Headline of the Day

Fred Goodwin Gets Superinjunction to Stop Him Being Called a Banker - The Guardian, London, 11 March, 2011

Glossary:

Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin CA, FCIBS, former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), which was bailed out by the British government in 2008 and is now owned mostly by the British taxpayer. Also known as “Fred the Shred.”

Superinjunction: an injunction obtained in a secret convening of the court where in the result, the court file, the names of the parties and even the terms of the injunction order are secret except as between the parties, counsel, the judge and the court staff.

'Sobering Lessons in the Politics of Illusion'

Fred Halliday, who died last year, was a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science for more than 20 years and one of the world's most influential scholars in the field of Middle Eastern studies. He spoke ten languages, including Arabic, and had over 20 books to his name, including Two Hours That Shook The World, which was about 9/11. In 2009, he wrote an article about Libya on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the coup d'etat that installed Muammar Gaddafi in power. Reflecting on the "sobering lessons in the politics of illusion" to be learned from the history of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, this is how Halliday ended the piece:

Libya is far from the most brutal regime in the world, or even the region: it has less blood on its hands than (for example) Sudan, Iraq, and Syria. But al-Jamahiriyah remains a grotesque entity. In its way it resembles a protection-racket run by a family group and its associates who wrested control of a state and its people by force and then ruled for forty years with no attempt to secure popular legitimation.

The outside world may be compelled by considerations of security, energy and investment to deal with this state. But there is no reason to indulge the fantasies that are constantly promoted about its political and social character, within the country and abroad. Al-Jamahiriyah is not a "state of the masses": it is a state of robbers, in formal terms a kleptocracy. The Libyan people have for far too long been denied the right to choose their own leaders and political system - and to benefit from their country's wealth via oil-and-gas deals of the kind the west is now so keen to promote. The sooner the form of rule they endure is consigned to the past, the better.

Cameron in Egypt

On the whole, the early weeks of 2011 have not gone well for David Cameron. Mainly, the British prime minister has been bogged down in a defense of his so-called Big Society agenda ahead of his government's first big series of budget cuts, which will prove increasingly unpopular as they kick in. He has, however, created a raft of good headlines this morning by being the first world leader to visit Egypt since Hosni Mubarak was ousted as president 10 days ago.

Cameron's diplomatic coup is not entirely without risk; he could lend premature legitimacy to a military junta that may not introduce democratic reforms on a schedule that will placate the still-massing opposition forces in the country. But in the short term, it has to be said, Cameron has made a swift, strong and statesmanlike gesture that will serve him and his country well at home and abroad. The political subtext at home will rankle his own opposition forces: he is underscoring the exceptionally strong ties between his two Labour predecessors, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Mubarak regime, not to mention other teetering and nervous regimes in the region.

The Albatross of Europe

When Conservative Party leader David Cameron formed a coalition government with the pro-European Liberal Democrats, he thought he had marginalised his hardline Eurosceptics. The new prime minister and many other centrists and Tory modernisers around him breathed a sigh of relief. That was May 2010. Not even a year later, the Conservative Party has the albatross of Europe hanging around its neck again.

Cameron's inner circle should have seen this coming. The prime minister's immediate problem is the European Convention on Human Rights and its court in Strasbourg. The court is demanding that Britain allow prisoners to vote in elections. This drives most Tory MPs crazy, and this past week they took advantage of a backbench debate on the issue to vote overwhelmingly against it.

In and of itself, the prisoner issue might fade away. But at a time when the British economy is in bad enough shape - even one of Cameron's Cabinet ministers describes it as "calamitous" - there are seemingly constant ill winds blowing in from across the Channel. Britain is not part of the European single-currency zone. Still, the financial fragility of the PIGS - Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain - and the pressure PIGS rescue efforts past and future is putting on the rest of Europe, including Britain, amount to a steady clarion call to Eurosceptics and even some erstwhile Europhiles to stay as far away from Europe as possible. With the coalition government's budget cutting regime coming under ferocious pressure, worsening squabbles over Europe is the last thing Downing Street needs.

US-UK: Still Shoulder to Shoulder?

