in a report last year, noting that promises to set up a human rights court and a truth and reconciliation commission had not been honoured.

While a reintegration program helped many former rebels, some have failed to benefit and a tiny number are so disillusioned they want to keep fighting the authorities, although serious violence is rare nowadays.

"We will keep this guerilla movement alive and fight the government until there is justice for ex-combatants and the people of Aceh," Nurdin Ismail Amat, a former GAM fighter, told AFP. – Rappler.com




Russia's fast track to ruin

<http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30491170>

Here are the numbers that explain why the Russian economy is imploding in the face of a tumbling oil price and Western sanctions.

Oil and gas energy represents two thirds of exports of around $530bn (£339bn). Without them, Russia would have a massive deficit on its trade and financial dealings with the rest of the world - which is why Russia's central bank expects a capital outflow of well over $100bn this year and next.

And public expenditure is almost completely supported by energy-related revenues. In their absence, the government would be increasing its indebtedness by more than 10% a year, according to IMF data.

So the massive and unsustainable non-oil deficits in the public sector and trade explain why investors don't want to touch the rouble with even the longest barge pole.

And Western sanctions, imposed to punish Putin for his Ukraine adventure, make it all the harder for Russia's undersized non-oil economy to trade the country out of its mess.
Desperate government?

Little wonder then that the rouble has halved this year, more-or-less in line with the tumbling oil price.

That raises the spectre of rampant inflation - prices are already rising more than 9% a year on the backward-looking official measure.

And there is the twin nightmare of a fully fledged slump: Russia's central bank expects the economy to contract not far off 5% next year.

But even so the decision of Russia's central bank to raise its policy interest rate from 10.5% to 17% is eye-catching (ahem).

It might work to stem the rouble's fall. Then again it could reinforce investors' fears that the government is increasingly desperate and powerless in the face of a market tsunami.

Global ripples

Russia isn't bust yet. In the middle of the year, it was projected by the IMF to hold reserves equivalent to about a year's worth of imports. That will probably be down to nearer 10 months now, but provides some kind of cushion.

What does it mean for the rest of us? Well it doesn't help that Russia is sucking demand from a global economy that is already looking a bit more ropey, as the eurozone stagnates and China slows.

As for the exposure of overseas banks - at $364bn, including guarantees - that is serious but not existentially threatening (and loans made by UK banks are just a few percentage points of that).

There are also about half a trillion dollars of Russian bonds trading, with about a third of those issued by the government. Most of those will be viewed by investors as junk, even if they are not officially classified as such by the rating agencies.

Or to pull it all together, Russia is massively leaking cash. And absent an entente with the West over Ukraine, which does not look imminent, it is challenging to see how the hole can be plugged.



The strange normality of life in the middle of Syria's war

<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30494989>


Diana Darke returned from London to Syria recently to reclaim her house from profiteers. She found her neighbours and friends in Damascus coping surprisingly well and even laughing.

Nothing in Damascus was as expected. Convinced there would be food shortages, I had vowed to eat very little during my stay. Yet while the besieged suburbs are starving, the central food markets are overflowing.

The fruit stalls of Shari' al-Amin boast bananas from Somalia, the Bzouriye spice markets are buoyant with top-quality saffron from Iran and walnuts from Afghanistan. Lebanese wine and beer are freely available. Prices are higher than before, but still largely affordable for most people.

Sandwiched between the heavily-armed checkpoints, street stands selling thick hot Aleppan sakhlab, a sweet white drink, are everywhere.

Cafes and pastry shops are bursting with sticky delicacies, the famous Bakdash ice-cream parlour is buzzing with people as ever.

To judge from the carpets of cigarette butts on the pavements, smoking rates, always high, are higher than ever. In the main thoroughfare of Souk al-Hamadiye all the usual clothes and flamboyant underwear outlets are still thronging with customers - not a single boarded shopfront - quite a contrast to the average British high street.

Sporadically, in the days as well as the nights, shelling is disturbingly loud.

Assad's artillery is fired from Mount Qassioun, directly above the city, towards the Ghouta region in the east - the scene of last year's chemical attack, whose pockets of resistance are still a thorn in the side of the government. Villages there have suffered a food blockade for the last 18 months.

But by all accounts there is much less noise than there was a year ago.

From that point of view, very gradually, life in central Damascus is getting better. Yet from other points of view, just as gradually, it is getting worse.

Beyond the 3.5 million who have fled the country as refugees, a further 7.5 million have been internally displaced - added together that's about half of Syria's entire population. Homes which are left empty, if they have not been flattened, are vulnerable to immediate seizure by others - usually the owners have no idea who has moved in and it is too dangerous to go back and find out.

Almost as often, but rarely reported, Syrian homes are taken by profiteers, exploiting the weak or the absent.

My own house in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Damascus, bought and restored in 2005, fell victim a few months ago.

It had been lived in for more than two years, from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2014, with my consent by displaced friends whose homes had been destroyed in the suburbs. Now they had been evicted by my ex-lawyer and the previous owner conniving together to take it for themselves and split it 50:50.

Determined to get it back I recently returned to Damascus to throw them out and after 15 roller-coaster days, I succeeded. Things can happen surprisingly fast in Syria. You go to meet the judge one day, and he comes to inspect the house the next - without payment.

Among the many moments of high drama were two break-ins, six changes of lock, the installation of two metal doors and the exposure of the bogus security reports which had led to my friends being evicted in the first place.

Bit parts were played by a fake general on a forged 25-year lease, and a single Baathist mother in the house with her newborn baby.

But in some ways life goes on almost as normal: dining with one friend in her 50s, whose car was lost in a random mortar attack, she explains how she now accompanies her 16-year-old nephew by taxi to play in the orchestra at the Opera House to make sure he is not picked up and enlisted into the army. At the checkpoints she clutches his cello between her legs so that the soldiers will not take it.

Another friend works for the national electricity grid: his job is to repair electric cables damaged in the clashes. Over lunch at his home with his family, he tells me how one of his team stepped on a mine and was blasted to pieces in front of him - the man next to him had his eyes blown out.

He himself was lucky, escaping only with shrapnel in his intestine. He spent two weeks in hospital, two weeks at home recuperating, then went straight back to work. His attitude is simple: anyone who damages Syrian infrastructure is hurting the Syrian people.

The alleys of the Old City are full of children playing football. Many go to the school round the corner from my house.

Such is the overcrowding - some say Damascus's population has risen from four to seven million because of internally displaced refugees - that their school-day is from 11am to 3pm, with one shift before them and another shift after them. They have 50-60 in their class but their enthusiasm to learn and to do their homework is undiminished.

The only other foreigners I saw on the streets were Iraqi Shia, men and women led round in groups to visit the shrines by a man wielding an orange lollipop sign.

When I met an old friend at the Tourism Ministry who still works at his office every day, he explained how this kind of religious tourism is now all they have left, some 200,000 pilgrims a year, after 8.2 million foreign visitors in 2010. He expresses no political views - he is just someone who has chosen to stay and do his job as best he can, like millions of others.

All over the country, even in IS-held Raqqah, I was reliably informed, government employees now draw their salaries direct from cash points on specific days, causing long queues outside the banks.

