France in Flames

France in Flames; La Crise des Banlieus

‘The riots themselves are not hard to fathom; several French commentators have said the only mystery is why they didn’t break out 15 years earlier. If you corral hundreds of thousands of the poor and disadvantaged into sink estates and suburbs, expose them to unemployment rtes of up to 40% and then subject them to daily racial discrimination at the hands of employers and the police, you can hardly expect peace and tranquility. Cut public expenditure on social programmes by 20% and you will guarantee an explosion. All you have to do is light the fuse.
Jonathan Freedland, Guardian, 9th November 2005.


Origins of the Riots
On 27th October, 2005, two young North African teenagers-Buona Traore, 15, and Ziad Benna, 17, were electrocuted in the suburb-‘banlieu’- of Clichy –sous- Bois while apparently fleeing from a police identity check. It now seems they were not being pursued by police but the fact that people believed they were when 20,000 volts ended their young lives, plus a tear gas grenade thrown at a local mosque, was enough to spark a major riot. Relations between the police and the young, mostly immigrant population of these crowded and run-down areas, are so bad that the reaction to this event acted like a trigger. That night there were 258 arrests and 2,100 vehicles burned.

A huge conflagration ensued of similar suburbs on the outskirts of French cities- the spread of the trouble was apparently the result of young rioters egging each other on via mobile phones- the video facility being the function used to greatest effect. Whole companies of police were attacked and everywhere cars were being set ablaze. The latter, incongruously became the barometer of the riots- a certain number of blazing cars was held to be ‘normal’ but anything over 200 per night indicated something worrying and unusual was going on. Riots spread to the north and west of Paris in the Seine-Saint Denis region. Interior minister Sarkozy and Prime Minister De Villepin both cancelled trips abroad, so serious did they consider the riots to be.

Progress of Riots
A few days later gangs attack trains heading for Charles De Gaulle airport and drag the conductor off it. Riots spread to other cities-Rouen, Lyon and Strasboug- and buildings are destroyed, police are injured, a man dies. Already it seems clear that the trouble is not inspired by Muslim extremists; the Union of French Islamic Organizations issues a fatwa condemning the violent activity. Most commentators had already concluded, after the first week or so that what was happening was indeed unusual and a symptom of something wrong within the heart of la belle France.

Amadou, a youth from Aulny –sous-bois, quoted in The Guardian, 3/11/05 said:
‘Nobody in Paris knows what it’s like to live on that estate. There’s so much frustration. All this was just waiting to explode.’ In retrospect this comment sums up much of what the riots were about: alienation, resentment, ignorance and pent up frustration. French citizens were shocked to see the scenes each night on their televisions. 6000 vehicles were torched in 300 cities and towns; over 1500 hundred arrests were made and at least one person killed. ‘It is the worst social turmoil since the student led unrest of 1968 and the government has appeared powerless to contain it’ Economist 12th November, 2005. Taking the first seven months of 2005 overall, there were 22,000 torched vehicles in France. In Greater Manchester the figure for a week is about 20. Eventually de Villepin declared a state of emergency, utilizing a 1955 law dating back to the time of the war in Algeria, which allows a curfew to be imposed in troubled areas.

Republican Model of Integration
News paper columnists were unanimous that the riots illustrate the failure of an idea central to French republicanism dating back to the revolution: that every citizen is equal to any other in the eyes of the state. According to this view, the state is both secular and indivisible- it assimilates all its components by not recognizing any peculiarities like race and religion. This means that there are no statistics based on ethnicity or religion, no way of finding out how many members of ethnic minorities are out of work; how many in prison and so forth. Furthermore:

‘Under the model of integration, the idea that ethnic, linguistic and religious groups might enjoy rights and recognition due to their particular minority status is unthinkable’
Jon Henley Guardian 8/11/05

This means that the affirmative action Sarkozy suggested last year to remedy some of these problems, was howled down by both Chirac and the leftwing leaders for offering ‘anti-republican’ and ‘un-French’ ideas. Yet to deny the existence of minorities with differences and special problems seems short-sighted and even absurd. Early immigrants from Poland, Spain, Italy and Portugal fitted in within this concept of ‘integration’ because they were white and arrived when there were plenty of jobs for them. The more recent ‘visible immigrants’ from north Africa have not found conditions to their liking. Some 750 estates are classified as ‘difficult’ and their inhabitants evidence that the old model has broken down. One student Yasser Amri told the Guardian:

‘The republic deals with citizens, not individuals. But we’re not citizens. We don’t know what we are. Not Arab or West African, but not French either. We’re unrecognized and unremembered. No wonder people rebel.’

‘The continent has woken up to its inability-frightening in the age of radical Islam- to embrace the destinies of thousands of youngsters estranged from the societies that their parents adopted’ Observer, 6/11/05.

French criminologist Hugues Lagrange, adds his own interpretation:

‘France is committed to a concept of citizenship that ignores both cultural origin and religious orientation, so it has been difficult for the country to recognize that it has been fragmented by segregation. The estates are not places of lawlessness, but where, due to the social segregation, all social tensions have become exacerbated. Far more than their parents, the youths of these estates feel misunderstood and hated. Those who have money or have been educated have escaped, resulting in an overwhelming sense in the communities that those who remain have failed.’ Observer, 6/11/05

The ‘Outcast Generation’
Ironically, the ‘multicultural’ approach, used in UK, anathema to the French, has possibly been more successful as a vehicle of integration (see quote at end of briefing). But some similarities are plain to see. It is not so much the first generation immigrants who feel alienated- though many do- it is their children and grandchildren who feel it most keenly. They who sense the racism in society against them and who do not feel at home either when they visit the country of their parents’ origin, whether it be Algeria for the French or Pakistan for Britons. It is from the former that the rioters have been drawn in France and the latter the suicide bombers in the UK. France has six million Muslims- the largest such population in Europe- and a third live in the suburban ghettos. This pattern of settlement is described by Manuel Valls, Mayor of Evry and socialist MP, as ‘territorial apartheid… in France our social elevator is blocked.’

Racism: French people- so proud of their rational intellectualism- do not like to admit to racism but it flourishes in the home of the Enlightenment. Le Pen’s National Front came second in the last presidential election, allowing the Gaullist Chirac to gallop home with the support of the left, horrified Le Pen might do too well in the run-off. Many young men interviewed for the French and British press claim their applications for work are binned as soon as their names- Ahmed, Omar, Mohammed or Hamid- become known. And France has a major problem as immigrants and their families represent 10 per cent of their population. Yet, these minorities are not officially recognized, hiding behind the myth of ‘republican equality.’ The 2004 ban on Muslim headscarves did nothing to calm feelings in the banlieus. An interesting contrast with Britain is provided. We have 15 members of ethnic minorities in the Commons, including Muslims plus a raft of our best known broadcasters drawn from the same source. In France, aside from those representing overseas territories, there are none and TV anchors plus the police are conspicuously all white. The only aspect of French life which seems to offer role models for immigrants, is its football where Zidane and Henry are deserved national icons and almost all its members are immigrants.

Unemployment: in France is very high-over 10%- partly because employees have such strong legal employment security. This means that employers are reluctant to take on new staff; that full –time jobs, especially those in the well protected public sector, are hugely sought after; and that minority race applicants end up on the bottom of the pile. Seventy per cent of all new jobs are now part-time- lasting little more than a month- yet even these are very hard to come by. A whole generation of the offspring of immigrant families have felt locked out and ignored- though it is young men rather than women who are the more discriminated against. Some calculations place unemployment on the estates at 20% but among immigrant families or ‘visible minorities’ as they have come to be called in reports- it is closer to 40%. Moreover, in one typical estate, Aulnay-sous-Bois, scene of some of the worst rioting, out of a 90,000 population, over 40% are under 25 years old. Statistics show that of EU countries France, Belgium and Italy all have youth unemployment over 20% compared with 13% in Britain and 12% USA.
Yet, the riots do not seem to have overt jihadist characteristics. Rather, the rioters seem to be young, angry unemployed people: petty criminals rather than radicalized fanatics. Some riots have seen the intervention of ‘les grand -freres’, often young men from the mosque who have tried to end the fighting. This is not to say however that these sink states do not offer huge potential for recruitment of radical Islamists in the future. The fact that an estimated half the country’s prison population is Muslim is another worrying indicator.

Politics and the Riots

The 5th Republic System and Jacques Chirac
The French Republic was founded in 1958 and retains a powerful (Napoleonic?) chief executive in the form of the President, elected originally for a seven year term-reduced to five in 2000. He appoints a Council of Ministers (Cabinet) numbering about 20 and can dismiss them should he choose or even submit a bill to a referendum. He can also declare a state of emergency and dissolve the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly and is the most powerful executive in Europe. France, incidentally, held onto overseas possessions longer than most, fighting to retain Algeria until 1962 and allowing such overseas territories as Reunion to send representatives to the French Parliament.

