Catalonia battles for sovereignty ahead of poll

AFP/Barcelona

Catalonia’s leader waged an all-out battle for nationhood yesterday, defying Madrid in the final run-up to snap regional elections this weekend.The northeastern region’s president, Artur Mas, vowed to push ahead with a referendum on Catalan “self-determination” even if he falls short of an outright majority in the November 25 vote.Latest polls show his Convergence and Union alliance heading for a win but falling short of the absolute majority he is seeking in the region’s parliament, based in Barcelona.Even if those polls prove correct, Mas refused to consider dropping his separatist bid, saying that there would still be a majority in the Catalan parliament favouring sovereignty.“Abandoning it would be a fraud,” he said.Mas warned, however, that the nationalist campaign in this region of 7.5mn people would be “weakened” if he was unable to win an absolute majority at its head.Surveys this weekend showed Mas’s alliance winning 60-64 of the 135 seats in parliament, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party and the opposition Socialists fighting for second place.A poll in leading newspaper El Pais found enough support to give Mas’s party 62 seats, unchanged from the last election two years ago.In a referendum on “self-determination”, Catalans would vote in favour by 46% to 42%, the poll said, with support ebbing to 37% if independence meant leaving the European Union.Catalonia, which is proud of its distinctive language and culture, feels it gets a raw deal because Madrid levies far more in taxes than it returns to the region.At the same time, it is slashing health and education spending to curb its deficit, has the biggest debts in Spain – equal to 22% of its annual output – and has had to go cap in hand to Madrid for a rescue loan.Emboldened by huge protests in Barcelona demanding independence on Catalonia’s national day, September 11, Mas sought greater taxing powers from Rajoy but said he was rebuffed.In response, he called the snap elections, vowing to seek a referendum on self-determination within four years.He has been met with stiff opposition from Madrid.“Catalans are not going to buy a train ticket with no return journey,” the Spanish prime minister said on Sunday.The separatist bid defied history and would hurt all Spaniards, Rajoy cautioned as he campaigned in the Catalan city of Girona. A Catalan country would “not be taken very seriously in Europe”, he said.Right-leaning newspapers, too, have criticised Mas’s independence drive, which comes as Spain battles recession, a bloated deficit, and a record 25% unemployment rate.Mas said his party had filed suit against the conservative daily El Mundo, which accused him of having Swiss bank accounts out of reach of the taxman, and said the report was “pure libel”.Though now at the forefront of the separatist campaign, Mas had previously been seen as a moderate nationalist, and even now he avoids calling for complete independence.The Catalan leader is seeking confrontation but is unlikely to get an absolute majority and go for a “head-on clash”, said Gabriel Colome, political science lecturer at Barcelona’s Autonomous University.

Six arrests made over alleged Berlusconi blackmailDPA/Rome

A gang of criminals briefly kidnapped Silvio Berlusconi’s accountant in order to blackmail the billionaire-turned-politician, police said yesterday in announcing six arrests.Giuseppe Spinelli and his wife were held in their home outside Milan for 11 hours on October 15-16, authorities said.The kidnappers wanted 35mn euros ($45mn) in return for handing over documents that they claimed could help overturn a court ruling in which Berlusconi’s media company, Mediaset, was ordered to pay 560mn euros in damages to Carlo De Benedetti, a business rival.The gang allegedly said they had footage showing parliament speaker Gianfranco Fini – a former Berlusconi ally that has turned against the former premier – meeting judges and pressuring them to issue a guilty verdict against Mediaset.Spinelli and his wife were freed after the accountant called Berlusconi to inform him about the kidnappers’ requests, police said.Authorities were informed later about what had happened by Berlusconi’s lawyers.“They did not have anything in their hands,” Berlusconi lawyer Nicolo Ghedini told reporters after the arrests were made public.Police told reporters in Milan that no ransom was paid, and the compromising material that the kidnappers claimed to have had was never found. But the judge who ordered the arrests wrote on the warrant that 8mn euros may have changed hands.Kidnappers mentioned that figure in wire-tapped telephone conversations, the judge wrote. But he also acknowledged that they money may have come from “other illicit affairs”.The gang, made up of three Italians and three Albanians, was headed by 51-year-old Francesco Leone, a former member of the Apulian branch of the mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita, with previous convictions for robbery and kidnapping, police said.Spinelli, 71, is thought to be one of Berlusconi’s most trusted aides.In May, he testified in court that he regularly paid showgirls on Berlusconi’s behalf, including dancer Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby Rubacuori (Heart Stealer).Berlusconi is currently being tried for allegedly having paid for sex with el-Mahroug while she was still a minor, and pressuring the police to release her after she had been held on suspicion of theft, claiming she was a niece of then Egyptian president Hosny Mubarak.El-Mahroug is to appear as a witness for the defence on December 10, Berlusconi’s lawyers said yesterday, after a court hearing in Milan.During proceedings, two other showgirls said Berlusconi was paying them 2,500 euros a month, but rejected suggestions that they offered sex in return.