For the last two nights when I was finally able to sleep in my house in Old Damascus I experienced what everyone else has to suffer on a daily basis - scarcely four hours of electricity a day, no gas, no hot water, limited cold water.

It was tough, yet strangely invigorating, crossing the chilly courtyard to wash in a dribble of icy water, warmed by the knowledge I was surrounded by loyal neighbours who were looking out for me. Without them I could never have retaken my house: they protected me, helped me at every turn.

A crisis brings out the worst and the best in people. What I found in Damascus was that a genuine kindness, a shared humanity and an extraordinary sense of humour are well and truly alive. Decent Syrian citizens are together doing their best to fight against immorality and corruption. Morale, in spite of everything, is high. Laughter keeps them sane.

Not once did anyone mention sectarianism. Da'esh, Arabic for IS, was universally condemned as beyond the pale.

How much longer, as the war approaches its fifth year and the number of greedy opportunists in society increases, such neighbourhood camaraderie can survive is an unanswerable question. But after this fortnight in Damascus I am much more optimistic than before.

More from the Magazine

Graced with thousands of historic sites, Syria is seeing its cultural heritage vandalised, looted and destroyed by war - but volunteers are doing what they can to document the damage and save the country's cultural identity from obliteration.

The ancient sites targeted by high-tech guns

Diana Darke is the author of My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution. An Arabic speaker, she has more than 30 years' experience of the Middle East.



The unlikely love affair between two countries

<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30447039>



The chaos and conflict that once consumed the port of Mogadishu are now gone and a few foreign investors are starting to move into Somalia. Turkey is leading the way - but why is there such a strong bond between these two countries?

Where once rival militias battled for control of these docks, giant container ships now line up to discharge their cargoes of cement, vehicles, pasta and rice. Huge cranes swoop up and down. Some operated by Turks, others by Somalis.

As a container swings uncomfortably close above my head, the sprightly Turkish manager of the port tells me that since his company took over in September, it has been bringing in a monthly revenue of $4m, and rising. Fifty-five percent goes straight to the Somali government.

He won't let me take his photograph. "I'm too ugly," he says.

It's not just the port. Turks are everywhere in Mogadishu. And so is their flag. This visit, I think I saw more Turkish flags in the city than Somali ones.

Turks run the airport and are busy building a new terminal. Turkish Airlines now flies to Mogadishu four times a week, the first international airline to do so in more than 20 years.

At a gleaming new hospital, built by the Turks, Turkish doctors wear simple white polo shirts. On one sleeve is an image of the Turkish flag. The Somali flag is on the other.

Outside, Turkish builders in cowboy hats and Somalis in tatty T-shirts are putting the final touches to an Ottoman-style mosque with room for 2,000 worshippers. Craftsmen were flown in from Turkey to hand paint the ceiling in rich blues, reds and gold.

Even the garbage trucks trying to get rid of the 20 years' worth of rubbish and rubble come from Turkey. I saw one such truck hosing down a street after a suicide bombing, to make sure every trace of blood and wreckage was removed.

It all started with the famine of 2011. The then Turkish prime minister, now president Erdogan, flew to Somalia. Unlike other foreigners, who keep at a safe distance from the country, preferring to do Somali-related business from neighbouring Kenya, he walked through the streets of Mogadishu. In a suit. Not body armour.

Somalis still talk to me about how he picked up dirty, starving children. How his wife kissed members of the despised minority clans.

And hence the love affair began. Somalis called their boys Erdogan, their daughters Istanbul.

This affection for a foreign country is highly unusual in Somalia. Somalis generally do not like outsiders, and have all sorts of abusive nicknames for them. But I struggled to find a Somali who would criticise Turkey, apart from the complaint that they hadn't provided adequate drainage for the new roads they're building in Mogadishu, and that they hadn't done enough to help other parts of the country.

In private conversations, Western diplomats have told me Turkey doesn't communicate or co-ordinate with other donors, that it is too unilateralist.

Turkey, like many other countries, is keen to lay its hands on Africa's natural resources and to exploit new markets as the continent develops. But it has chosen an eccentric way in - Somalia is classed by many as one of the world's most dangerous countries.

The Turks in Mogadishu seem to have a different attitude to danger. On the day of a suicide bombing, I was forbidden access to the highly fortified airport, where I was due to meet the British ambassador.

But just nearby was a Turkish school, guarded by a couple of lightly-armed Somalis. Turkish children scampered about, playing hide and seek amongst the papaya trees. They share classes with Somali students, who the teachers say are especially good at computing and languages.

The Turks have paid a price for this more relaxed attitude to security. A few have been killed and injured in attacks by the Islamist group al- Shabab; some have been shot dead in disputes over money and other issues.

The next day, I managed with some difficulty to get into the airport compound, this time to meet the United Nations, based in a sterile, grey complex of containers.

Somewhat to my embarrassment, I didn't have a pen. The UN lady kindly lent me a pencil. I forgot to give it back, and later on I gave it to a Somali friend.

Wielding the pencil, he rushed off to his friends shouting, "Look. This is all the UN has to offer us, after more than 20 years and billions of dollars. In just three years, the Turks have helped transform our man-made earthquake of Mogadishu into a semi-functioning city."

Of course, it's not as simple as that. The UN and others are paying for African Union soldiers who are helping make Somalia a safer place. The Turks have gone for highly visible projects.

But as I sat eating the cube of Turkish delight offered to me by the sleek stewardess on my homeward Turkish Airlines flight, I couldn't help wondering whether the rest of the world could learn something from what the Turks are doing in the broken city of Mogadishu.

Kenya 'de-registers' NGOs in anti-terror clampdown

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30494259>

Kenya has de-registered 510 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including 15 accused of links with terrorism, an official has said.

The government has also frozen their bank accounts and revoked the work permits of foreign employees.

The move follows a heated debate in Kenya over a controversial new security bill aimed at fighting militants.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group has been increasingly targeting Kenya for attack.

The organisations had been de-registered because of their failure to submit financial records, said Henry Ochido, the deputy head of the government-appointed NGO Co-ordination Board, which oversees their activities.

Fifteen are suspected of financing "terrorism", Mr Ochido told the BBC.

The decision is bound to cause an uproar in Kenya, where many fear that the government is using the threat posed by al-Shabab to curb democratic freedoms, reports the BBC's Wanyama Chebusiri from the capital, Nairobi.

"The NGOs with accounting issues can only be allowed to operate if they successfully go through a thorough vetting process. Otherwise, they will remain deregistered indefinitely," Fazul Mahamed, the executive director of the board, is quoted by Kenya's privately owned Standard newspaper as saying.

Last week, Kenya's parliament passed a bill which gave security and intelligence agencies wide-ranging powers, including:

  • the right to detain terror suspects for up to one year
  • to tap communications without court consent
  • and the requirement for journalists to obtain police permission before investigating or publishing stories on domestic terrorism and security issues.

Al-Shabab has killed 64 people in two attacks in the north-eastern Mandera region since last month.

Non-Muslims were singled out and shot dead in an attack on quarry workers and bus commuters.