Usually voters elect a majority to the legislature from the same party as the president but when this does not happen a period of ‘co-habitation’ ensues e.g. 1997-2002, when the president shares executive power with the prime minister. Elections in 2002 saw the far right National Front, beat the socialist, Lionel Jospin in the first ballot. When no candidate wins over 50% in the first ballot a second is held between the two leading candidates and in this Chirac-now 72- won the top job, fulfilling his lifelong ambition. When a candidate for the presidency in 1995 Chirac promised to counter the threat posed to national unity by urban ghettos or, as he put it: ‘these difficulties that threaten to grow into a fracture that is urban, ethnic and even religious’ Ten years later it would seem that little has been done. Chirac has presided over an economy which has faltered, an EU policy which has been rejected by the nation and a social model which has signally failed to reverse France’s deep-seated problems. He faces 18 more months in power but most of his effective power has drained away. His public insistence during the riots that all citizens were equal regardless of race or religion merely emphasized his lack of understanding of what is happening.

Jean-Marie Le Pen-Leader of the Front Nationale.

“In the last 15 days our party has acquired several thousand new members. We’ve received thousands of e-mails, faxes and letters from people who say ‘At last we have understood. You were right Monsieur Le Pen. They said you were an extremist, but you were a visionary. You predicted everything.’”
Sunday Times, 13/1/05. Le Pen, 77, who was once a paratrooper who served in Algeria, calls for an immediate halt to immigration, expulsion of all immigrants without a French citizenship and a ‘French-ness test’ for those who wish to stay. ‘I have great hopes’ he told the Sunday Times, ‘change is coming’.


Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominic de Villepin

These two leading and ambitious French politicians found themselves at the centre of a fraught vortex of events which could determine their respective chances of winning the contest in 2007, for the presidency. Chirac is pretty much a tired out lame duck president and both younger men are fighting for the succession- something not lost on the rioters who have become angrily aware that their activities are being used by the two men the better to position themselves for the coming contest.

Sarkozy, 49, of paternal Hungarian origin-his mother was a mixture of Greek and Jewish- has made it clear he has little respect for Chirac- they fell out after the younger man supported a different candidate in the 1995 presidential elections. He has established his reputation as a hyperactive minister, full of ideas and energy but also as a brilliant performer on television. With his accusations that the rioters were ‘louts’ and ‘scum’ his response appeared ‘knee-jerk’ rightwing to many observers this side of the Channel but this might have been to tap into the support Le Pen might otherwise have commanded- ironic, maybe, given his mother’s origins. Sarkozy has been associated with a zero-tolerance’ policing policy, cracking down on illegal immigrants and prostitution and forbidding ‘hostile gatherings’ plus arming local police forces with Flash Ball rubber pellets. In addition however, the Minister of the Interior recommends a wider more empathetic approach embracing affirmative action: ‘French Muslims’ he has said ‘are also capable of being senior civil servants, researchers, doctors, teachers’ His careless rhetoric inflamed an already delicate situation but his political instinct was that modern France tends to swing to the right in crises. Many say the former finance minister and party leader is hard to pin down e.g. pro-USA yet anti Iraq war; it’s closer to describe him as a pragmatist who is determined to get to the top. The foreign politician he most admires is… Tony Blair.

De Villepin, 51, is a classic ‘enarch’ of the French system- aristocratic, intellectually brilliant, handsome, eloquent and with literary gifts. In other words, he is the kind of Frenchman who has been ruling his country, either elected or as a senior official, for decades. He is, inevitably a graduate of the Ecole Nationale D’Adminstration but has also written volumes of poetry and a biography of Napoleon. He spent most of his career as a diplomat but moved on to be Chirac’s closest adviser and has remained a loyalist. He served as Interior minister and distinguished himself as a hard-line opponent of Islam and easy immigration, setting up an ‘immigration police force’ and insisting imams attended courses in French language and culture. His pro-Chirac loyalty explains why he was appointed Prime Minister in the wake of Chirac’s loss of the referendum- the earlier loss of Paris’s Olympic bid to London could not have helped Chirac either. Critics point out that de Villepin has never been elected to office by voters; they also claim he is far too arrogant for his own good. As foreign minister 2002-04 however he was best known for his impassioned opposition to the war in Iraq. His address to the security Council in February 2003 was greeted with unprecedented spontaneous applause.

The Economist found it hard to assess which of the candidates for the presidency had come out of the riots best. Sarkozy had the courage to venture into the suburbs and issue lurid statements designed to attract rightwing support. However, de Villepin’s promise of more money for the suburbs plus a more conciliatory style seems to have won him support according to a Paris- Match opinion poll during the riots. But the overall judgment must be that the centre-right government has been left appearing lost and impotent as the fires have raged in the suburbs.

Finally Jonathon Freedland finished off his 9th November article in the following fashion:

‘Britain has an emerging model too, one we call multiculturalism. It did not arrive from nowhere, but partly came out of our own experience of race riots in the 1980s. Unlike France’s, it recognizes difference and has passed legislation to protect it. But it also yearns for some affirmation of common identity. It knows there are differences between us –but it wants there to be ties that bind. What those ties should be, what notion of British-ness might hold us al together, nobody seems quite sure. Indeed the problem of racial cohesion in Britain is far from solved, as we saw last month in Lozells. But multiculturalism is still the best model we have.’

Bill Jones 29th November 2005

Global Warming and the Future

Global Warming, the future and the UK Connection
‘The Problem of global warming is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible and who should pay.’
Margaret Thatcher, 8th November 1989.

‘The earth’s climate is delicate, threatened and changing. Though there is no absolute agreement on the balance of factors causing change, or whether it is now possible to slow it, there should be no doubt that climate change exists’
Guardian editorial 21/6/05

One of the problems in writing a brief on the UK and Global Warming is that the general cannot be separated from the particular. Rising temperatures affect so many aspects of the world and its future that to understand Britain’s place within the problem, some understanding of the worldwide perspective is required.

The Scientific Argument on Greenhouse Gases
It is an obvious fact that the earth receives its warmth from the sun. However, certain gases within the earth’s atmosphere have been crucial in helping retain the sun’s heat over the billions of years life has been evolving. Some of the sun’s heat is reflected back into space but the retention of a portion of this heat, absorbed by the gases, has enabled the earth to achieve a temperature ideal for supporting life. Indeed, without such gases the average temperature of the world would have been -15 C instead of 18C.
The first person to make the link between climate and greenhouse gases was the Swedish scientist Svante Arrherius in 1898. He calculated that a doubling of CO2 would increase world temperatures by 5-6C. Other scientists observed that volcanic eruptions of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which reflects sunlight, causes a degree of cooling. Some have attributed global warming to the lack of volcanic activity in the 20th century. In 1988 the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s latest estimate is of a warming of between 1.4 and 5.8C by 2010 depending on what is done to curb gas emissions.

How Bad is It?

‘Greenhouse Gases’:
i)water vapour- 60%; the warmer the air the more it vapour it can hold.

ii) Carbon dioxide- 25% of the gases; human activity causes 8,000,000,000 tons of CO2 to be dumped in the atmosphere every year-it accounts for 62% of human induced warming. 100,000 party balloons equals one ton of CO2.

iii) Methane- this absorbs 23 times as much heat as CO2.

iv)Ozone- less in stratosphere but more now in troposphere.

v)Halocarbons-includes chlorofluoro-carbons or CFCs found in fridge coolants. Takes 1000 years before disperses from atmosphere.

vi)Nitrous oxide- man made chemical, 2-300 times more absorbent of heat than CO2.

vii) Sulphur hexafluoride- small amount but highly absorbent of CO2: 25,000 times more than CO2.

Effects of Global warming by 2050

a)Sea Level Rise: Likely to be 15cm by 2050 and 34cm by 2100. If emissions are stabilized by 2025 the rise in sea level would be cut by half by 2050. Increasing temperatures produce rising sea levels through the expansion caused in sea water. This has caused levels to rise several inches in the last century. In the longer term the melting of the Greenland ice cap would be a massive 23 ft rise in sea level. This would inundate many low-lying cities and countries: the Maldives would disappear for a start; the eastern coast of the USA from Boston to Miami would be swamped along with London, the Nile Delta, Holland and Bangladesh.

b) Deforestation: trees absorb CO2 so cutting down trees accentuates the problem. If deforestation continues as at present then by 2050 there will be an increase of 15% in CO2.

c) Crops Collapse
Crop yields have to double by 2050 to keep pace with rising population. Scientists say crop yields however will suffer a 50% loss by this date if CO2 levels keep rising as at present.

d) Tropical Storms
Some 50 storms in the tropics reach hurricane status every year but in recent years warmer waters have caused an increase; experts predict a possible doubling. Warming seems to cause more volatility with more frequent sudden storms- even tornados in Britain- and even cold spells.

e)Fishing
Two thirds of fish stocks in the North Sea have moved north in search of colder waters. Warm water also contains smaller amounts of oxygen which causes further dwindling of stocks.

f) Disease
Areas where mosquitoes can thrive are likely to extend from 45% of the earth’s surface to 60% by 2050. Moreover there will be more deaths from heat exhaustion etc. In 2003 15,000 people were killed in France as a result of the heat wave plus 2000 in UK.