Rajoy defends grim first yearAFP/Madrid

One year after winning power, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy admitted yesterday that his biting austerity programme has hurt many people.But the 57-year-old Galician said he had no choice.“It is true that the measures we are taking hurt a lot of people,” Rajoy admitted in a news conference. “But they are absolutely crucial.”Rajoy said the challenges this year had not taken the government by surprise.“We knew 2012 would be bad, 2013 will be better and that in 2014 economic growth will return,” he said in a joint news conference with visiting Brazilian Brasil President Dilma Rousseff.On the night of his thumping November 20 win over the Socialists last year, Rajoy predicted that with the backing of the nation “Spain will be where we all want it to be – at the head of Europe”.He promised to fix the economy and create jobs.But Spain has entered a second year of recession and the unemployment rate is now at 25%.At the same time, his Popular Party government is on a hotly protested campaign of spending cuts and tax increases to squeeze 102bn euros out of the Spanish budget by 2014.In response, unions led a general strike on November 14 and hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets of Madrid and other major cities, sporadically clashing with baton-wielding riot police.An outcry over soaring home owner evictions, linked to two recent suicides in the space of 15 days, led the government last week to declare a two-year halt to expulsions in the most extreme cases.Now, many analysts are counting down to the moment when they believe the prime minister will be forced to seek a sovereign rescue, too.To do so, Rajoy would have to submit to strict conditions in return for a European Central Bank promise to buy up Spanish bonds and curb the country’s debt-refinancing costs.As if that was not enough, the Spanish leader is fighting a rearguard action against independence stirrings in Catalonia, which has called snap elections for this Sunday (see accompanying story, below).

Rioters target Somalis after Nairobi bus blastReuters/Nairobi

Kenyan police fired tear gas to disperse rioters who attacked ethnic Somalis in the Nairobi district known as “Little Mogadishu” yesterday, hurling rocks and smashing windows after a weekend bomb attack there killed nine people.The violence coincided with the start of voter registration for a general election in March, adding to security concerns ahead of the first national polls since 2007 when a dispute over the results fuelled ethnic slaughter that killed more than 1,200 people and forced some 300,000 from their homes.Angry mobs broke into Somali homes and shops in anger at Sunday’s attack on a minibus which killed at least nine people in Nairobi’s Eastleigh district, which is dominated by Somali Kenyans and their ethnic kin who have fled fighting in Somalia.Ethnic Somalis, some armed with machetes, fought back and hurled rocks at their attackers who responded with sling shots and stones. Paramilitary police fired volleys of teargas to prise the battling factions apart.“We are trying to create a buffer zone so that people cannot cross over,” Nairobi regional police commander Moses Ombati told reporters, pointing to a road that he said formed a rough boundary between the two communities.“These people are neighbours and business partners who need each other, so I don’t think it will last long,” he said.Gangs of looters ran amok as the security forces fought to quell the violence.One Somali trader, who gave her name only as Hamdi for fear of reprisal attacks, said she was worried the unrest would spread throughout Eastleigh’s rundown estates.“I condemn anyone who carried out this heinous act,” she said, referring to Sunday’s bomb attack. “It’s affecting many innocent civilians and is causing the Somali community to be targeted.”Authorities have blamed Somali militants and their sympathisers for grenade and gun attacks in Kenya since Nairobi sent soldiers into neighbouring Somalia last year to drive out Shebaab rebels, an Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda.Attacks have intensified since Kenyan forces, fighting under an African Union (AU) banner, and Somali government troops routed Shebaab from their last major urban bastion, the Somali port of Kismayu last month and forced the rebels to flee.Two Kenyan soldiers were shot dead in the eastern town of Garissa, which is a rear base for Kenya troops fighting in Somalia as part of the AU force.In the Eastleigh district of the capital Nairobi, crowds poured through the streets chanting “Somalis must go!” and hurling rocks and smashing windows of some Somali apartment blocks.Rioters jeered police who fired warnings shots in the air, demanding the government improve security in a district that has borne the brunt of the grenade and gun attacks.Streets in Eastleigh, a congested residential and business area, were strewn with rocks and shattered glass. Shops shuttered their windows and most business were closed in what is one of Nairobi’s busiest trading centres.People stood on rooftops while some ethnic Somalis gestured for assistance through their windows.“These Somalis are getting used to this. Everyday there is a grenade attack,” said Evans, a non-Somali resident of the area wearing sandals and a t-shirt with a print of Che Guevara.Children in school uniform and their parents ran from school after being trapped in the unrest. Others ran with hands in air as police began arresting suspects. At least a dozen Kenyan men lay face down in one truck.Local businessman Godfrey Biketi who supplies meat to Eastleigh, urged his fellow Kenyans to be calm.“They should just chill. They’re our neighbours,” he said of the Somalis. “Even our country is fighting a war in Somalia. Now our country is becoming like theirs, it’s not cool.”The Muslim Human Rights Forum said that even if the suspects responsible for Sunday’s bombing were proven to be Somalis, it did not mean the whole community was involved.“The xenophobic attacks must be stopped at all costs lest they escalate to unmanageable mayhem at grave costs to the nation,” the group’s chairman Al-Amin Kimathi said.