Last year, 67 people were killed when four gunmen took over the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi.

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta has said the government will not "flinch" in the campaign to defeat the militants.



Cheney: 'No problem' with detaining innocents

<http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30485999>

 

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney made no apologies on Sunday for the US interrogation programme that he helped devise after the 9/11 attacks and expressed no regrets for any innocents who may have been harmed in the process.

Mr Cheney had said in an interview last week on Fox News that he considers the now-released summary of the Senate report on interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda militants to be "full of crap" and that the programme was "fundamentally justified".

Critics who hoped the former vice-president would receive more pointed questions in a Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press weren't disappointed, but Mr Cheney didn't back down from his defence of his actions. He said Bush administration policies have kept the US safe for 13 years, repeatedly referencing the horrors of the 9/11 attacks to justify his actions.

How does he define torture?

"Torture to me … is an American citizen on his cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York," he replied.

Did he have a problem with the "involuntary rectal feeding" of some detainees, as detailed in the Senate report?

"What was done here apparently certainly was not one of the techniques that was approved," he said. "I believe it was done for medical reasons." (That contention is disputed by the report and medical experts.)

Was he concerned by the report's findings that up to 25% of detainees were innocents captured as a result of mistaken identity and that one such man, Gul Rahman, froze to death after being doused with water and chained to a wall?

"The problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield," he said. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent."

And in case that wasn't clear enough, he added:

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States."

Mr Cheney's remarks were greeted with equal parts outrage and bitter resignation on the part of many liberal commentators.

"An innocent man died," writes MSNBC's Steven Benen. "For Cheney, there is no remorse, no reflection, no acknowledgement of an obvious tragedy. Rather, there is an immediate shift to others he wishes he could have imprisoned longer."

Mr Cheney is fine with the ends justifying the means, he says, "just so long as Cheney is the one dictating both the means and the ends".

Benen also warns that it's too easy to write Mr Cheney off as a retired politician who no longer has influence in the Washington corridors of power.

"Most of the contemporary Republican Party not only agrees with Cheney, but GOP policymakers literally welcome Cheney to Capitol Hill to help offer guidance to Republican lawmakers on matters of national security," he writes.

Mr Cheney's views shouldn't be surprising, writes Salon's Heather Digby Parton, since it's all part of the "1% doctrine" the vice-president laid out more than a decade ago.

"If even a 1% chance existed that we might suffer an attack," she says, "we had to do whatever was in our capability, including torture, to stop it."

According to blogger Andrew Sullivan, Mr Cheney's answer reveal that his interrogation programme was motivated less by the desire to prevent another attack as it was by rage and revenge.

"It was torture designed to be as brutal to terror suspects as 19 men on 9/11 were to Americans," he writes. "Tit-for-tat. Our torture in return for their torture; their innocent victims in return for ours. It was a programme that has no place in a civilised society."

The former vice-president is a "sociopath", Sullivan says, who "needs to be brought to justice".

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, on the other hand, lauds Mr Cheney as "one of the few men publicly pushing back against the Democrats". His views may be unpopular, he writes for RedState, but his cause is just.

"Because of Dick Cheney, George W Bush and many nameless men and women, the Democrats and their friends in the media get to morally preen because they are alive and might not be had Dick Cheney, George W Bush and these nameless men and women not done what needed doing," he says.

Others on the right weren't as enthusiastic as Erickson, however.

"Whatever you think of Cheney's general approach to torture, the indifference to the innocents caught in the machine seemed callous to me," tweeted the National Review's Charles CW Cooke.

In his 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, jurist William Blackstone wrote: "It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

This ratio, commonly called Blackstone's Formulation, drew from the Old Testament and has been a bedrock principle of Western jurisprudence, having been cited repeatedly by US Supreme Court justices.

Mr Cheney may or may not believe this formulation applies to US citizens, but when it comes to foreign detainees, it appears he takes a decidedly different view.



Greek radical left Syriza prepares for power under Tsipras

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30481307>

A large portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg hangs in the Thessaloniki office of Nikos Samanidis, a founder member of Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left, better known as Syriza.

With many Greeks exhausted by five years of recession, tax hikes and record unemployment rates, Syriza and its firebrand leader Alexis Tsipras are tipped to win the early elections that must be called, according to the Greek constitution, if parliament fails to elect a new head of state by 29 December.

"After decades on the defensive, the left is staging a comeback. Not just in Greece, but in Europe and Latin America as well," said Mr Samanidis, a top official of Syriza in the country's second city.

Alluring as it may prove to Greek voters, the prospect of a leftist party coming to power in Europe's most indebted country is rattling the markets and European capitals.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has warned parliamentarians that if they fail to elect a new president, Greece could risk a disastrous exit from the eurozone.

The Athens Stock Exchange posted its biggest drop on record on 9 December, while borrowing costs for Greece have skyrocketed amid the political uncertainty.

A number of senior European officials have urged voters to support the ruling coalition of conservatives and social democrats. "I wouldn't like extreme forces to come to power. I would prefer if known faces show up," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently told journalists, commenting on the chances of a general election in Greece.

'Still radical'

While Rosa Luxemburg may adorn its offices, Syriza is not the revolutionary force that her Spartacists represented in Germany a century ago.

As the party draws closer to real power, it has softened many of its sharp edges and tried to build bridges, even with City hedge funds. Syriza is vowing to keep Greece within the eurozone and has reassured creditors it will refrain from unilateral decisions on the debt issue.

Far from being destructive, Syriza's political proposals offer a reasonable way out of austerity and a chance to replace existing bailout laws with new ones, argues political economist Yanis Varoufakis.

"The first priority is renegotiating with creditors. Syriza needs to speak the language of truth about the continuing triple bankruptcy of the country - public debt, banks, private sector - something no Greek government has done so far. Then they need to table positions that the average German will find reasonable."

But Syriza and its 40-year-old leader are still seen by many in the Greek and European establishment as unknown and potentially dangerous quantities.

Mr Tsipras has warned markets that they "will have to dance to the tune" of his government, while Syriza promises to boost public spending, reverse privatisations, increase salaries and pensions and repeal bailout laws liberalising the markets.

Nikos Samanidis emphasises that the prospect of power has not blunted the radical nature of the party, despite its meteoric rise from relative obscurity to frontrunner in little over two years.

"The rich, the elites, the markets, the super-rich, the top 10%, yes, they obviously do have reason to worry," he says.

"They will lose their privileges. Our voter base has expanded greatly, but the grassroots, radical nature of Syriza has been preserved thanks to the crisis. Our party has not and will not sever its ties with the streets, with the social movements it arose from."

Syriza was formed in 2004 as a coalition of groups and parties ranging from Maoists to greens. Before 2012 its electoral appeal had been of little consequence for Greece's political system, never exceeding 5% of the vote. It only became a unitary party in 2013.

But in 2012, in the apogee of the Greek crisis, Syriza took the political establishment by storm, polling close to 27% in the June general elections and eclipsing the social democrats to become the second-largest party in the country. In the European Parliament elections in May 2014, Syriza emerged victorious, polling close to 27% of the vote.