g)Perma-frosted Areas. These comprise 27% of the earth’s surface, mostly in Arctic areas of Asia. As they slowly melt they:
i) cause subsidence or collapse of roads, houses and pipelines in countries like Canada, China and Russia.
ii) threaten to release huge amounts of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well as huge amounts of the even more greenhouse, methane. The impact of released methane is incalculable.

h) Glacier Melts
The Observer 20th November told the story of the village of Ghat in Nepal. It was swept away when a lake, high in the Himalaya burst its banks as a result of a glacier melting. In the week beginning 14th November scientists reported a tenfold increase in such events, as a result of global warming. 24 lakes both in Bhutan and Nepal are on the brink of bursting their banks. In 1994 Luggye Tsho in Bhutan burst its banks and 10 million cubic meters of water swept down the mountainside, killing 21 people 50 miles away. Future disasters in the area, according to Nature magazine, are ‘floods, droughts, land erosion, bio-diversity loss and changes in rainfall and the monsoon.’. Great rivers like the Indus, yellow River and the Ganges will dwindle to a trickle with all that implies for drinking water and irrigation. In the short term it’s too much water but long term it’s the reverse. Temperatures will rise in the area by 3C by the end of the century. Hydro-electric plants are also at risk as the melt continues.

i) Gulf Stream: one view of global warming sees wine being produced in Yorkshire and Scarborough becoming more like Nice. But another sees the melting of the arctic ice-cap as stopping the mechanism which causes the Gulf Stream: the downdraught of water from the north Atlantic which then pulls warmer water closer to the surface across the ocean as it currently does to our advantage. Without it UK would suffer the same climate as northern Norway.

Developing World Usage Fossil Fuels: Transport

While the west gobbles up the world’s resources and has only recently has realized the error of its ways-and not all of the west at that of course- the developing world has slowly been emerging and in the process producing more and more greenhouse gases. China in 1989 used bicycles in cities to a huge degree. Now all that is changing. In 2004 the 1.3 billion Chinese bought 4 million new cars and numbers are doubling every four years. Within 25 years they will have more cars than the USA. New plant is being set up and owning a car is becoming a highly achievable consumer dream. Similarily, India bought one million new cars in 2004 and is increasing at the rate of 20% per annum. Car ownership in Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa are growing at comparable rates. Yet the difference is still huge. There are 745 vehicles for every 1000 people in the USA with slightly lower rates in Europe. But in India and China the rate is still only 8 in a 1000. Transport provides 26% of UK’s output of greenhouse gases and is its single biggest single source of global emissions.

So it is very worrying that transport is booming so vibrantly in the developing world. It could exceed transport in the developed world within five years. If growth continues as at present there could be 3.5 billion cars by 2050: four times the present figure. At that level further growth will be impossible. Oil production at present is barely able to meet the needs of 795 million vehicles; it is inconceivable it could meet the needs of four times that number. What is seldom realized is that actually producing cars absorbs huge amounts of oil. Each car requires up to 55 barrels of oil and runs on tyres which are 40% oil also.

Aviation is an even greater worry, especially as there are no economic or physical limits set for the industry. Aircraft have increased their emissions by 50% over the past ten years and the current increase is 4% per annum. Currently aircraft provide 3.5% of emissions- this will reach 5% in 25 years. By 2030 if air travel increases as at present then all the gains of Kyoto will be cancelled out. If 10% of Chinese and Indian people took the equivalent of a return flight from London to New York once a year, about 850million extra tonnes of greenhouse gases would be emitted, causing huge problems. Yet, can we legitimately deny developing countries what we have enjoyed for so long?

Economic Growth/Kyoto
India, China, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa are not signatories to Kyoto so are not in any way bound by its terms. This is especially concerning as these are the countries, still using outdated technology, who will cause the most pollution: China for example is expanding its coal fired electricity stations at a huge rate so that its coal consumption is increasing at 20% per annum; it will overtake the US by 2040. At the same time China is facing astonishing environmental effects of global warming: droughts, disappearing glaciers, non productive farms, tropical storms. India has based its transformation on service industries not manufacturing so appears less polluting but its car use- mainly by its new affluent middle class- is soaring: ‘Millions are borrowing to buy air conditioners, washing machines and fridges’(Observer, ibid)

Barriers to the Change Needed

US
The Kyoto Protocol, won at great expense of effort in 1997, set targets for reducing emissions by certain dates. Most of Europe- France, Germany, Italy, UK- plus Japan and Canada signed the agreement and agreed to reduce emissions by 2010 to below 1990 levels. Bill Clinton, the Democratic president, was behind the move, together with his Vice President Al Gore. But both politicians signed the protocol in the knowledge that the US Senate would not ratify unless developing as well as developed countries signed up too. Some reports estimated a substantial decline in GDP if the targets for the US were met. Corporate lobbyists were intent on nullifying the climate warming message.

However, the administration of George Bush has refused to accept that global warming is caused by human activity. In the run up to the Gleneagles G8 summit in July 2005 the hand of the US was seen in many amendments to draft position papers on this subject. This applied to explanations for global warming and to pledges for financial assistance to energy saving research projects. Bush and his coterie are drawn from the oil industry and it seems they are unwilling to sacrifice present prosperity for future survival. At a press conference shortly before G8, Bush pointedly refused to accept global warming is manmade. Instead he held that any such problems, if they are caused by technology, could and would be solved by technology. Many critics argue that, given that USA produces 25% of the world’s emissions based on only 5% of its population, it has an obligation to the rest of the world to take a lead on this crucial issue.

Myron Ebell
In advance of the summit the British Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor David King, said global warming posed more of a threat to the future of the world than terrorism. This prompted an attack from one Myron Ebell, an American who has advised Bush who is director of Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non profit public policy group in Washington but which is funded by the oil industry. He accepts King is a distinguished chemistry professor but says he is no climate scientist and that ‘the advice he is giving the government is poor’. Ebell has appeared on Radio 4’s Today where he sweepingly dismissed European calls for a reduction in emissions as the complaint of economies which could not keep up with the USA. Consequently Europe was seeking to reduce the gap by burdening the US economy with constraints which were unjustifiable and based on inadequate evidence. Writing in The Guardian 2nd November 2005, he claimed he was not a ‘climate change denier’, continuing:

‘There is no doubt that the climate has always been changing and that human activity –especially burning vast quantities of coal, natural gas and oil- now play a significant role in causing current changes. ….the scientific evidence suggests that the rate of increase in global mean temperature is modest and likely to remain so; that the potential adverse impacts of global warming have been vastly exaggerated; and that the policies designed to seal with global warming –such as the Kyoto Protocol- pose a much greater threat to human flourishing than does global warming…’

Ebell accused George Monbiot-the Guardian’s columnist who concentrates on the environment- of being one of the ‘leftist propagandists who will seize on any alleged crisis to advocate more centralized government control over people’s lives.’ While some so called experts doubt the fact of global warming they represent probably less than 1% of scientists while the remaining 99% form the worldwide consensus that it is an established fact. Well over a fifth of Americans in a poll following Hurricane Katrina attributed it to an effect of global warming.

Within the US Bush’s administration has waged war on climatologists who argue the ‘wrong’ case. According to the Observer, 19th June, 2005, it has interfered with research linking warming to human activity, blocking the reappointment of Dr Robert Watson to the top position of the IPCC. It has also insisted on the removal of sections it dislikes from official reports. In March 2005 Rick Piltz, a senior member of the US Global Change Research Office, resigned on the basis that the White House had ‘politicized’ the science programme. Cheney even appointed an Energy task Force packed with oil executives to produce the foundations of new legislation. The Union of Concerned Scientists gathered 60 eminent scientists including 12 Nobel Prize winners to condemn the Bush government for distorting findings counter to its political beliefs.

Possible Answers

International Cooperation

Kyoto protocol 1997
This international gathering took place under the aegis of the UN in 1997 whereby the signatories undertook to reduce their emissions of CO2 and five other greenhouse gases or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. Critics have pointed out that even if Kyoto goals are met the reductions will only be very small. But according to the Observer 19th June the best case scenario suggests that temperature increases will stabilize at 1.5C until the end of the century if carbon emissions are reduced substantially. As of September 2005, following Russia’s surprise ratification in November 2004, 156 countries had ratified the agreement, representing over 61% of global emissions. USA and Australia were among those who did not ratify. Developing countries were excluded from the treaty in any case- much to the opposition of the USA. Russia’s joining in 2004 brought the treaty into force as the emissions represented by signatories than exceeded 55%. ‘Those countries which have done well at reducing can ‘sell’ their ‘savings’ to those who have not done so well. London has emerged as the centre of such trading. The EU agreed to cut emissions by 8% on 1990 levels; fines will be levied on those countries which fail to meet their obligations.
USA claims to be supportive of the aims of Kyoto but Bush will not ratify the ‘flawed treaty’. However, 10 states in the northeast plus 25 US cities representing 35million Americans have cooperated to support the treaty and to try and set their own emission reduction targets so that there is an emergent de facto recognition of Kyoto by an increasing proportion of the USA.