He bleeds red: A man cries for help after he was attacked with machetes during inter-ethnic clashes yesterday in Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb

No nation immune to climate change: World BankBy Anna Yukhananov, Reuters/Washington

All nations will suffer the effects of a warmer world, but it is the world’s poorest countries that will be hit hardest by food shortages, rising sea levels, cyclones and drought, the World Bank said in a report on climate change.Under new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the global development lender has launched a more aggressive stance to integrate climate change into development.“We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today,” Kim told reporters on a conference call on Friday.The report, called Turn Down the Heat, highlights the devastating impact of a world hotter by four degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a likely scenario under current policies, according to the report.Climate change is already having an effect: Arctic sea ice reached a record minimum in September, and extreme heat waves and drought in the last decade have hit places like the US and Russia more often than would be expected from historical records, the report said.Such extreme weather is likely to become the “new normal” if the temperature rises by 4C, according to the World Bank report.This is likely to happen if not all countries comply with pledges they have made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even assuming full compliance, the world will warm by more than 3C by 2100.In this hotter climate, the level of the sea would rise by up to three feet, flooding cities in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh. Water scarcity and falling crop yields would exacerbate hunger and poverty.Heatwaves would devastate swaths of the earth’s land, from the Middle East to the US, the report says. The warmest July in the Mediterranean could be 9C hotter – akin to temperatures seen in the Libyan desert.The combined effect of all these changes could be even worse, with unpredictable effects that people may not be able to adapt to, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which along with Climate Analytics prepared the report for the World Bank.“If you look at all these things together, like organs co-operating in a human body, you can think about acceleration of this dilemma,” said Schellnhuber, who studied chaos theory as a physicist. “The picture reads that this is not where we want the world to go.”As the first scientist to head the World Bank, Kim has pointed to “unequivocal” scientific evidence for man-made climate change to urge countries to do more.Kim said 97% of scientists agree on the reality of climate change. “It is my hope that this report shocks us into action,” he writes in the report.Scientists are convinced that global warming in the past century is caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.These findings by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were recognised by the national science academies of all major industrialised nations in a joint statement in 2010.The World Bank study comes as almost 200 nations will meet in Doha, Qatar, from November 26 to December 7 to try to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the existing plan for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations that runs to the end of the year.They have been trying off and on since Kyoto was agreed in 1997 to widen limits on emissions but have been unable to find a formula acceptable to both rich and poor nations.Emerging countries like China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, have said the main responsibility to cut emissions lies with developed nations, which had a headstart in sparking global warming.Combating climate change also poses a challenge for the poverty-fighting World Bank: how to balance global warming with immediate energy needs in poor countries.