No fear

Mr Tsipras, the youngest political leader in Greece's history, was instrumental in transforming Syriza from an also-ran to a potential ruling party. Known for his rhetorical skills, his dislike of neckties and his good looks, Mr Tsipras rose to the leadership of Syriza in 2008 and was elected to parliament in 2009.

"The economic crisis and the collapse of traditional parties certainly helped Syriza grow its influence, but it was Alexis Tsipras who catapulted the party," says Christoforos Vernardakis, Professor of Political Science at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and founder of the public opinion survey company VPRC.

"This happened because Tsipras is young and knows no fear. He took a defensive left and turned it into a credible choice for government."

Despite his undoubted charisma, several Syriza members and officials who know Mr Tsipras personally describe him as "an everyday, decent person".

"With Alexis we go a long way back. We used to hang out and I can tell you he is a normal, decent guy. Even as a leader, he likes collective processes and decisions," said Mr Samanidis.

Critics, on the other hand, see Mr Tsipras as arrogant, inexperienced and power hungry - a maverick politician willing to sacrifice Greece to rise to power.

Long-time friend Nikos Karanikas rejects this description of Syriza's "comrade-president".

"Although it was clear from the start he was a leader, it took some encouragement from us for him to come forward and take the lead - he had no lust for power," said Mr Karanikas, a member of the political bureau of Syriza's largest constituent group, Synaspismos.

Tsipras, he argues, still lives in the middle class Athens neighbourhood of Kypseli, and cut his professional teeth while working as a civil engineer. He was one of the "700-euro generation" of youth who struggled to advance beyond the average Greek salary.

'Operation of terror'

Eager as they are for a historic victory for the left, Syriza officials are also prepared for a long struggle. "My generation has a chance now with Syriza to stop the disaster. We have no fear of governing," said Mr. Karanikas.

The party's first battle starts on Wednesday, in the first ballot of the parliamentary election for president.

Some analysts predict that renewed fears for Greece's future in the eurozone will convince enough MPs to vote for the government's presidential candidate; or, in the event of a general election, convince enough Greeks to turn the tide in favour of the ruling coalition.

Alexis Tsipras has denounced this tactic as an "operation of terror" by Prime Minister Samaras and European officials.

Some Greeks seem to believe the danger is real, with weekend polls showing that Syriza's lead has narrowed slightly.

But others, like Panagiotis Makridis, a waiter at a Greek coffee shop, are enraged by what they say is blatant scaremongering from the government, Brussels and European capitals.

"So Jean-Claude Juncker is telling me who to vote for? I didn't plan on voting Syriza, but now I just might."


The Russians fighting a 'holy war' in Ukraine

<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30518054>

Since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine eight months ago, the Kremlin has denied any direct involvement, including sending Russian troops. But there are Russian fighters on the ground who are proud to announce their presence - and to discuss their ideas of "holy war".

Even when the morning sun catches the gold domes of its Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, stronghold of the pro-Russian rebels, doesn't look much like Jerusalem. Trolley-buses trundle through the dirty snow, past belching chimneys and the slag-heaps from the coal-mines on the edge of town.

But through the smoke and grime, Pavel Rasta sees a sacred city - and he's fighting for it, Kalashnikov in hand, just like the Crusaders fought for the heart of Christendom centuries ago. He may be a financial manager - most recently working in a funeral parlour - who's never held a gun before in his life, but he sees himself as the modern version of a medieval knight, dedicated to chivalrous ideas of Christian purity and defending the defenceless.

And the defenceless, for him, are the citizens of eastern Ukraine, mainly Russian-speaking, who are under attack, as he sees it, by a ruthless Ukrainian government intent on wiping them out culturally, or even physically.

Pavel, from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don - a tall man in his late 30s with a fashionably trimmed beard and a bookish air - is just one of hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,000, Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine.

The conflict around the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk has now dragged on for eight months - with at least 4,600 killed, even by the most conservative, UN, estimate. Despite Kremlin denials, evidence from intelligence sources, and Russian human rights groups, suggests thousands of regular Russian troops have also been fighting there, alongside a larger number of local rebels. But men like Pavel say they aren't there under orders, or for money, but only for an idea, the idea of restoring a Russian empire. It would be Orthodox, like the empire of the tsars, including Ukraine and Belarus.

"Why do I say Donetsk is Jerusalem? Because what's happening here is a holy war of the Russian people for its own future, for its own ideals, for its children and its great country that 25 years ago was divided into pieces," Pavel says.

We're sitting on his narrow, squeaky bed in a barracks in Donetsk, our conversation interrupted periodically by the boom of shelling and the crackle of gunfire. Like the other Russians here, he says he's paid for much of his equipment and travel arrangements himself. Some kit and food comes from donations channelled through Russian nationalist organisations, while their weapons - in this unit, mostly rifles - are from the rebel military authorities, originally captured from Ukrainian forces or supplied by Russia.

Few Western journalists have been allowed to meet the volunteers before - revealing any Russian involvement in the war is sensitive - and some of his comrades in this unit of Russian and Ukrainian volunteers are nervous about our presence.

They're a mixed bunch: some are retired professional soldiers hardened by Russia's wars against the Chechen rebels, some former policemen - and possibly, secret service agents - who later went into business, some youngsters who've never even served in the army. And their cultural reference-points are bewilderingly eclectic. The image of Orthodox Crusaders sits uneasily with the emblem of the brigade they serve in - a skull-and-crossbones - and their motto: "The more enemies - the more honour."

Some are clearly driven partly by an existentialist quest to give meaning to their lives - it's no surprise to find Pavel's most recent reading is Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. But what seems to unite most of them is a belief that they're in Ukraine not to support a rebellion against the legitimate government there, but rather to defend Russia itself against sinister Western forces that want its total destruction.

"The Ukrainian authorities aren't responsible for starting this war," says a young volunteer from the outskirts of Moscow who wants to be known only by his military nickname Chernomor (Black Sea). "It's Britain, Europe and the West." He's a trained lawyer who served in the Interior Ministry forces, partly in Chechnya, and now he's left his new wife and baby son to fight, he says, for "freedom". That means freedom, in the first instance, for the Russian nation. Pavel is more apocalyptic. "Our efforts are saving the Russian state," he says. "Because if the war for Donetsk is lost, it will immediately cross the border and begin in Russia. Rostov, Moscow, Vladivostok will be in flames."

To many outsiders this looks like paranoia. But the idea that Russia - and the wider Orthodox, Slav world - are surrounded by steadily encroaching enemies has been a powerful current in Russian thought for at least 200 years. And the tradition of volunteers travelling to defend it also goes back a long way. In the late Nineteenth Century there were many real-life equivalents of Count Vronsky, the lover of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, who signs up after her suicide to protect fellow Slavs against the Turks in Serbia, and dies in the struggle. In the 1990s Russian volunteers - including some now fighting in Ukraine - took the same road, joining the Orthodox Serbs against the Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav wars.