Technological: It follows that what technology can do it can also, to a degree. Undo.

a) Cars: driving a car accounts for about 40% of the average person’s emissions so a ‘greener’ car is a good start. i)There a ‘biocars’ made by Saab, which run off wood chip, wheat and sugar.
ii) Prius by Toyota is a hybrid which has petrol plus electric power to maximize efficiency.
iii) Hydrogen fuel cell cars: these have no emissions at all; the hydrogen car would only produce water. The technology is there but unit costs are prohibitively high at present.
Biocars are popular in Sweden and Brazil while hybrids are becoming so in London to beat the congestion charge and in California.

b) Home heating: fuel cells created from methanol or other natural ‘biomass’ sources might take over energy needs in the future. Over 30% of our energy needs exist in the home so this is a major area.

c) Solar cells: these can be embodied in clothing as well as placed on buildings and the technology is moving ahead but there is a limit to the amount of such power where the sun does not shine.


d) Renewables: these comprise energy from wind, wave and tide. Potentially these could provide 40% of UK needs. The problem with the wind is that it does not always blow but it is a source and is being developed even though some object strongly to the adverse impact wind mills have on the skyline.

e) Storing CO2: it has been suggested the gas could be turned into liquid and then stored in coalmines or even under the sea in spaces left by oil and gas deposits or in natural spaces like ‘saline aquifers’. Such an experiment is in operation off the coast of Norway.


f) Ocean absorbtion: this idea is based on adding iron to parts of the ocean which then creats algae which then absorbs CO2. This seems a questionable answer however.

g) Clouds reflective: some scientists suggest we make clouds reflect heat: one reckons that if a 3% cloud coverage of the earth could be so adjusted, it would balance out the warming effects of greenhouse gases.


h) Stratosphere particles: University California have suggested sending up fine particles into the stratosphere to reflect sun at that level. This would have major effect say the boffins.

i) Screen between sun and earth: the same scientist as above suggests the construction of a fine wire screen to deflect infra red rays around the world.
However many of these ideas will prove impractical, too expensive or otherwise unacceptable to some.

Maybe we should look to what we can do ourselves to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’:
a) moderate transport use/change car/use public transport.
b) take train rather than fly or use Climate care to compensate for your journey.
c) insulate home/ turn down thermostat/wear woolly jumpers
d) eat local produce and not imported varieties.


UK and Global Warming
The British government is broadly supportive of Kyoto; indeed John Prescott worked with conspicuous zeal to improve its terms. UK agreed to reduce emissions by 12.5% on 1990 levels by 2010. Public opinion is emphatic in its support for government action. In a poll on 21st June 2005 by ICM in The Guardian: 40% saw climate change as already a ‘threat’; 86% see national governments as responsible for acting on climate change; 83% wanted Blair to challenge Bush at the G8 summit; 69% would support a wind farm within 20 miles of their home (only 19% would support a nuclear power station); 61% oppose a pollution tax on air travel; 26% of people have ‘done a lot’ to change the way they live; 51% have done a ‘little’ and 20% ‘nothing at all’. The poll showed concern existing in all socio-economic groups and across the political spectrum. British airlines signed an agreement during the summer of 2005 promising to cut emissions by 50% emissions per seat.

Despite the opposition to nuclear power, UK lack of success in meeting aspects of their Kyoto targets-currently emissions are rising not falling- led to the revival of interest in nuclear power- which at present produces only just over a fifth of the nation’s power compared to 70% in France. Business demanded on 21st November that the government clarify its position on the subject; a sizeable proportion of Britons are unhappy about nuclear energy however as nuclear waste takes thousands of years to become safe. Labour’s manifesto offered a 20% emissions reduction target by 2010 plus one of 10% for the proportion of energy to be produced by wind power by the same year. What progress made by UK has, ironically, been a byproduct of Thatcher’s decision to close the pollution producing coal mines. Blair and his energetic Environment secretary Margaret Beckett, have been conspicuous in their advocacy of controls but on 2nd November 2005 Blair seemed to backtrack and say ‘voluntary’ rather than compulsory targets were the best way forward. This caused environmental groups to blow fuses but Margaret Beckett claimed in a letter to The Guardian on 4th November that her boss’s position had not fundamentally changed.

On 13th November the government’s climate change review was leaked to the papers; it reported on progress towards Kyoto targets. The review makes clear the scale of the challenge, given the increase in emissions caused by the switch to coal for cost reasons in a number of power stations: 4.5 million tons since 1997. DEFRA calculates current policies will reduce emissions by about 20million tons by 2010 but to meet the 20% target an additional 14 million tons will need to be pared off our annual levels. Suggestions, in three categories, include (bracketed figures show projected savings in million tones carbon):

‘Frontrunners’
a) Pollution caps on UK business and public sector (0.3)
b) Extend UK participation in EU carbon trading scheme (4.2)
c) Improve household energy efficiency (0.3)
d) New requirements for local government (0.4)

‘Emerging’
a) Link winter fuel payments to energy efficiency (0.07)
b) Store carbon underground (0.5-2.5)
c) Make energy suppliers use more offshore turbines (1.0)
d) Better enforcement of building regulations (0.1)

‘Difficult’
a) change road speeds (1.7)
b) replace inefficient boilers (0.5)
c) increase car sharing (0.5)

Brown-Blair Rivalry and the Future of Labour

Brown-Blair Rivalry and the Future of Labour

Is it real?
It is easy to dismiss stories of a deep seated rivalry between Blair and Gordon Brown for the leadership of the Labour Party and hence, since 1997, the office of Prime Minister. Voters have the power to vote in and remove governments but the fine detail of policy is often ignored by voters who bother to read the papers and stories about personalities devoured instead. Quite simply, many people find politics boring and cannot understand issues like: joining the euro; reforming public services; the Atlantic Alliance. But everyone understands envy and competitive rivalry- it happens in families, work places and in sports teams. Newspapers will naturally try to amplify stories about struggles like this on the ‘greasy pole’ of politics- hence the natural element of doubt regarding the longstanding Brown-Blair competitiveness.

Genuine rivalry
However, there really does seem to be real substance to this story upon which countless newspaper columns and even the occasional television drama have dwelt and elaborated.
The origins of the story go back to the 1980s when Gordon Brown was something of a political prodigy from Scotland. Winning a brilliant first class honours degree from Edinburgh University he went on to gain a doctorate-in Labour history- and become ‘rector’ of his university at the age of 21. He moved on to become an MP in 1983 and soon established himself as a rising star, especially on economic and financial matters. Also entering the Commons in 1983, Tony Blair came from a traditional Conservative rather than Labour background- privately educated at posh school, Fettes- and then to Oxford to study law before training to become a barrister.

Brown stands aside
Both young MPs became friends, shared a room together and set out to ‘modernize’ the party which many people saw as old fashioned and locked into old ways of thinking- nationalization, top down management of public services, union strangleholds of public sector-and which had been locked out of power since the infamous Winter of Discontent and the resulting win for Thatcher in the 1979 election. Brown established a reputation as a powerful debater, enjoyed a rapid rise as a Treasury spokesman and soon was made Shadow Trade Minister by fellow Scot, John Smith, when he led the party.
Blair meanwhile was establishing himself as a brilliant performer in the Commons but also, crucially, with a winning way on the television. Brown, the son of a priest, has a tendency to be dour and appear humourless. He does not smile much and can look glum. Blair also showed a tendency to adopt relatively right-leaning policies and repackage them as Labour. He shifted party policy from ‘full employment’ to ‘maximum possible employment’ and then, most famously, when Shadow Home Secretary to be ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’. This last was especially crucial as Labour had always been perceived as somewhat ‘soft’ on crime compared to the Conservatives.

When Smith died in 1994 it was to the two young stars that the party turned. Almost immediately Blair was seen to be favoured by senior figures and by the media. Not wishing to split the ‘modernizers vote’ they met, ccording to legend, in a restaurant in Islington called the Granita where Brown agreed to stand aside to let Tony have a clear run. Yet Brown was seen at the time as the senior of the two with better Labour Party credentials and –said his supporters- a superior intellect. But both men had joined enthusiastically in the project to redesign the party to make it ‘New’ Labour, something different from the unpopular old dinosaur that had lost four elections in a row after 1979. It was also necessary, given the reduction of working class voters, to attract middle class votes if Labour was to win back power from a Conservative government which had ruled for 18 years under Thatcher and Major. Blair was judged by many, to be the person the middle classes would respond to, with his clean cut looks, public school accent and middle class demeanor.

Some say there was a kind of agreement that Tony would stand aside in turn after a time to allow Brown a turn at the wheel but this has never been verified. However, the various books on the subject have never been denied by Brown and it seems clear that he has always assumed a deal had existed. But he did extract one apparent agreement which Blair did respect: Brown was allowed to dominate domestic policy while Blair has looked after foreign affairs. So much evidence exists of a simmering feud that it is hard to deny that no differences exist. Reshuffles of the cabinet are always scrutinized by journalists to gauge how ‘Brownites’ have done compared to ‘Blairites’. But the chief aspect of the feud was fomented by the personal staff of the two men: Alistair Campbell for Blair and Charlie Whelan for Brown-both ‘spin doctors’ who have since departed their positions. These two men gave briefings to the media which both advanced the causes of their masters while seeking to rubbish that of the other. The story was stoked by a book which came out in 2005 by Robert Peston argued that Blair had promised his Chancellor to go in the autumn of 2004 but had infuriated Brown by not doing so. But Blair did promise to stand down before the next election, due to take place before May 2010; this unprecedented promise from a serving Prime Minister is further evidence that the feud exists. Brown is usually seen as to the left of Blair but it can be argued that he is also favour of introducing market forces and the private sector into public services. Blair is firmly of the opinion that to reform successfully public services have to achieve the same discipline as those companies which succeed in the private sector. This makes him unpopular with left leaning Labour MPs who have vowed to frustrate his plans.