Australia passes illegal logging laws, joins EU, USReuters/Canberra

Australia’s parliament has passed laws to ban the import and trade of illegally logged timber, joining the US and European Union in clamping down on a global trade in stolen timber that Interpol says is worth about $30bn a year.The laws, five years in the making, impose fines, jail and forfeiture of goods and oblige importers to carry out mandatory due diligence on timber and timber products sourced from overseas.“The illegal timber trade is a trade that benefits no one. It risks jobs, it risks the timber industry, and it risks the environment,” Forestry Minister Joe Ludwig said.Every year an area the size of Ireland is illegally cleared in an industry that fuels crime and conflict, destroys livelihoods of forest communities, triggers landslides, pollutes rivers and releases large amounts of carbon emissions.“The Australian government can raise its head high for following the US in progressive legislation aimed to stop the ongoing trade in illegal timber products,” Reece Turner, forests campaigner for Greenpeace Australia-Pacific, told Reuters.The government says about 10% of the more than A$4bn ($4.12bn) of timber imported annually is illegal and that illegal logging globally causes environmental and social damage estimated at $60bn a year.Greenpeace says that high-risk timber products include outdoor furniture, decking and plywood made from tropical hardwood species.Green groups, governments and some in the timber industry have been pushing for laws to tackle the trade in stolen wood as the world’s tropical forests shrink.Illegal timber depresses prices, slashes margins and can deter firms from investing in better due diligence.There were sound commercial and environmental reasons to support the laws, said Ross Hearne, general manager of corporate services for Kimberly-Clark Australia and New Zealand, which makes various products from paper.“We face cheap paper imports in Australia and one of the factors in cheap imports is illegally harvested timber,” he told Reuters, adding supporting the bill had helped protect the firm’s brand.Telling illegal and legal wood and wood products apart is impossible by sight alone, making it relatively easy to mislabel origin and forge import documents.Tougher laws and forcing firms to scrutinise supplies more thoroughly is regarded as a key way to clean up the global timber trade, worth more than $150bn a year.The Australian laws impose a maximum penalty of five years jail and a fine of A$275,000 for a company or A$55,000 for an individual if they knowingly, recklessly import or process illegally logged timber products.Amendments to the US Lacey Act in 2008 ban trade in illegally sourced timber, wood and paper products within the US and internationally. Failure to comply means fines, jail time and forfeiture of goods.From next year, the European Union will apply much tougher rules as well.Greenpeace, which has been working with the Australian government and industry in developing the laws, says due diligence provisions for importers are being developed and will be enacted in the next 12 to 18 months.“The biggest outstanding question is how the government will ensure these laws are enforced. We know that unscrupulous companies and individuals continue to import illegal timber,” Turner said.Winners from the laws, apart from forest communities, will be firms that provide timber legality and verification services and timber importers that have already put in place tougher timber sourcing and tracking rules.One potential winner is DNA testing and timber tracking technology developed by Singapore-based Double Helix Tracking Technologies and used by Australian client Simmonds Lumber, one of the country’s largest timber importers.DNA tests can pinpoint the species and origin of a piece of timber. DoubleHelix, as it is known, can also track timber and timber products from forest to shop to ensure clients’ shipments are legal.

Tuareg separatists fight IslamistsReuters/Bamako

Islamists fought Tuareg separatist rebels yesterday in a battle for control of the town of Menaka in Mali’s northern desert, close to the border with Niger, both sides said.The renewed fighting came as African leaders put the finishing touches on an international intervention plan to retake Mali’s north from a patchwork of armed groups.“The fighting started this morning and it is ongoing,” said Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, a France-based spokesman for the independence-seeking MNLA Tuareg group. “We have not given up on Menaka.”A spokesman for Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group MUJWA said its fighters had already seized control of the town, about 100km from the Niger border, in clashes that had left many MNLA fighters “dead, wounded, and imprisoned”.Neither side could give details on casualties.The MNLA declared an independent Tuareg homeland in April after routing government troops in the wake of a March coup, but it has since lost control of the zone to Islamists.