How do Russia's rulers regard such volunteers? Certainly, there's a complex interplay between nationalist groups and the authorities. The nationalists share the Kremlin's distaste for Western liberal values and its love of strong central authority. But many are ultimately monarchists who dream of turning the clock back to before the 1917 revolution. "God, Tsar, Nation" is their slogan - and a president who was once an agent of the hated Communist secret police is distinctly second-best. Putin has borrowed some of their religious imagery: in his annual address to the Russian parliament, which I see him deliver on a fuzzy TV in Pavel's barracks, he too uses the Jerusalem comparison. But he's not talking about Donetsk, only about Crimea, annexed by Russia earlier this year. In this speech, he stresses Ukraine's right to determine its own path - unlike Pavel, who says simply that there should be no Ukrainian state.

So are the volunteers loose cannons who could potentially embarrass the Kremlin? Or are they simply useful tools of a policy that can be officially denied? In April a force led by Russian volunteers under the shadowy former intelligence agent Igor Strelkov - another monarchist - seized the strategic town of Slavyansk, north of Donetsk, effectively sparking the war. In recent interviews, Strelkov has said he takes full responsibility on himself. But he's now back in Moscow. And other Russian citizens who played a prominent role in the formation of the separatist republics have also now left Ukraine, at least partly it seems under pressure from Moscow. Their role there no longer suited the Kremlin's purpose.

Moscow could easily - if it chose - prevent rank-and-file volunteers like Pavel travelling to Ukraine. But for now it chooses not to hinder them. It interferes neither with the nationalist websites that recruit volunteers, or with their paramilitary training camps - like one I visited on the outskirts of St Petersburg which trains them in the handling of firearms, survival techniques, battlefield first-aid and basic discipline. Perhaps, secretly, it even encourages such activities.

What's certainly true is that with their ideological zeal, the volunteers are playing their part in prolonging the war - and they believe it will rumble on for a long time. I ask Pavel, over supper, whether his friends don't think he's crazy - doesn't he ever feel like giving up and going home? "I will," he says with a grim smirk, "but only when the job's done." And that, in his fantasy, means fighting all the way to the westernmost boundaries of Ukraine - creating a new Russian empire.




Obama hails 'new chapter' in US-Cuba ties

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30516740>

US President Barack Obama has hailed a "new chapter" in US relations with Cuba, announcing moves to normalise diplomatic and economic ties.

Mr Obama said Washington's current approach was "outdated" and the changes were the "most significant" in US policy towards Cuba in 50 years.

Cuban President Raul Castro said he welcomed the shift in a TV address.

The move includes the release of US contractor Alan Gross and three Cubans held in the US.

Wednesday's announcements follow more than a year of secret talks in Canada and at the Vatican, directly involving Pope Francis.

US-Cuba relations have remained frozen since the early 1960s, when the US broke off diplomatic relations and imposed a trade embargo after Cuba's revolution led to communism.

'Respectful'

The US is looking to open an embassy in Havana in the coming months, Mr Obama said on Wednesday.

The plans set out in a White House statement also include:

    • Reviewing the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism
    • Easing a travel ban for US citizens
    • Easing financial restrictions
    • Increasing telecommunications links
    • Efforts to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo

Mr Castro said the changes were something Cuba had been pressing for for a long time.

"Ever since my election... I have reiterated on many occasions our preparedness to hold a respectful dialogue with the government of the United States based on sovereign equality," he said.

President Castro urged Washington to lift a trade and economic embargo imposed on the communist-run island - a move that can only be made by Congress.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio has criticised the new US policy, saying it would do nothing to address the issues of Cuba's political system and human rights record.

US and Cuba

54 years since trade embargo imposed $1.1 trillion cost to Cuban economy

  • Cost to US economy $1.2bn a year

  • US presidents since 1960: 11

  • Cuban presidents since 1960: 3

GETTY
Analysis: BBC's Barbara Plett Usher  in Washington

The release of Alan Gross was essential to any diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Cuba, but internal political changes in both countries had already created a climate where detente was conceivable.

In the US, demographic shifts in Miami have softened the political influence of the anti-Castro exiles: younger Cuban Americans and recent immigrants are more open to engagement.

In Cuba, limited economic reforms carried out by Raul Castro have begun to relax the tight grip of the state, and pique the interest of American business.

Cuba has stopped exporting revolution to Latin America. In fact, it's mediating the most successful attempt so far to achieve peace between the Colombian government and Farc rebels, making its inclusion on the US list of states that sponsor terrorism look increasingly outdated.

Latin American countries think so: they've reintegrated Cuba into regional bodies by inviting it to the Summit of the Americas in April.

President Obama is also expected to attend, which perhaps helped focus his mind as he ponders how to shape his legacy during his remaining two years in office.

Mr Gross' arrest and imprisonment had previously undermined attempts to thaw diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, he thanked his family and supporters, saying: "It was crucial to my survival knowing that I was not forgotten."

He described the policy shift as a "game changer".

Mr Gross was smiling ear-to-ear, a few of his teeth missing, the BBC's Suzanne Kianpour reports.

Our correspondent says a family spokesperson had warned the press about Mr Gross' missing teeth before he walked out, and for a man - who had been held captive for five years - there was a certain youthful candour about his concern for appearance.

Earlier, the 65-year-old arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, where he was met by US Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials.

Mr Kerry said he was looking forward "to being the first secretary of state in 60 years to visit Cuba".

Mr Gross spent five years behind bars after being accused of subversion, while on a mission to bring internet services to Jewish community groups in Cuba.

The US and Cuba say he was freed on humanitarian grounds.

The Cuban government has also freed an unnamed American intelligence officer who had been in jail in Cuba for nearly 20 years.

Three Cubans jailed in the US have arrived back in Cuba.

They are part of the so-called "Cuban Five" who US prosecutors said had sought to infiltrate US military bases and spied on Cuban exiles in Florida.

Two of them had recently been allowed to return to Cuba after finishing their sentences.

Key dates

1959: Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army defeat the US-backed Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista

1960-1961: Cuba nationalises US businesses without compensation; US breaks off diplomatic relations and imposes a trade embargo in response

1961: Failed Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-backed Cuban exiles

1962: Soviet Union deploys ballistic missiles to Cuba, prompting Cuban Missile Crisis

2001: Five Cubans, dubbed the Cuban Five, are jailed in Miami for spying

2008: Raul Castro becomes Cuban president

2009: US citizen Alan Gross detained in Cuba accused of spying

Dec 2013: US President Barack Obama and Raul Castro shake hands at Nelson Mandela's funeral - the first such public gesture since 1959

17 December 2014: Alan Gross is released by Cuba



MEPs back Palestinian statehood bid

<http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-30516523>

If you are in Strasbourg for a European Parliament plenary session you are bound to run into a drinks reception at some point. This time, it was an event to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

There was singing, a live band and an opulent buffet (kosher of course). The vice-president of the parliament even lit the special festival candelabra.

But attention shifted to the thorny political question of Palestine on Wednesday.

The European Parliament voted to recognise Palestine as a state "in principle", by an overwhelming majority - 498 in favour and 88 against.

There was a standing ovation in the chamber, as many feel this is a historic moment: it's the first time that the parliament has adopted a formal position on the issue.

Several EU officials said they were surprised that the five main political groups - especially the conservatives and the socialists - had found an agreement. The Germans were particularly hard to convince.