Labour’s Record since 1997
a) Economy has continued to grow year on year at 2-3%, a better record than countries in the eurozone. However, Brown deserves most of the credit for this.

b) Huge investments in education and health, the services most voters want to see improve. Given the atrophy of such services under the Conservatives, this has been a key advantage at election times.


c) Constitutional Change: Scotland has been given a Parliament, Wales an Assembly and hereditary members of the House of Lords have been abolished. In addition a Human Rights Act was passed in 1998.

d) Northern Ireland has not been pacified totally but the degree of peace and prosperity in the province is a testimony to the efforts Blair has put into finding a settlement.


e) Foreign policy has been mixed. Blair led interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo have been successful and most supported the war in Afghanistan following 9-11, but the invasion of Iraq, despite the horrific regime of Saddam Hussein was a step too far for many voters of both main parties.

This is a thoroughly respectable record for any government to boast but Blair still yearns for something big : Heath had entry into Europe, Thatcher turned the economy round by breaking the power of the unions. But Blair so far, it would appear, has nothing that he can look back on with similar pride; hence his problem of when to go. Has he done enough yet?

The big problems for Brown are:

a) when will Tony stand down? Churchill kept Eden waiting for years to take over as PM and Blair seems to enjoy his job so much he might end up staying until the very last minute and

b) will the party be worth leading by then?


Good Things Going for Labour

i) It won a third successive election victory in May 2005.

ii)Economy has enjoyed the longest period of sustained growth for 200 years.

iii)Labour has had majorities of 179 in 1997, 160 in 2001 and 67 in 2005 respectively.

iv) After a drastic dip in his ratings during the early summer-despite having just won an election- Blair’s popularity rose after UK’s successful Olympic bid for 2112 and his stout, Churchillian response to the July bombings.

v)Huge expenditure on health, education and transport, all services which had been starved of funding during the Conservatives’ period in power.

Bad Things Going for Labour

i)With a hard core of some 30 rebels Blair cannot guarantee to win votes any more in the Commons.

ii)Economy is showing signs of decline with lower growth and unemployment beginning to rise plus the possibility of a ‘hole’ in the public finances some short time hence which can only be filled through more highly unpopular taxation.

iii)Iraq: Blair’s continuing problem lies supporting this war which daily brings in bad news and the origin of which, in terms of British involvement is a constant embarrassment e.g. the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction. A recent memoir by the former ambassador to Washington-Sir Christopher Meyer- also portrayed Blair as unable to defend British interests and with no grasp of essential detail on a par with that of Thatcher and John Major.

iv)Problems for key ministers: Blunkett was forced to resign in November after he appeared to have ignored rules about working in the private sector after leaving office. This was a major blow as Blunkett, who has overcome the handicaps of blindness as well as poverty and a single parent household, was a good answer to the accusation that New Labour had lost its ability to sympathize with the disadvantaged. Blunkett also had a reputation for getting things done, though often by ignoring established ways of governing. Indeed this tendency to blast his way through and ignore the constraints was an element in his downfall. He had resigned just before the last election when it transpired he had helped the nanny of his (unlikely) lover Kimberley Quinn to acquire permission to stay in the country. The fact that his lover- a glamorous society hostess and publisher of the rightwing Spectator magazine- added to the impression that Blunkett had been somehow ‘corrupted by power’.

This appearance of being ‘spoilt’ by power has been insidious for the party in government, not helped by Blair’s habit of staying in the holiday homes of rightwing leaders like Silvio Berlusconi or his wife’s tendency to appear overly interested in acquiring the reality and trappings of mega-wealth. To illustrate this tendency in the leader’s life style, Blair’s longtime close friend Peter Mandelson- another minister who was twice sacked- once said ‘New Labour is intensely relaxed about people becoming stinking rich’.

v)Terror Bill: On 9th November Blair’s bill designed to make the country safer from terrorists received its second major reverse. The first had been on a clause which was won by only one vote and the second was on the length of time suspects could be held without charge. Blair favoured a 90 day period, as recommended by the police and supported by the majority of voters but he was defeated by 31 votes.

vi)‘Decoupling’: this is a tactic said to be favoured by the Conservatives of supporting Blair’s rightwing reforms and helping him to win but effectively separating him from his party and making it likely to split. This last happened in 1931 when Ramsay MacDonald formed a coalition government with the Conservatives. Labour did not begin to win popular support after that for over ten years. Blair would not wish to go down as the man who split his party.

vii)David Cameron, the Eton educated Conservative MP who seems likely to win the leadership of the opposition party is seen as that party’s ‘Blair’. He could easily emerge as a popular critic of Blair and come to be seen as the ‘Prime Minister in Waiting.’ If the worst happened Brown would inherit a split party destined to lose its attempt to win four in a row. This explains why brown supporters are desperate for Blair to go soon or to declare when he will go so that Brown is more likely to inherit a party with some chance of winning the next election.

viii)Public Services: No real evidence exists that the huge sums spent on public services have transformed them. Productivity has not been revolutionized and extra cash pumped in seems to have mostly gone on increased staff salaries. Polls show only minorities think public services have improved significantly.

ix)The Pensions crisis is affecting millions of workers. UK has an ageing population with many older people expecting to live much longer. This means fewer people will be available to work the economy and generous pensions will be a thing of the past. One problem is that public sector workers will not back down and threaten industrial action.

Will Blair go Sooner or Later?
This is the key question. Critics want him out so Brown can establish a record of achievement and go on to win the next election. Blair loyalists believe he is on the right track and want him to continue. Inevitably some of the political support for the two men is purely based on who will offer the most reward. Some former Blairites, like Clare Short, has tacked towards Brown, possibly because she thinks he might offer more chance of a return to the Cabinet.

Attitude to Party
Some critics claim Blair has never really been a Labour politician, that his heart has always leaned fundamentally towards the right- apart from his traditional Conservative background, his father actually harboured ambitions to become an MP for that party. They claim Bliar is more concerned with achieving ‘legacy policies’, those things which people will look back on and attribute to Blair’s ‘glorious reign’. Andrew Rawnsley, in the Observer, 13th November believes Blair is not inclined to compromise and duck and weave to stay in power. He seemed almost to know he would lose over the 90 day issue but seemed also to believe it was better to lose on the right issue than win on the wrong one. If this is to be his approach, Blair might find his swansong will soon be upon him as Labour rebels are in no mood for sentimentality. However, if he is prepared to do deals and compromise, to listen, adapt and refashion policies to suit elements in the party, then he might stay for another year or maybe more. But the party Brown inherits, if indeed he does win the leadership contest after Blair goes, will be much different from the one which triumphantly and euphorically marched onto the Commons benches in June 1997.

Bill Jones, 16/11/05

Things go Pearshaped for George Bush

US Politics: George Bush’s Travails

A short time after the head of government’s historic election win, his political capital and his authority had drained away and the air was thick with accusations of perceived ‘lame ducks’. And that was just Tony Blair. His friend, the US President, faces even worse problems. The Guardian editorial page led on 28th October on US politics with the headline, ‘What a difference a year makes’. Indeed, the contrast between Bush’s victory in 2004 where he won the seventh victory out of the last ten for his party polling more votes than any other candidate in history, and now, is dramatic. A year on and problems swirl around him like avenging furies.

This situation is great for those (like me) who enjoy such Schadenfreude at Bush misfortune, but less so for certain sections of US society. The Democrats should be exploiting Bush’s discomfiture but seem not to be quite up to it, as yet. Many newspapers dubbed last week Bush’s ‘week from hell’ but the trouble started some time before then, months ago in fact.

The Economist on 1st October, ran through some of the tensions underlying the surface unity of America’s conservative movement.

i) Small government v big-government conservatives: from ostensibly championing small government Bush has introduced huge spending programmes in education and Medicare drug entitlement which more than outweigh his first term tax cuts.
ii) Faith v doubt: ‘doubters’ oppose the federal government telling states what to think on issues like euthanasia or marijuana for medical purposes. Those of ‘faith’ want the government to actively intervene on issues too important to be left to individual conscience.
iii) Insurgent v establishment conservatives: conservatives, deriving their power from the south and the west have long been hostile to Washington DC. Bush has created a new establishment in the capital city, wielding ever increasing financial federal power. Bush’s pose of being ‘anti-Washington’ has lost its credibility.
iv) Business v religious conservatives: business conservatives are concerned the religious element is assuming too much influence. Bush’s stance on stem cell research for instance threatens to deny the USA a stake in bio-medical technology research. Business and religion are seldom easy bedfellows and many businessmen are fed up with the high sounding moral stance of the Bush administration.
v) Neo-v- traditional conservatives: the former have somehow assumed a world vision, including spreading democracy to the Middle East. Latter distrust government at heart and doubt whether it can ever achieve the transformations envisaged.