opinion

America’s fiscal cliff dwellersBy Simon Johnson/Washington

In early 2012, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used the term “fiscal cliff” to grab the attention of lawmakers and the broader public. Bernanke’s point was that Americans should worry about the combination of federal tax increases and spending cuts that are currently scheduled to begin at the end of this year.But there is not really any kind of “cliff” in the sense that if you stepped over the edge, you would fall fast, land on something hard, and not get up for a long time. In the modern US economy, the scheduled changes constitute more of a fiscal “slope” – meaning that the full effect of the tax increases would not be felt immediately (income withholding takes time to adjust), while the spending cuts would also be phased in (the government has some discretion regarding implementation). This slope offers President Barack Obama a real opportunity to restore the federal government’s revenue base to what it was in the mid-1990’s.The choice of words to describe America’s fiscal situation matters, given the hysteria that has been whipped up in recent months, primarily by people who want to make big cuts in the country’s two main entitlement programmes, Social Security and Medicare. Their logic is that if we are about to rush off a cliff, we need to take extreme measures. And cutting pensions and health care for the elderly certainly qualifies as extreme – as well as completely inappropriate and unnecessary.If, instead, the US faces a fiscal slope, then people who refuse to consider raising taxes – namely, Republicans in the US Congress’s House of Representatives – have a very weak hand indeed.It has become clear that the House Republicans will steadfastly refuse to vote for any increases in tax rates during the current lame-duck congressional session. House Speaker John Boehner, who offered relatively conciliatory remarks immediately after the election, now says that he would accept higher revenue with lower rates – precisely what the temporary tax cuts enacted by George W Bush’s administration were supposed to deliver, but manifestly did not.It is very unlikely that congressional Democrats and Republicans can reach an agreement on extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class, while allowing them to expire for the rich. They will spar with each other for another six weeks, then go to the brink of the purported “cliff” and see who blinks at the last moment.The sensible course of action for Obama would be to step off the “cliff” by vetoing any extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, which would then expire at the end of 2012. Once tax rates were restored to their previous levels, Obama could present his own tax-cut package to Congress – for example, with a proposal in early January that provided greater benefit to lower-income Americans, as he promised during his re-election campaign.These tax cuts should also be linked to the state of the economy, so that they would wind down as employment recovers (for example, to its level in 2007, relative to total population). If the economy looks weaker than anticipated in early 2013, the proposed tax cuts could be larger (as long as they were phased out during the economic recovery). This approach would significantly transform America’s longer-run fiscal prospects.Then, as America heads steadily down the fiscal slope in early 2013, the House Republicans would have a choice. Do they vote, week after week, against tax cuts that would help 100mn  Americans, while the economy deteriorates around them? Or do they embrace a deal that cuts taxes and tax rates relative to where they would be otherwise?If effect, the House Republicans can be forced to sign onto a deal that both supports the economy and restores revenue to the level that prevailed before the disastrous experiment of Bushonomics.Obama has already put spending cuts on the table – probably to a greater extent than would please his electoral base (he does have a tendency to do this). The big question is whether the US can strengthen revenue in an appropriate manner that is consistent with renewed economic growth.America should aim to return to the tax rates of the mid-1990’s, when the economy was booming and the federal budget was in much better shape. But it should do this fully only once the economy has completely recovered.Ordinarily, partisan political gridlock in Washington would prevent any such sensible change. Fortunately, the fiscal slope gives Obama the opportunity to bring it about – and even to write some history in the process. That means vetoing any extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, and then working to enact the Obama tax cuts.- Project Syndicate

-  Simon Johnson is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, And Why It Matters To You

LettersFood challenge for GCC states

Dear Sir,

Doha Bank CEO R Seetharaman’s elaborate assertion with statistics on GCC’s food situation (Gulf Times, November 19) is timely and should be taken as a challenge to authorities to come up with innovative and corrective measures.All GCC countries are rich because of their oil reserves and this is an attraction for other states to sell them not only food items but anything, irrespective of their needs.GCC governments should exercise utmost care to evaluate the need for each and every product and service being offered and accept just what is really needed.Gulf countries, at the same time, must encourage agricultural scientists and experts to explore ways to convert deserts as arable land and to improve water conservation.Food consumption in the GCC will reach 51.5mn tonnes by 2015 and food consumption in Qatar is projected to grow at 6.3% during 2011-15, according to Seetharaman.Quoting the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), he said population in the GCC region was likely to increase further and cross the 50mn-mark by 2020 from the current level of 40.6mn.He said that 90% of GCC’s food requirements were imported. This means that only 10% of food requirements are met indigenously.  So the scope for increasing  food production in the GCC remains high.In any growing economy it is not easy to bring radical changes overnight. Plans to increase food production must be a top priority for GCC.