"I've been an MEP for twenty years, and this is the toughest negotiation I've ever had to endure," said Richard Howitt, the Socialist group's foreign affairs spokesperson, who proposed the vote.

He likened the process to peace talks: "We were only able to reach an agreement in the past 24 hours, and this included a series of back channels with private emails, phone calls over the weekend, and even a glass of whisky."

Drive for recognition

The MEPs voted to support "in principle recognition of Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution", with Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The text also says that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and calls on the EU to become a facilitator in the Middle East peace process.

There is growing momentum to recognise Palestinian statehood. In the past couple of months the parliaments of the UK, Republic of Ireland, Spain and France have all passed non-binding motions in favour. Sweden has gone further, officially recognising Palestine as a state.

The moves have been criticised by Israel, which says recognition of statehood in this way discourages Palestinians from resuming talks on a final status agreement.

The European Parliament clearly doesn't want to lag behind. Even the Greens and the far left, who often oppose the main political groups, are happy.

"The text should go even further," said Tamas Meszerics, the Hungarian MEP who negotiated on behalf of the Greens. "I wish it would set out a European strategy on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. But this is a good compromise, and I think it puts it on the cards for the EU to be more of a political player in the future."

This vote is not legally binding, but it sends a strong message to the international community. Palestinian officials say they will press on with a bid for statehood at the UN - and this European support no doubt helps their cause.



Notes on Global Politics

Systems of Ideas and Power
Why Do So Many...... ?

It's the Stupid Economy
Fighting for Rights?
King Client
Truth Or Dare?
The Right to Dissent



Introduction to Cross Media Mapping
Manifesto on Aesthetics

Between Tears and Laughter
Only Yesterday

News Reports
Project Machiavelli
Think-Tank

Intelligent Systems
The New Industrial State
The Age of Automation



Project Land
Project HomeFarm
Garden Diary


 
Trevor Batten

 <trevor at tebatt dot net>
 Baclayon 2014
 home
 



16 December 2014 Last updated at 00:14

Greek radical left Syriza prepares for power under Tsipras

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30481307>

A large portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg hangs in the Thessaloniki office of Nikos Samanidis, a founder member of Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left, better known as Syriza.

With many Greeks exhausted by five years of recession, tax hikes and record unemployment rates, Syriza and its firebrand leader Alexis Tsipras are tipped to win the early elections that must be called, according to the Greek constitution, if parliament fails to elect a new head of state by 29 December.

"After decades on the defensive, the left is staging a comeback. Not just in Greece, but in Europe and Latin America as well," said Mr Samanidis, a top official of Syriza in the country's second city.

Alluring as it may prove to Greek voters, the prospect of a leftist party coming to power in Europe's most indebted country is rattling the markets and European capitals.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has warned parliamentarians that if they fail to elect a new president, Greece could risk a disastrous exit from the eurozone.

The Athens Stock Exchange posted its biggest drop on record on 9 December, while borrowing costs for Greece have skyrocketed amid the political uncertainty.

A number of senior European officials have urged voters to support the ruling coalition of conservatives and social democrats. "I wouldn't like extreme forces to come to power. I would prefer if known faces show up," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently told journalists, commenting on the chances of a general election in Greece.

'Still radical'

While Rosa Luxemburg may adorn its offices, Syriza is not the revolutionary force that her Spartacists represented in Germany a century ago.

As the party draws closer to real power, it has softened many of its sharp edges and tried to build bridges, even with City hedge funds. Syriza is vowing to keep Greece within the eurozone and has reassured creditors it will refrain from unilateral decisions on the debt issue.

Far from being destructive, Syriza's political proposals offer a reasonable way out of austerity and a chance to replace existing bailout laws with new ones, argues political economist Yanis Varoufakis.

"The first priority is renegotiating with creditors. Syriza needs to speak the language of truth about the continuing triple bankruptcy of the country - public debt, banks, private sector - something no Greek government has done so far. Then they need to table positions that the average German will find reasonable."

But Syriza and its 40-year-old leader are still seen by many in the Greek and European establishment as unknown and potentially dangerous quantities.

Mr Tsipras has warned markets that they "will have to dance to the tune" of his government, while Syriza promises to boost public spending, reverse privatisations, increase salaries and pensions and repeal bailout laws liberalising the markets.

Nikos Samanidis emphasises that the prospect of power has not blunted the radical nature of the party, despite its meteoric rise from relative obscurity to frontrunner in little over two years.

"The rich, the elites, the markets, the super-rich, the top 10%, yes, they obviously do have reason to worry," he says.

"They will lose their privileges. Our voter base has expanded greatly, but the grassroots, radical nature of Syriza has been preserved thanks to the crisis. Our party has not and will not sever its ties with the streets, with the social movements it arose from."

Syriza was formed in 2004 as a coalition of groups and parties ranging from Maoists to greens. Before 2012 its electoral appeal had been of little consequence for Greece's political system, never exceeding 5% of the vote. It only became a unitary party in 2013.

But in 2012, in the apogee of the Greek crisis, Syriza took the political establishment by storm, polling close to 27% in the June general elections and eclipsing the social democrats to become the second-largest party in the country. In the European Parliament elections in May 2014, Syriza emerged victorious, polling close to 27% of the vote.

No fear

Mr Tsipras, the youngest political leader in Greece's history, was instrumental in transforming Syriza from an also-ran to a potential ruling party. Known for his rhetorical skills, his dislike of neckties and his good looks, Mr Tsipras rose to the leadership of Syriza in 2008 and was elected to parliament in 2009.

"The economic crisis and the collapse of traditional parties certainly helped Syriza grow its influence, but it was Alexis Tsipras who catapulted the party," says Christoforos Vernardakis, Professor of Political Science at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and founder of the public opinion survey company VPRC.

"This happened because Tsipras is young and knows no fear. He took a defensive left and turned it into a credible choice for government."

Despite his undoubted charisma, several Syriza members and officials who know Mr Tsipras personally describe him as "an everyday, decent person".

"With Alexis we go a long way back. We used to hang out and I can tell you he is a normal, decent guy. Even as a leader, he likes collective processes and decisions," said Mr Samanidis.

Critics, on the other hand, see Mr Tsipras as arrogant, inexperienced and power hungry - a maverick politician willing to sacrifice Greece to rise to power.

Long-time friend Nikos Karanikas rejects this description of Syriza's "comrade-president".

"Although it was clear from the start he was a leader, it took some encouragement from us for him to come forward and take the lead - he had no lust for power," said Mr Karanikas, a member of the political bureau of Syriza's largest constituent group, Synaspismos.

Tsipras, he argues, still lives in the middle class Athens neighbourhood of Kypseli, and cut his professional teeth while working as a civil engineer. He was one of the "700-euro generation" of youth who struggled to advance beyond the average Greek salary.

'Operation of terror'

Eager as they are for a historic victory for the left, Syriza officials are also prepared for a long struggle. "My generation has a chance now with Syriza to stop the disaster. We have no fear of governing," said Mr. Karanikas.

The party's first battle starts on Wednesday, in the first ballot of the parliamentary election for president.