Republican Scandals and Failures
Tom Delay
On 28th September delay, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, was indicted by a grand jury in Texas for alleged breaches of the campaign finance law. He was accused of creating a Political Action Committee -Texans for a Republican Majority- to circumvent the ban on corporate donations to individual candidates. If he is found guilty, he faces up to two years in jail or a fine of $10,000. His pursuer is Ronnie Earle, a liberal Democratic district attorney. Delay is legendary in US Congressional politics for his vote-whipping skills- his nickname is ‘The Hammer’. His special skill is assembling just enough votes for a majority meaning thus minimizing the federal handouts needed to push legislation through. His role has been assumed by three other Republican but few expect them to be as effective.

Bill Frist
The Senate majority leader is accused of making a killing on the stock market via possible insider trading. He owned substantial stock in HCA, a hospital chain founded by his family. Aware that a conflict of interest might arise if the Senate considered health-care, he put them in a blind trust, thinking this would insure him sufficiently. But as a presidential aspirant he decided it wiser to sell them. He did so shortly before the firm announced losses which caused the shares to fall drastically. He claims he has e-mails proving he planned to sell them months before and the Economist thinks he’ll be ‘exonerated’.

Jack Abramoff
This former lobbyist is close to Republican big hitters and so the investigation into his affairs has implications for the party. He is accused of bank fraud and of receiving ‘millions of dollars… from casino owning Indian tribes’. The problem for the Republicans is that such financial scandals within the ruling elites tend to spread and expose wider involvement. The party faces a long period of exposure to questions, court cases and skeletons being found in unwholesome cupboards.

Supreme Court Nominee: Harriet Miers
The loss of his nominee was a major blow to Bush. Social conservatives regard the legal opinions of Supreme Court judges to be of key importance as they affect the long term. Many feel the constitution has been subverted, for example, to allow abortion on demand and the banning of prayers in schools. Gay marriage, allowed in some states like Massachusetts is another hot issue. Some conservatives fear it will spread to other states and undermine the institution of marriage which they regard as providing the essential moral glue of society. Harriet Miers was nominated on 3rd October to occupy the seat in the Supreme Court vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate ‘swing’ voter who had voted against certain key moral issues dear to the heart of god fearing Republicans.

Her qualifications for the role were instantly questioned, not just by Democrats but by Republicans too. She had been a close friend and legal counsel of Bush for many years and it was embarrassing for Bush when letters were released from Miers to the president which lavished praise upon him e.g. (when he was governor of Texas) ‘You are the best governor ever’. The accusation of cronyism was instant and indignant. Also important to moral values advocates was her ambivalent stance on abortion- she had been against it and apparently for it too in the past.

More measured and damaging criticism was leveled by those with legal backgrounds. Ms Miers had no track record as a judge and her only public office was as the head of the Texas lottery. However, it got worse. Ms Miers was obliged to fill in a questionnaire on legal issues but the senators who perused them, many of them well versed in the law, were acutely under-whelmed. Nor were they especially reassured by Ms Miers’ promise to ‘bone up’ on such issues. They felt, with some justification, that a member of the highest court in the land should not need to work at acquiring familiarity with the major legal debates of the day.
Finally, the new member read the signals- assisted maybe by the White House which had arrived at the conclusion before her- and she declared she was withdrawing from the nomination. As the Guardian commented:

‘The withdrawal of a nominee before confirmation is embarrassing enough. Dropping her after repeated personal endorsements, in the face of rancorous opposition from the president’s own party, is an unprecedented humiliation.’(28/10/05).

The eventual nomination of Samuel Alito, in place of Ms Miers was judged by most commentators to be a huge improvement.

Hurricane Katrina
The bearing down on Louisiana of Hurricane Katrina, had been well charted and predicted, yet the effects on the city of New Orleans, once it struck, seemed to catch all the organs of government, from the city level up to the White House, completely by surprise. The city was quickly flooded and thousands were placed at risk. While the world watched those too poor to flee-mostly blacks- at the mercy of the elements, and roving gangs of rapists and criminals, it seemed US government agencies were paralyzed. Four days after the disaster there were still no troops available to bring order to the anarchy. By contrast, in 1906, aid reached San Francisco two hours after the earthquake. Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times, (4/9/05) quoted Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) in 2001 which cited a hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three major catastrophes which could hit the USA- the other two were an earthquake in San Francisco and a terrorist attack on New York. It predicted the city could be inundated by 20 feet of water with possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Rather than increase spending on improving the levees the Bush government slashed spending- the money apparently moved into homeland security and the war on Iraq. Even worse thousands of Louisiana National Guardsmen, who could have helped in the disaster, had been deployed in Iraq. Despite the fact that the levees had been perceived as inadequate for decades, this had not been taken on board by a government preoccupied elsewhere. Thousands were marooned in public buildings with no food or water or protection from brutal attack. The water stunk from multiple contaminations not least from the floating dead bodies. The vast majority of those stranded and needy were the poor black residents of the city- 50% of children in the city live below the poverty line. Wealthier whites had made good their escape, for the most part, before the storm struck. The scenes were nightmarish- reminiscent of floods in Bangladesh rather than the backyard of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.

The first public contribution to the aftermath by Bush was that he thought the rebuilding of the house of Senator Trent Lott, demolished by the storm, would turn it into a wonderful thing and he looked forward to ‘sitting on the porch’. Laughter followed this humorous quip. Lott was forced to resign as Majority Leader in the Senate a few years ago when he said he regretted racial desegregation had occurred in the Deep South in the 1950s and 60s. Eventually Bush was forced to say the response to the storm had been ‘not acceptable’. Michael Brown, the head of FEMA tried to mobilize aid but seemed unable to make things happen. Bush responded by telling him he was doing a ‘heck of a job’. Soon afterwards Brown was revealed as someone with no experience of disaster management and had been put in place purely through his contacts with a close associate of Bush in the Republican Party. He was replaced but not before the damge was done. While attitudes among white Republicans were mildly critical those of Democrats and blacks were extremely negative as the Pew Centre survey, taken in mid September shows on the last page of this briefing. It is clear from the poll that black Americans are angry at what they see as racism in the way aid was eventually disbursed. Blacks are also the most critical of Bush’s efforts to initiate attempts to assist those suffering from the hurricane.

‘Plame Gate’
This is the one scandal George Bush did not want to emerge during his second term. Its connections hearken back to the muddled and duplicitous reasons for going to war in Iraq; cast a jaundiced light on the ethics of the White House and threaten to involve not only his vice President but his beloved so-called ‘Brain’, his political adviser, the man who discovered and then made him: Karl Rove. The story goes back to January 2003 when a former ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger to see if Saddam had tried to buy uranium there- the implications for Iraq’s possible nuclear weapons program being obvious. His report was that there had been no such overtures. However, in his State of the Union message in January 2003 the president said that he had. In an article in the New York Times 6th July 2003 Wilson effectively accused him of lying and ‘twisting’ the evidence on Iraq’s WMD. It is alleged that this article provoked the White House staff into leaking to the press that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. In the US such a leak is against the law in that CIA agents, by the nature of their work, have to be covert. The apparent aim of the leak-though the reasoning seems opaque on this side of the Atlantic- was to suggest that Wilson’s wife had secured her husband the job. Such a claim was duly made in a column by rightwing columnist Robert Novak. A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald-was appointed to investigate the claim that Plame had been ‘outed’.

Patrick Fitzgerald
The son of a Manhattan doorman, from poor immigrant stock Fitzgerald earned his spurs by taking down mobsters in New York and is known as ‘Elliot Ness with a Harvard law degree’. He is so hardworking it is said that he went for 14 years without having the gas connected to his apartment as he was never at home, keeping clothes in drawers in his office where he also showered and ate. While Kenneth Starr, Clinton’s nemesis, was a staunch Republican, Fitzgerald has no affiliations. The White House’s fears were fulfilled on 28th October when Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and arch neo conservative, was indicted on five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice. Fitzgerald’s investigations continue and the White House fears both Cheney and Karl Rove might end up being indicted as well. Though the fact that they have not been so accused is seen as a huge bonus.

Public Finances: Republican conservatives have had more than Supreme Court nominations to incense them. Committed to less government and low taxes they have had to impotently observe the president spending like a Democrat on amphetamines, more so, in fact, than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Critics point to his open-ended pledge to ‘spend what it takes’ to restore New Orleans (some estimates exceed $200billion); to allocate $223m for a bridge to an Alaskan community numbering only 50 and £231m another to a place where no-one lives at all. Questions are asked about why cuts have not been considered to finance the cost of Katrina though Republicans favour cuts in Medicaid while most Americans think the Iraq war effort should be slimmed down. Overall Bush’s administration has managed to run up a deficit of $60 billion, a worrying, yawning gap despite an economy which continues to show resilience and an annual growth rate of 3%.