Inch by inch, ever so slightly, Britain continues to distance itself from the United States on foreign policy. It began with a speech nearly five years ago by then-Conservative Party leader David Cameron in which he urged that the US-UK relationship should be "solid but not slavish." His words, pointedly delivered on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, presaged what would become four years later under Conservative government a deliberate, if slight, recalibration of the so-called special relationship following the shoulder-to-shoulder, "51st state" strategy pursued by Tony Blair. Then, just weeks after his party's 2010 electoral victory, Cameron made it clear on a visit to Turkey that he would take a hardish line on Israel's dealing with the Palestinians: "Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp." Now along comes Cameron's foreign secretary, William Hague, to give Israel and the US a slap on the wrist over the Middle East peace process as revolutions stir among Israel's neighbours. In response to Tunisia and Egypt, Hague has called on Israel to get on with negotiations and drop the negative posture it has adopted in response to the turmoil in Egypt: "Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States. Recent events mean this is an even more urgent priority and that's a case we are putting to the Israeli Government and in Washington,” he said.

Abu Dhabi Scenes

World Future Energy Summit, January 2011

Inside the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre

Masdar Institute, the "quad"

Masdar Institute, the cooling tower

Masdar Institute, personal rapid transport vehicle

How America Lost Tahrir Square

When he gave his “We hear your voices” speech last night, Barack Obama sounded like he wanted to hop on Air Force One and join the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. But they don’t want him there. This is hard for Americans to understand. On the way to the streets of Cairo – and Amman and Sanaa – a funny thing happened to America’s supposed desire to spread democracy around the world. When convenient, as in the invasion of Iraq, Washington has flown the banner of democracy and “American values” as its tanks and warplanes moved in. When inconvenient, when too much democracy is deemed to harm US interests and upset important alliances, Washington sets aside talk about power to the people in the interest of propping up ancienes regimes like Mubarak’s and others across the greater Middle East, just as it did in Latin America for decades. Americans don’t appreciate that this is the message the world has taken away from Iraq. In this way, America’s once justifiable claim to be a global sponsor of democracy – through its history and indeed some of its actions and interventions (e.g. its role in the liberation of Eastern Europe) – is wrecked on the shoals of more recent history. There must be room for real politik in international relations, but America played the false democracy card too many times. "Shame on you, Americans!” Wahid Fawzi, the foreign affairs spokesman of the Egypt’s opposition Wafd Party, told Time magazine. “You are giving constant headaches about democracy. The streets want one thing, and America wants another. The Egyptians are never going to forget this position." Americans, ever looking forward, have short memories. The world does not.

Abu Dhabi: The Capital of Prudence?

Abu Dhabi doesn’t look anything like a pinnacle of prudence. Construction cranes outnumber existing buildings in some parts of the capital of the United Arab Emirates. At the vast Capital Centre building site, just one of dozens scattered around the city, hoardings announce: “23 towers, 7 hotels, 1 world class exhibition centre.” Across the road, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, having just hosted the World Future Energy Summit (the so-called Davos of renewable energy), is getting ready for February’s megagathering, the International Defence Exhibition & Conference 2011. Two suspiciously pharaonic projects, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, are in the works on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island (“one island, many masterpieces”). As the rest of the world struggles out of the Great Recession, Abu Dhabi’s grand ambitions beg the question: is all this really sensible?

It’s not as wild and crazy as it looks. Abu Dhabi is not Dubai. The two best known of seven emirates have taken very different paths in the 40 years since independence. Dubai is a port that grew into a business hub and financial center – and, like Wall Street or the City of London, was hit hard by the financial crisis of the last three years. Business sagged, construction slowed, rents dropped, expats left, and tourists cooled on the OTT Vegas-style hotels and manufactured beaches. In short order, stories about Dubai’s collapse spread around the world.

Abu Dhabi didn’t completely escape the financial blows, but it was cushioned against them. By oil, for one thing: sitting on over 90 percent of the UAE’s oil, Abu Dhabi possesses 9 percent of world reserves and has benefited from rising oil prices (up more than 20 percent over the past year). With GDP per capita behind only even tinier Luxembourg and another petrostate, Norway, Abu Dhabi has lavished guaranteed incomes-for-life and other extraordinary benefits on its citizens, who make up only 19 percent of the population, the rest being non-Emiratis. As Dubai shrinks, Abu Dhabi’s economy and its population of 1.6 million continue to grow: many expats who work in “AD” commute by car from Dubai, where housing is plentiful and rents lower.