Some analysts predict that renewed fears for Greece's future in the eurozone will convince enough MPs to vote for the government's presidential candidate; or, in the event of a general election, convince enough Greeks to turn the tide in favour of the ruling coalition.

Alexis Tsipras has denounced this tactic as an "operation of terror" by Prime Minister Samaras and European officials.

Some Greeks seem to believe the danger is real, with weekend polls showing that Syriza's lead has narrowed slightly.

But others, like Panagiotis Makridis, a waiter at a Greek coffee shop, are enraged by what they say is blatant scaremongering from the government, Brussels and European capitals.

"So Jean-Claude Juncker is telling me who to vote for? I didn't plan on voting Syriza, but now I just might."


The Russians fighting a 'holy war' in Ukraine

<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30518054>

Since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine eight months ago, the Kremlin has denied any direct involvement, including sending Russian troops. But there are Russian fighters on the ground who are proud to announce their presence - and to discuss their ideas of "holy war".

Even when the morning sun catches the gold domes of its Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, stronghold of the pro-Russian rebels, doesn't look much like Jerusalem. Trolley-buses trundle through the dirty snow, past belching chimneys and the slag-heaps from the coal-mines on the edge of town.

But through the smoke and grime, Pavel Rasta sees a sacred city - and he's fighting for it, Kalashnikov in hand, just like the Crusaders fought for the heart of Christendom centuries ago. He may be a financial manager - most recently working in a funeral parlour - who's never held a gun before in his life, but he sees himself as the modern version of a medieval knight, dedicated to chivalrous ideas of Christian purity and defending the defenceless.

And the defenceless, for him, are the citizens of eastern Ukraine, mainly Russian-speaking, who are under attack, as he sees it, by a ruthless Ukrainian government intent on wiping them out culturally, or even physically.

Pavel, from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don - a tall man in his late 30s with a fashionably trimmed beard and a bookish air - is just one of hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,000, Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine.

The conflict around the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk has now dragged on for eight months - with at least 4,600 killed, even by the most conservative, UN, estimate. Despite Kremlin denials, evidence from intelligence sources, and Russian human rights groups, suggests thousands of regular Russian troops have also been fighting there, alongside a larger number of local rebels. But men like Pavel say they aren't there under orders, or for money, but only for an idea, the idea of restoring a Russian empire. It would be Orthodox, like the empire of the tsars, including Ukraine and Belarus.

"Why do I say Donetsk is Jerusalem? Because what's happening here is a holy war of the Russian people for its own future, for its own ideals, for its children and its great country that 25 years ago was divided into pieces," Pavel says.

We're sitting on his narrow, squeaky bed in a barracks in Donetsk, our conversation interrupted periodically by the boom of shelling and the crackle of gunfire. Like the other Russians here, he says he's paid for much of his equipment and travel arrangements himself. Some kit and food comes from donations channelled through Russian nationalist organisations, while their weapons - in this unit, mostly rifles - are from the rebel military authorities, originally captured from Ukrainian forces or supplied by Russia.

Few Western journalists have been allowed to meet the volunteers before - revealing any Russian involvement in the war is sensitive - and some of his comrades in this unit of Russian and Ukrainian volunteers are nervous about our presence.

They're a mixed bunch: some are retired professional soldiers hardened by Russia's wars against the Chechen rebels, some former policemen - and possibly, secret service agents - who later went into business, some youngsters who've never even served in the army. And their cultural reference-points are bewilderingly eclectic. The image of Orthodox Crusaders sits uneasily with the emblem of the brigade they serve in - a skull-and-crossbones - and their motto: "The more enemies - the more honour."

Some are clearly driven partly by an existentialist quest to give meaning to their lives - it's no surprise to find Pavel's most recent reading is Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. But what seems to unite most of them is a belief that they're in Ukraine not to support a rebellion against the legitimate government there, but rather to defend Russia itself against sinister Western forces that want its total destruction.

"The Ukrainian authorities aren't responsible for starting this war," says a young volunteer from the outskirts of Moscow who wants to be known only by his military nickname Chernomor (Black Sea). "It's Britain, Europe and the West." He's a trained lawyer who served in the Interior Ministry forces, partly in Chechnya, and now he's left his new wife and baby son to fight, he says, for "freedom". That means freedom, in the first instance, for the Russian nation. Pavel is more apocalyptic. "Our efforts are saving the Russian state," he says. "Because if the war for Donetsk is lost, it will immediately cross the border and begin in Russia. Rostov, Moscow, Vladivostok will be in flames."

To many outsiders this looks like paranoia. But the idea that Russia - and the wider Orthodox, Slav world - are surrounded by steadily encroaching enemies has been a powerful current in Russian thought for at least 200 years. And the tradition of volunteers travelling to defend it also goes back a long way. In the late Nineteenth Century there were many real-life equivalents of Count Vronsky, the lover of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, who signs up after her suicide to protect fellow Slavs against the Turks in Serbia, and dies in the struggle. In the 1990s Russian volunteers - including some now fighting in Ukraine - took the same road, joining the Orthodox Serbs against the Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav wars.

How do Russia's rulers regard such volunteers? Certainly, there's a complex interplay between nationalist groups and the authorities. The nationalists share the Kremlin's distaste for Western liberal values and its love of strong central authority. But many are ultimately monarchists who dream of turning the clock back to before the 1917 revolution. "God, Tsar, Nation" is their slogan - and a president who was once an agent of the hated Communist secret police is distinctly second-best. Putin has borrowed some of their religious imagery: in his annual address to the Russian parliament, which I see him deliver on a fuzzy TV in Pavel's barracks, he too uses the Jerusalem comparison. But he's not talking about Donetsk, only about Crimea, annexed by Russia earlier this year. In this speech, he stresses Ukraine's right to determine its own path - unlike Pavel, who says simply that there should be no Ukrainian state.

So are the volunteers loose cannons who could potentially embarrass the Kremlin? Or are they simply useful tools of a policy that can be officially denied? In April a force led by Russian volunteers under the shadowy former intelligence agent Igor Strelkov - another monarchist - seized the strategic town of Slavyansk, north of Donetsk, effectively sparking the war. In recent interviews, Strelkov has said he takes full responsibility on himself. But he's now back in Moscow. And other Russian citizens who played a prominent role in the formation of the separatist republics have also now left Ukraine, at least partly it seems under pressure from Moscow. Their role there no longer suited the Kremlin's purpose.

Moscow could easily - if it chose - prevent rank-and-file volunteers like Pavel travelling to Ukraine. But for now it chooses not to hinder them. It interferes neither with the nationalist websites that recruit volunteers, or with their paramilitary training camps - like one I visited on the outskirts of St Petersburg which trains them in the handling of firearms, survival techniques, battlefield first-aid and basic discipline. Perhaps, secretly, it even encourages such activities.

What's certainly true is that with their ideological zeal, the volunteers are playing their part in prolonging the war - and they believe it will rumble on for a long time. I ask Pavel, over supper, whether his friends don't think he's crazy - doesn't he ever feel like giving up and going home? "I will," he says with a grim smirk, "but only when the job's done." And that, in his fantasy, means fighting all the way to the westernmost boundaries of Ukraine - creating a new Russian empire.