Joseph Anandaraj Mjosephanand87@gmail.com

Kabul must ensure investors’ security

Dear Sir,

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s recent visit to India was in the media limelight (Gulf Times, November 13). His remarks during a meeting with Indian entrepreneurs that Afghanistan is “ripe and ready” for Indian investments has been welcomed. He also told the meeting that the “red carpet” is awaiting Indian entrepreneurs in Afghanistan. But Karzai didn’t make any remarks on topics like the present security condition in Afghanistan and the steps being taken by the government to ensure peace after the withdrawal of foreign troops. He also failed to make any concrete statements regarding the safety of Indian entrepreneurs who wish to invest in Afghanistan.Being a mineral-rich country, many Indian firms are interested in Afghanistan but political/insurgent issues discourage them from investing there. Remarks such as “ripe and ready”, “red carpet”, etc will not clear the doubts among the investors until the Afghan government takes concrete steps to ensure their  safety, presently and after the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Manoj C Velappanmanucv74@yahoo.com

Dilemmas in store for shoppersBy Oliver Burkeman/London

If, like me, you’ve recently purchased a mattress, you’ll know it’s an astoundingly tedious and soul-depleting process – rendered only slightly less awful by the fact that when you do finally collapse, exhausted by indecision, in the middle of the beds department, there are plenty of places to lie down. Long ago, maybe mattress-shopping was a simple choice between “firm” and “soft”, but these days it’s a thicket of dilemmas. Memory foam, wool, gel, fibre? Solid-slatted or sprung-slatted? Lumbar zoning? Perhaps a pillow-top? This complexity at first seems hard to explain. Sure, it’s nice to have options, but why deliberately aggravate customers, delaying the moment of purchase with so many extra decisions? Aren’t mattress-makers aware of one of the best-known truths of consumer psychology: that too much choice makes people miserable?Oh, don’t worry: they’re aware. But they’ve got a different plan: by inventing so many different criteria, they make it effectively impossible to comparison-shop. Even if those criteria were identical from one manufacturer to the next – which they’re not – you’d go crazy keeping track of every one. And so the industry, as a whole, gets to charge inflated prices; consumers have no way to tell what’s good value. Airlines do this increasingly, too, with “unbundled” fares, charging separately for luggage, on-board food, etc. People get cross when Ryanair adds sneaky fees – as when, earlier this year, they charged one woman €300 for printing boarding passes – and consumer watchdogs demand “transparency”. But sneakiness is only part of the problem. Even when charges are out in the open, their proliferation make flights comparison-proof. The only (partial) remedy is to pick your own criteria, before you begin, and stick to them. Buying a TV? If you care only about picture and sound quality, ignore every other feature you’re offered. And with mattresses, as Slate magazine once concluded in a review of the industry, “just buy the cheapest thing you can stand and be done with it, because they’re pretty much all the same”.It’s not all bad news, though: the same idea of “comparison-proofing” has more cheering implications when it comes to personal wellbeing. Happiness is a deeply comparison-based notion, and our need to feel that we’re doing well compared to others leads us into traps: this explains the famous finding that many people would choose a smaller rise in income, leaving them wealthier than those around them, over a larger one, with others receiving even more.Might it not make sense, then, to comparison-proof your own life? This is one good argument for pursuing a long-held eccentric career ambition over something more conventional: if nobody else you know is a gherkin wholesaler, or a goat farmer, you’re much less likely to feel gnawed by the sense of not measuring up. It might pay to pick friends with different lifestyles, too. When I hear about successes of friends who are writers, I admit, my happiness is tinged with envy. (“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little” – Gore Vidal.) But my friend the actor, or my friend the computer programmer? For them, I’m just happy: there’s no easy way to compare our achievements, so it never occurs to me to do so. Though there is one way, of course, in which anyone can compare themselves to others. Which is why friends who want to stay friends should never discuss money.- Guardian News and Media