Even though Abu Dhabi’s oil reserves are forecast to last through the century, the ruling Al Nahyan family is pouring billions into the diversification of its economy – from oil- to knowledge-based. The focus on higher education, homegrown entrepreneurs, renewable-energy research, and overseas investment is evident at Masdar, the state-funded renewable energy company. Its units include Masdar Capital, which invests in renewable and clean-tech companies around the world, and Masdar Institute (photo), a research-driven graduate school developed with MIT that offers full scholarships and stipends to national and foreign students. This is not an exercise in charity, says Masdar CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber. “We’re here to make money. Financial sustainability is the number one item on our agenda,” he says, adding what could be, or should be, Abu Dhabi’s motto: “If you’re not financially sustainable, you can’t sustainable in anything else.”

The State Arizona Is In

Arizona, which many of us know mostly as one of the most beautiful states in the American West, will now be known to many more people as the place where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range on Jan. 8, where a federal judge, John Roll, and five other people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, Christina Green, and where 13 people besides Ms. Giffords were wounded. Here are some other things to know about Arizona, taken from an article by Ken Silverstein in the July 2010 issue of Harper's magazine:

Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California. A horrific budget deficit has been papered over with massive borrowing and accounting gimmickry, and the state may yet have to issue IOUs to employees and vendors. All-day kindergarten has been eliminated statewide, and some districts have adopted a four-day school week. Arizona’s state parks, despite bringing in 2 million visitors and $266 million annually, have lost 80 percent of their budget, with up to two thirds of the parks now in danger of closure. The legislature slashed the budget for the Department of Revenue, which required the agency to fire hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors; lawmakers boasted that these measures saved $25 million, but a top official in the department estimated that the state would miss out on $174 million in tax collections as a result...

Arizona lawmakers have shown little enthusiasm for dealing seriously with the state’s insolvency. They have instead preferred to focus on matters that have little to do with the crisis. Lawmakers have turned racial profiling into official policy, through a new law that requires police to stop suspected illegal immigrants and demand to see their papers; anyone not carrying acceptable proof of citizenship can be arrested for trespassing and thrown in jail for up to six months. But this is just one bill in what has been a season of provocative legislating. Another new law bans the funding of any ethnic-studies programs in the public schools, while a third prohibits “intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.” Lawmakers declared February 8 the “Boy Scout Holiday,” took time out to discount fishing-license fees for Eagle Scouts, and approved a constitutional right to hunt…

In January, Senator Jack Harper, an immaculately combed zealot who speaks in the patter of an infomercial voiceover, submitted a bill that would allow faculty members to carry guns on university campuses, saying it was “one very small step in trying to eliminate gun-free zones, where there’s absolutely no one who could defend themselves if a terrorist incident happened.” The house passed a measure that would force President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election, as well as a bill that bars Arizona from entering into any program to regulate greenhouse gases without approval from the legislature. “There are only two ways to vote on this,” said Representative Ray Barnes of the latter initiative. “Yes, or face the east in the morning and worship the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] because they own you.”...

As the national midterm elections approach in November, the Tea Party movement is supplying the Republican Party with most of its momentum. But this movement, and the strain of aggrieved libertarianism it espouses, cannot claim much representation in elected office. This disparity has led many on the left to dismiss Tea Partiers as a media phenomenon, and to speculate that their ideas could not possibly “stand up to the test” of real governance. But there is, in fact, one place where the results of Tea Party governance has already been tested: Arizona, where the Tea Party is arguably the ruling party....

There will always be an England

It could only happen here. Two great English institutions -- cricket and the Shipping Forecast -- have collided. A live radio broadcast of an England v Australia match was interrupted to bring BBC listeners the Shipping Forecast, which goes out four times a day to give details of conditions in the seas around the UK, Ireland and beyond. The Shipping Forecast has a loyal following, and not just among sailors. But it was no ordinary cricket match that was interrupted. It was the Ashes, a Test cricket series played between England and Australia that is considered the most celebrated rivalry in the sport and dates back to 1882, and the broadcast happened to come at the very moment “the tourists” (i.e., England) were about to win in Oz for the first time in 24 years. Have a listen here.