Obama hails 'new chapter' in US-Cuba ties

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30516740>

US President Barack Obama has hailed a "new chapter" in US relations with Cuba, announcing moves to normalise diplomatic and economic ties.

Mr Obama said Washington's current approach was "outdated" and the changes were the "most significant" in US policy towards Cuba in 50 years.

Cuban President Raul Castro said he welcomed the shift in a TV address.

The move includes the release of US contractor Alan Gross and three Cubans held in the US.

Wednesday's announcements follow more than a year of secret talks in Canada and at the Vatican, directly involving Pope Francis.

US-Cuba relations have remained frozen since the early 1960s, when the US broke off diplomatic relations and imposed a trade embargo after Cuba's revolution led to communism.

'Respectful'

The US is looking to open an embassy in Havana in the coming months, Mr Obama said on Wednesday.

The plans set out in a White House statement also include:

    • Reviewing the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism
    • Easing a travel ban for US citizens
    • Easing financial restrictions
    • Increasing telecommunications links
    • Efforts to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo

Mr Castro said the changes were something Cuba had been pressing for for a long time.

"Ever since my election... I have reiterated on many occasions our preparedness to hold a respectful dialogue with the government of the United States based on sovereign equality," he said.

President Castro urged Washington to lift a trade and economic embargo imposed on the communist-run island - a move that can only be made by Congress.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio has criticised the new US policy, saying it would do nothing to address the issues of Cuba's political system and human rights record.

US and Cuba

54 years since trade embargo imposed $1.1 trillion cost to Cuban economy

  • Cost to US economy $1.2bn a year

  • US presidents since 1960: 11

  • Cuban presidents since 1960: 3

GETTY
Analysis: BBC's Barbara Plett Usher  in Washington

The release of Alan Gross was essential to any diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Cuba, but internal political changes in both countries had already created a climate where detente was conceivable.

In the US, demographic shifts in Miami have softened the political influence of the anti-Castro exiles: younger Cuban Americans and recent immigrants are more open to engagement.

In Cuba, limited economic reforms carried out by Raul Castro have begun to relax the tight grip of the state, and pique the interest of American business.

Cuba has stopped exporting revolution to Latin America. In fact, it's mediating the most successful attempt so far to achieve peace between the Colombian government and Farc rebels, making its inclusion on the US list of states that sponsor terrorism look increasingly outdated.

Latin American countries think so: they've reintegrated Cuba into regional bodies by inviting it to the Summit of the Americas in April.

President Obama is also expected to attend, which perhaps helped focus his mind as he ponders how to shape his legacy during his remaining two years in office.

Mr Gross' arrest and imprisonment had previously undermined attempts to thaw diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, he thanked his family and supporters, saying: "It was crucial to my survival knowing that I was not forgotten."

He described the policy shift as a "game changer".

Mr Gross was smiling ear-to-ear, a few of his teeth missing, the BBC's Suzanne Kianpour reports.

Our correspondent says a family spokesperson had warned the press about Mr Gross' missing teeth before he walked out, and for a man - who had been held captive for five years - there was a certain youthful candour about his concern for appearance.

Earlier, the 65-year-old arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, where he was met by US Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials.

Mr Kerry said he was looking forward "to being the first secretary of state in 60 years to visit Cuba".

Mr Gross spent five years behind bars after being accused of subversion, while on a mission to bring internet services to Jewish community groups in Cuba.

The US and Cuba say he was freed on humanitarian grounds.

The Cuban government has also freed an unnamed American intelligence officer who had been in jail in Cuba for nearly 20 years.

Three Cubans jailed in the US have arrived back in Cuba.

They are part of the so-called "Cuban Five" who US prosecutors said had sought to infiltrate US military bases and spied on Cuban exiles in Florida.

Two of them had recently been allowed to return to Cuba after finishing their sentences.

Key dates

1959: Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army defeat the US-backed Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista

1960-1961: Cuba nationalises US businesses without compensation; US breaks off diplomatic relations and imposes a trade embargo in response

1961: Failed Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-backed Cuban exiles

1962: Soviet Union deploys ballistic missiles to Cuba, prompting Cuban Missile Crisis

2001: Five Cubans, dubbed the Cuban Five, are jailed in Miami for spying

2008: Raul Castro becomes Cuban president

2009: US citizen Alan Gross detained in Cuba accused of spying

Dec 2013: US President Barack Obama and Raul Castro shake hands at Nelson Mandela's funeral - the first such public gesture since 1959

17 December 2014: Alan Gross is released by Cuba



MEPs back Palestinian statehood bid

<http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-30516523>

If you are in Strasbourg for a European Parliament plenary session you are bound to run into a drinks reception at some point. This time, it was an event to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

There was singing, a live band and an opulent buffet (kosher of course). The vice-president of the parliament even lit the special festival candelabra.

But attention shifted to the thorny political question of Palestine on Wednesday.

The European Parliament voted to recognise Palestine as a state "in principle", by an overwhelming majority - 498 in favour and 88 against.

There was a standing ovation in the chamber, as many feel this is a historic moment: it's the first time that the parliament has adopted a formal position on the issue.

Several EU officials said they were surprised that the five main political groups - especially the conservatives and the socialists - had found an agreement. The Germans were particularly hard to convince.

"I've been an MEP for twenty years, and this is the toughest negotiation I've ever had to endure," said Richard Howitt, the Socialist group's foreign affairs spokesperson, who proposed the vote.

He likened the process to peace talks: "We were only able to reach an agreement in the past 24 hours, and this included a series of back channels with private emails, phone calls over the weekend, and even a glass of whisky."

Drive for recognition

The MEPs voted to support "in principle recognition of Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution", with Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The text also says that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and calls on the EU to become a facilitator in the Middle East peace process.

There is growing momentum to recognise Palestinian statehood. In the past couple of months the parliaments of the UK, Republic of Ireland, Spain and France have all passed non-binding motions in favour. Sweden has gone further, officially recognising Palestine as a state.

The moves have been criticised by Israel, which says recognition of statehood in this way discourages Palestinians from resuming talks on a final status agreement.

The European Parliament clearly doesn't want to lag behind. Even the Greens and the far left, who often oppose the main political groups, are happy.

"The text should go even further," said Tamas Meszerics, the Hungarian MEP who negotiated on behalf of the Greens. "I wish it would set out a European strategy on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. But this is a good compromise, and I think it puts it on the cards for the EU to be more of a political player in the future."

This vote is not legally binding, but it sends a strong message to the international community. Palestinian officials say they will press on with a bid for statehood at the UN - and this European support no doubt helps their cause.





Notes on Global Politics

Systems of Ideas and Power
Why Do So Many...... ?

It's the Stupid Economy
Fighting for Rights?
King Client
Truth Or Dare?
The Right to Dissent



Introduction to Cross Media Mapping
Manifesto on Aesthetics

Between Tears and Laughter
Only Yesterday

News Reports
Project Machiavelli
Think-Tank

Intelligent Systems
The New Industrial State
The Age of Automation



Project Land
Project HomeFarm
Garden Diary


 
Trevor Batten

 <trevor at tebatt dot net>
 Baclayon 2014
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