Asia trip takes Obama into Myanmar time warpBy Matt Spetalnick/Yangon

It won’t be mistaken for a Nixon-goes-to-China kind of moment. But President Barack Obama’s visit to Myanmar yesterday sometimes felt like a return to an earlier era of presidential diplomacy - and his aides were determined to make sure that no one missed its historic significance. The trip was carefully choreographed to highlight what the White House sees as a first-term foreign policy success for a newly re-elected president whose record on the world stage shows few triumphs so far. There was the cautious first meeting with reformist President Thein Sein to keep him on track, landmark talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a speech to the Burmese people at a university steeped in the country’s turbulent political history. But there were also a few unscripted parts that underscored how strange it was for Obama to be feted by cheering crowds lining the streets of Yangon little more than a year after ordering aides to explore rapprochement with the long-shunned Southeast Asian country after decades of military rule. On the fly, Obama decided to make an unscheduled stop at the Shwedagon Pagoda, where he, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their entire entourage went barefoot as part of Buddhist tradition at the revered shrine. Even Obama’s Secret Service agents were left scurrying shoeless and sockless, talking quietly into their radios, as they secured the area. The road to Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa, where she was kept under house arrest by the country’s military rulers for much of two decades until her release in 2010, took Obama through a decaying but bustling city still bearing the marks of its British colonial past. Strangely, Obama - in his statement to reporters after their meeting in which he hailed Suu Kyi for her heroism - mispronounced her name at least twice. And there was another awkward moment at the end when he embraced and kissed the devout Buddhist, leaving her visibly uncomfortable. Obama also took a linguistic leap when - after his talks with Thein Sein - he referred, once, to the country as Myanmar, the name the former ruling junta changed to years ago. Obama aide Ben Rhodes said it was done as a “diplomatic courtesy” and that US government policy was still to refer to it as Burma. At times, it felt like the White House and its sometimes-pampered press corps had stepped into a time warp. Cellphones and BlackBerrys usually humming at all hours back in Washington went strangely silent for the most part in Myanmar, where sanctions that have only recently been eased have kept mobile telecommunications from developing very far. Obama’s six-hour visit - part of a three-country Asian tour - had been in the planning stages for months, a trip he would have taken, win or lose the November 6 election. The fact that he won gave him a chance to tout his success in pushing Myanmar’s generals onto the path of democratic reform as he starts to build a presidential legacy. He went ahead despite objections from international human rights groups that it was too soon, despite a looming fiscal showdown in Washington, despite the eruption of an Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip. The visit was part of a shift in the US strategic focus - the so-called “Asia pivot” - by which Washington aims to advance diplomatic and economic relations in the region, in part to counter China’s rising influence. But it was also a chance for Obama, America’s first black president who has met historians and scholars to ponder the historical dimensions of his tenure, to make a bit of history. The visit, in some ways, brought Obama full circle from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2009 when he spoke of “repression in Burma” in the same breath as “genocide in Darfur” and “systematic rape in Congo”. How big of a moment it is historically is open for debate. After all, British Prime Minister David Cameron, South Korea President Lee Myung-bak and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had already visited. It certainly won’t rank up there with the breakthrough that President Richard Nixon scored with his visit to communist China in 1972 that ended decades of estrangement between Washington and Beijing. But if the reforms stick, Obama can expect high marks for the opening to Myanmar. It is a country where democratic processes are so new that Clinton, during her visit last year, was told that lawmakers were trying to teach themselves how to behave by watching old episodes of “The West Wing,” a fictional US television series about presidential politics. As he wrapped up his trip, Obama gave his own civics lesson, telling an attentive but politely quiet audience at Yangon University how Congress acts as a check and balance on his presidential power. “As President, I cannot just impose my will on Congress,” he said. “... even though sometimes I wish I could.” - Reuters

President Barack Obama and US Secratary of State Hillary Clinton  visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar yesterday. Obama’s visit to Myanmar yesterday sometimes felt like a return to an earlier era of presidential diplomacy - and his aides were determined to make sure that no one missed its historic significance