Iraq does not Improve Matters
Invading Iraq was never wildly popular in USA but it was sold as a measure of self defence and as a bold move in the war on terror. However, most people have now realized that Al Quaida had little or nothing to do with Saddam or Saddam with the 9/11 attack. Antiwar campaigns led by parents of killed soldiers began to penetrate the national consciousness earlier in the year and last week’s 2000th victim was well noted in the US media
This war was plunged into perhaps as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 or maybe, as has been long suggested through a preconceived plan. Much has been made of a document produced by the Project for the New American Century, written by Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Rumsfeld, Libby and Wolfovitch , which advised that the US should exert control over the Gulf region even without the need to replace Saddam Hussein. This theory still rumbles around US political culture though the recent book by Sir Anthony Meyer, UK ambassador to Washington at the time when the war was being planned, suggests there was no prior plan whatsoever and that all parties were keen to avoid war. However, he argues that: the assumption that Iraqis would welcome ‘liberation’ was naïve in the extreme; and that no real planning was put into what happened after the invasion. Whatever the reasons for war- and these are now being revisited courtesy of ‘Plamegate’- the present state of the occupation does not inspire confidence. Despite the election of an interim government- more elections will take place in January- and the approval of a new constitution, the country seems a long way from being both democratized and pacified. Monday 7th November brought reports of insurgents fighting 3500 Iraqi and US troops along Iraq’s border with Syria. While the Shia majority and the relatively separate Kurds seem to favour a federal style form of government, the once all powerful Sunni grouping from whence sprang Saddam Hussein, are strongly opposed and provide the recruitment pool for the forces which attack US, UK and (US trained) Iraqi troops- augmented, as they constantly are by ‘jihadi militiamen’ from all over the Muslim world. The scandal of Abu Ghraib prison badly scarred the worldwide reputation for ethical behaviour which the US has so assiduously sought to foster. Within the US disputes rumble on between those who want to send more troops to complete the task of pacifying and democratizing Iraq and those who urge an immediate or as soon as possible withdrawal.
The result of all these failures has been a steady toll of US servicemen and a collapse in support for the war at home where ‘bring the boys home’ is now a cry with nationwide resonance. 70% now disapprove of the US involvement in the Iraq war and still there is no sign of its being resolved. The suggestion that the president took the country to war on false premises is a serious accusation that has not yet resounded properly in US politics, in the way it has and still does in UK politics. Slowly then issue is being articulated and the damage is potentially vast. Already the Democrats have insisted on a closed session of Congress to discuss the issue and Senator Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader is intent on pursuing the issue of the war’s inception. ‘How did the administration manufacture intelligence?’ he asks; the media, emboldened by poll evidence are seeking answers more insistently than when Bush wielded more power.

Falling Ratings
The net result of all these scandals, shortcomings and incompetence has been a plummeting of ratings for the president. Recent polls show only 39% approve of the way Bush is doing his job. Only 40% consider him honest and trustworthy- this especially hard for a man who promised high ethical standards in the wake of the louche Bill Clinton. Even worse: 70% think the nation is being led ‘seriously off course’; 6 in 10 say Rove should resign following Plamegate; and, despite economic growth, 60% are ‘disappointed’ with the economy.

Repairing the Damage
The Economist, (5th November), suggests Bush has time to recover as these crises have occurred in his first year, unlike the second year of second term problems encountered by Reagan (Iran-Contra) and Clinton (Lewinsky). The journal suggests Bush has been completely out of touch, protected from reality by a sycophantic staff. He needs to rebuild his links with the conservative movement (where his ratings have fallen from 82% in 2003 to 69% now); continue his more sensible policy on nominations (e.g. Alito to Supreme Court and Bernanke to head to Federal Bank); and recreate the sense of an ‘energetic executive’ which he established in his first term by rolling out tax cuts and educational reforms.

‘If Mr Bush can seize the moment, he can turn the second term around. If he dithers, as he did during Katrina, things will get a lot worse.’

Torture Allegations: The leaking of the CIA Inspector General’s report on 9th November embarrassed Bush a few days after he declared ‘we do not torture’. John Helgerson criticized in particular the practice of ‘waterboarding’ whereby a detainee is strapped to a board and then submerged until he believes he is drowning. Such a technique was used on senior al Quaeda prisoners. The CIA is also reported to use detention centres on Eastern Europe to carry out interrogations outside the USA jurisdiction. A new law supported by senator John McCain, himself a former Vietnam POW who was tortured, seeks to ban inhumane treatment and oblige the USA to recognize international law. This is the law from which Vice President Cheney seeks to exempt the CIA and Bush has threatened to use his veto if the law remains unchanged.

Latin American Summit. At Mar del Plata, 34 countries met to discuss common problems but Bush found himself isolated at the discussions and attacked at demonstrations in the streets. The whole sub continent faces eleven elections for presidents over the next two years and already a leftward shift is clear. Hugo Chavez, a bitter critic of the Bush White House is one example, President Lula of Brazil, much courted by its major trading partner, China, is another. Several like minded candidates, who might well win will be facing voters over the next twelve months. A widespread perception of US policy is that its embrace of free trade and globalization has advantaged itself while poverty in the region has not been alleviated.

Elections
Gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey saw Democrat candidates elected in October. Also Governor Swarzenegger’s attempt to pass a series of proposals to reform the state’s government, were rejected by voters. Mayor Blomberg held new York however. Republicans must be very worried that the mid term elections for the Congress might see heavy losses which will lose them their majorities in both houses. The democrats, moreover, are excited at the emergence of Senator Mark Warner, a charismatic Virginian who might well challenge Hilary Clinton’s assumed leasehold on the Democratic candidacy.
‘If a politician cannot write or speak fluently, you can bet he or she is not thinking fluently, perhaps not thinking at all.’ Henry Porter, Observer, 13/11/05

Turkmenistan's Niyazov:Crazy Name, Cazy Guy

Turkmenistan: Bastard Child of the USSR

‘I’m personally against seeing my pictures an statues in the street, but it’s what people want.’ President Niyazov, Turkmenistan

The ‘Stans’: Liberated into Slavery

When the USSR imploded in 1989 a number of territories containing coherent ethnic groupings began to look around and sense ‘nationhood’ approaching. To be more precise, certain political leaders, often associated with the outgoing Soviet regime, felt this the most keenly and set about exploiting the situation. Never was this tendency more prevalent than in Central Asia, the future home of the ‘Stans’. In Uzbekistan we heard in May of the massacre of hundreds, probably thousands of protesters in the eastern city of Andijan, by government troops. Since then we have learnt more about this benighted country- ruled by President Karimov, a man who it seems has no scruples of the kind tormenting our legislature at the moment regarding the treatment of terrorism suspects. Here, the chief criterion for suspicion is lack of loyalty to the president and imprisonment plus appalling torture is applied as a matter of course. Human Rights Watch calculate that 4,200 have been detained following the May massacre and it is almost impossible for relatives to make contact with them. The president has applied repression with a severity that would have done credit to Joseph Stalin himself- even the BBC decided to pull out its correspondent on 26th October. Elections have just taken place in Azerbaijan and the familiar list of complaints regarding abuse of power and rigged elections have appeared in the press. President Aliev seems just as corrupt and paranoid as the other ‘Stan’ rulers.

Turkmenistan
This 485 square kilometers of mostly barren subtropical desert-about the size of California- was first annexed by Russia between 1865 and 1885. It became a Soviet Republic in 1924 and its population suffered under the yoke of communism for nearly seventy years until 1991 when it gained its independence on 27th October, their national day (irrelevant aside: the very day I am writing this briefing). The 5 million or so new citizens of Turkmenistan-mostly Muslim by religion and Turkmen speaking- might have looked forward to a future of prosperity founded on the plentiful supplies of natural gas and oil which lie under this stretch of desert bordering the Caspian Sea- the reserves sitting under the scorched earth of this semi-desert are the fifth largest in the world. In 2001 Niyazov promised every family would have ‘a house, a car and a cow with calf.’ It has not turned out quite like that. In fact what has happened provides even more evidence-not that we needed it- of the corrupting influence of power. It also suggests the template which rulers so corrupted strive for is an ancient one whereby they seek sanctification as some kind of living God.

Turkmenistan is not an apparently well endowed country – more like a huge near desert with only 3.7% arable land- but its oil and gas make it potentially rich. Literacy is 99%-a not to be sniffed at legacy of its communist past- but instead of a Norwegian standard of living, unemployment is 60% and a similar percentage live in extreme poverty; life expectancy is a mere 58 for men- 65 for women.

Government
On the face of it the 1992 constitution looks liberal and not dissimilar to what one might find in Western Europe. It provides the Halk Maslahaty or People’s Council- 2500 strong- plus the 50 member Mejlis or Parliament which is elected for five year terms and was last elected in April 2003. The Democratic Party of Turkmenistan holds the majority of seats. And then there is the Supreme Court to complete the theoretical picture of a well balanced liberal democracy.
But the façade is soon dispelled. There is no opposition; there was once but its leaders of which have either been locked up; have ‘disappeared’ or have fled. Those let out of prison have been so intimidated by surveillance and the threat of more torture in jail that they have kept quiet. The President and Chairman of the Council and the Supreme Leader of Parliament as well as the head of government is the same man: President Suparmurat Atajevitch Niyazov. He has managed to build up a cult of personality equaled only by that of Mao, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong II and Stalin himself.