A green European budget

By Jacques Delors/Paris

However predictable the difficult negotiations that accompany European politics may seem to be, in the end they seldom fail to surprise. A crucial European Union summit aimed at securing a deal on the EU budget for 2014-2020, the so-called multi-annual financial framework (MFF), will take place later this week, and the mood music surrounding it has been intense, to say the least.Before even a word has been spoken, Europeans are being told that the negotiations in Brussels will be “bad-tempered”, with vetoes by individual member states looming large. Unfortunately, such talk could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.Consider this: A group of major companies based in various EU countries – the likes of Tesco, Shell, Barilla, and Philips – are insisting that whatever its final size, the MFF deal should commit to a proposed minimum of 20% of spending in 2014-2020 on green and low-carbon growth.These are the same companies that Europe’s national governments court and listen to on a daily basis. But, when it comes to the MFF, Europe’s national leaders appear not to be listening closely. Nor do they say much about the obvious dividends that such spending could provide, from the United Kingdom in the west to the EU’s newest candidate country, Croatia, in the east.Europe’s 500mn citizens may not be surprised by what is playing out in the corridors of power, but they ought to find it very disturbing. The issue is not only what could be lost in the race to the bottom in which many EU national governments are now engaging, but also the manipulative anti-EU sentiment coming from many quarters of the European press, which appears intent on pushing various national leaders into another budget showdown.In the EU’s western, net-contributor states, the MFF debate remains narrowly focused on how much money can be cut from the European Commission’s proposed €1.033tn ($1.3tn) budget for 2014-2020. Next to nothing, though, is being said about the Commission’s more important, and more integral, proposal: the 20% spending commitment for projects and initiatives that can stimulate resource-efficient business, protect Europe’s collective, boundary-less environment, and ensure a better future for families across the continent.The dividends promised by a “green” MFF (which recently received the support of the European Parliament) are at least threefold: a higher share of jobs in one of the world’s fastest-growing economic sectors; lower energy bills for households throughout Europe; and help in achieving the reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions to which all EU states have agreed as part of their “Europe 2020” commitments.The green potential within EU spending has already taken root. In France, for example, social housing organisations have rapidly deployed €320mn of EU money in the last few years to improve energy efficiency in existing housing stock. This European finance triggered additional investment of €2.2bn, created 15,000 local jobs, and has resulted in savings of €98 per month per household, thanks to a 40% average decrease in heating costs.Recently, Michael Heseltine, a former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, stressed the importance of wind energy for deprived regions of the United Kingdom, such as the northeast of England. And yet the penny has not dropped in London that focusing European investment funds accordingly would create opportunities to build stronger businesses and increase competitiveness in the technologies of the future – and to share these gains within and beyond the EU. Instead, in the UK and elsewhere, the predictable MFF chest-thumping that is now underway threatens to dispatch this kind of opportunity to the bin beneath the negotiating table.Europe has come a long way since 1951 and the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the EU. But we are now in the process of constructing the EU economy anew, striving to overcome the economic crisis, and creating a more sustainable, globally competitive and resilient European economy – an economy that can be green as well as productive.The EU’s heads of government need to understand the bigger picture as they prepare for this week’s MFF summit. Europe’s common good – indeed, its most promising path to a prosperous future – is at stake. - Project Syndicate

- Jacques Delors, a former president of the European Commission and a former French minister of economics and finance, is founding president of the Notre Europe – Jacques Delors Institute

Viewpoint

Israel’s thirst for Palestinian blood knows no limits

Once again Gaza is in flames. Its soil is soaked in blood and the wails of parents mourning their dead children are only drowned out by the roar of Israeli warplanes and the thunderclap of exploding bombs and missiles. Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Gazans are facing such a situation. Tragically, it won’t be the last either.The tragedy of the Palestinians is far too great to describe in words. Pictures of dead children and women splashed across television screens and on the front pages of newspapers make for some distressing viewing. They should prick the conscience of even the staunchest of pro-Israelis for the simple reason that humanity demands it.More than 100 Palestinians have died so far in the six-day conflict, many blown to bits by US-supplied missiles or crushed under the rubble of targeted buildings which Israel says are used by Hamas to launch missiles into Israeli territory.The Palestinians have fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, killing three people – a lopsided scoreline, but we are not talking about sport here. In sport you at least have an umpire who steps in when one team doesn’t want to play fair. In this case, Israel is the judge, jury and executioner, a killing machine whose thirst for Palestinian blood knows no limits.The entire world has called for a halt to the conflict, but there’s little sign Israel is going to listen. Its biggest ally, the United States, has responded in a predictable manner, with President Barack Obama saying that Israel has the right to defend itself if targeted by enemy missiles.Obama’s position is not unique as far as the US approach to the Palestinian crisis is concerned. It’s no secret that pro-Israeli lobbies influence US foreign policy. Big businesses owned by Jewish tycoons donate heavily to both Democrats and Republicans with the result that whichever party comes to power becomes totally powerless to rein in Israel.Obama, whose historic speech in Egypt after he first came to power brought hope to the Middle East, will have to take the lead to solve the Middle East crisis, or risk going down as someone who promised much but ended up delivering far too little.Understandably, regional powers should be also playing their part. Egypt has said it is negotiating with the Israelis and the Palestinians to stop fighting and is hopeful of a positive outcome. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described Israel as a “terrorist state” and accused the United Nations of failing to step in. Qatar has called on Israel to immediately lift the siege on Gaza. But mere words amount to nothing in the face of such tragedy.But history tells us that the Israel considers itself far above any legal or humanitarian obligation. That it continues to behave in such a way in this age speaks poorly of the strategies adopted so far in dealing with the Middle East crisis. It’s a collective failure of the entire human race.