Background
He was born in the tiny village of Kipcak on the outskirts of the capital Ashgabat in 1940. His father died in the war while his mother and brother were among the 100,000 killed in the earthquake which destroyed the capital in 1948. Niyazov was brought up in an orphanage before studying in St Petersburg and then returning to work as an engineer. In 1962 he joined the Communist Party and began a rapid rise through the ranks. In 1985 he was chosen by Gorbachev to become General Secretary of the Turkmenistan Communist Party. Being married to a Russian wife and having an orphan upbringing, made him advantageously free of allegiances to the powerful clan system. He was also a scrupulously obedient and deferential servant of Moscow. When the USSR began to disintegrate, Niyazov, as its then creature, opposed independence but soon scented the change in the wind and changed accordingly. He became an enthusiastic advocate of national independence, using his incumbent position to accumulate power and place himself at the centre of it. He became president, prime minister and chairman of the council of ministers. He assumed the name Turkmenbashi (Father of the Turkmen). In 1992 he was ‘elected’ president unopposed and in 1999 his team of handpicked ministers voted him president for life. He made great play of objecting when the Humanitarian Association of the World’s Ethnic Turkmen voted to prefix his name with ‘beyt’ or ‘great’ but did not object to it being used.

The press is saturated with fawning articles and pictures of the great man but no alternative view is allowed. Foreign newspapers are banned and Radio Free Europe is jammed. Satellite TV and the internet are closely monitored and censored; nearby Georgia’s US supported overthrow of Shevardnadze was not reported at all. Secret police and bugged telephones abound in the new state. The military are much in evidence. Public demonstrations never happen now. Nor is movement free- the hallmarks of tyranny in Soviet times and in South Africa under apartheid. ‘Closed zones’ are defined over 40% of the country and permits are required to pass through them. CCTV is ubiquitous and is not designed merely to curb petty crime. Insulting Niyazov carries a minimum penalty of five years in prison. Life imprisonment is the sentence given to those guilty of treason- defined in vague terms of ‘attempting to sow doubt … about internal and foreign policy conducted by the first and permanent president of Turkmenistan, the Great Saparmurat.’ Professor Jerrold Post, who researches for the CIA concludes:

‘The narcissism of the man is beyond description- he has essentially turned himself into a living god.’

25th November 2002 a failed assassination attempt was made. If tyrants like Niyazov are to be killed it is better to get them first time as the revenge taken was severe. The former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov was forced to read a confession of having organized the attempted coup and confessing to be part of a gang of ‘criminals and drug addicts’. Amnesty says many of the suspects then imprisoned were not let out or when they were, showed signs of persistent torture. There were televised show trials as in thirties USSR with defence lawyers actually apologizing for defending those they represented. The state head of Islam was removed on the grounds that he objected to having phrases from the Rukhnama written on the walls of mosques.

Rukhmana
This book is one of the most frightening things about this clone of the departed USSR and this totalitarian run state. He wrote this between 1997 and 2001 and is a kind of philosophical work seeking to give guidance but seems more like an invented religion by the ‘living god’. ‘On a par with the bible and the Koran’ writes Niyazov, ‘it is to be used as a Spiritual Guide to remove the complexities and anguishes from day to day living’. Scenes from the book are staged in big stadia all over the country drawing on the moral purity of the president and his mother and father.
In his article in the Observer, 10th October, 2005, Tom Templeton quotes one of the very few civil rights activists in the country:

‘The country has been converted into a hopeless and sinister reservation closed from the outside world. The main part of Turkmenistan population simply doesn’t have any interest what happens. Extreme poverty, unemployment and drug taking have produced fear and hopelessness.’

Niyazov announced recently his latest idea: a palace of ice for children to use for skating. The scheme will cost £13m. The artificial lake in the Karakum desert-the Golden Lake costing £6bn- is even more dubious- fund consuming and of no use. Much better would be to dredge the Karakum Canal which has a vital role to play in the country’s economy. Investment in water infrastructure is a priority which the president refuses to recognize. Officials and the intelligentsia see the president as embarked on crazy schemes but the youth are surprisingly enthusiastic for his rule. One reason is the brain-washing which all receive: the daily pledges to the great president, the two hour compulsory daily readings from the Rukhnama. Even entrance to university and driving tests depend on knowledge of the weighty text. Children are encouraged to report parents whose knowledge of the book is faulty or insufficient. They see this state of affairs as normal, having known no other. Meetings in the president’s office are televised and broadcast weekly on the state’s three television channels. His face or his title ‘Serdar’ (leader) even is plastered all over vodka and wine bottles.

Censorship
Ballet, opera, the circus and the cinema are banned in the country as the president does not think they advance national interests. Voluntary bodies have also been sieved by the president so that variety and opportunity are shrinking constantly. Before long the population will cease to acquire the skills needed to live in a modern country. Niyazov sacked 15000 health workers in February, replacing them with conscripts, in order to save the country money. Oil production has gone down rather than up as promised nor have the pipelines to the eager western markets materialized. The state provides free gas and water plus cheap housing and bread plus state sponsored horse races; without them the country might explode.
One Western diplomat is quoted by Templeton as saying:

‘If these services were withdrawn there would be chaos, you’d be looking at revolution.’

Unemployment, non payment of wages is commonplace and state services are disintegrating.

Hope springs eternal but…
People are not allowed to leave the country and this has outraged human rights bodies which suggest the UN should threaten to expel the country if human rights are not improved and respected. But the US air-force benefits from over-flying rights and western oil companies, especially in the USA, are struggling to win concessions from the self glorifying president. Even a recent delegation from Russia-also keen to win oil and gas rights- praised his achievements as ‘fantastic’ and the Rukhnama as a ‘serious philosophical work’. On balance the forces supporting the status quo out balance those seeking change and the real victims are the poor citizens of Turkmenistan.

The result could prove another failed state. Moreover Niyazov harbours aggressive attitudes towards neighbouring Azerbaijan and claims oilfields currently belonging to that state. A regional war over oil is not an unbelievable outcome. Niyazov has had a recent heart bypass but otherwise seems fit and healthy, despite being 75 years old. He is expected to make the projected election in 2008 ‘disappear’. Meanwhile the country is covered with his statued image, one of them 12 metres high, coated in gold and rotating constantly to face the sun. Airports, regions cities and schools have been renamed after the president and his parents. Most absurd of all perhaps, he has declared the month of January to be known, henceforth as Niyazov with April to be named after his mother and September after his father.


Bill Jones 28th October(corrected 8/11) 2005

German Politics

German Politics: 2005 Elections and their Significance

Facts about Germany
Population 82.4m (No Growth -UK,57.8)
15-64…… 67%
65+………19%
Ethnic Groups
German….. 91%
Turks………2,4%
Other………6.1%
Life Expectancy
Men…….... 75: 7
Women….. 82
Territory
356.959 sq km (UK, 244.103- Germany Slightly smaller than Montana) Unified in 1990 to incorporate former communist Eastern Germany (GDR).

Boundaries with: Austria, Belgium, Czech, Denmark, France, Poland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland. (n.b. boundaries with France and Poland- 450 km)

Government Apparatus
cabinet: Cabinet or Bundes-minister (Federal Ministers) appointed by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor
elections: president elected for a five-year term by a Federal Convention including all members of the Federal Assembly and an equal number of delegates elected by the state parliaments; chancellor elected by an absolute majority of the Federal Assembly for a four-year term.
cabinet: Cabinet or Bundes-minister (Federal Ministers) appointed by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor

Unemployment 11 per cent

State form: Federation of 16 Lander each with own constitution, legislature and government.

Govt Chancellor- the federal ‘Prime Minister’- is elected by an absolute majority of the Bundestag and appoints a Cabinet of some 20 ministers. The President formally appoints both Chancellor and ministers. The federal govt is responsible to the Bundestag.
The Bundesrat or second chamber is made up of representatives of the Lander; each sends 3-6 members depending on the size of the state; they can only vote en bloc. The Bundesrat can veto legislation in certain circumstances.

Voting System: Additional Member System (AMS), whereby each voter has two votes: one for half of the seats elected by simple majority and half according to a regional list system. It’s the percentage won in ‘party’ vote which determines the eventual entitlement of seats for each party though they must either win 5 per cent of the vote to qualify or three constituency seats. Constituency seats are ‘topped -up’ to entitlement levels by regional list seats. The system is quite complex and, interestingly, only a minority of voters realise the ‘party’ vote plays the decisive role it does.

Need for reform of system. When it was set up by the occupying powers in 1949, the German system was praised for its success in maintaining peace and winning prosperity. However the system is no longer held up as ideal. The process whereby the rich Lander subsidize the poorer ones has become unpopular and some suggest it would be easier for states to be self supporting if they were larger; e.g. 7 instead of 16. Associated with this reform would be the proposal to give the states more powers to raise local revenue, thus freeing them from their dependence on the federal govt for funding- though Eastern Germany will need help for years to come. The Bundesrat tend to block measures passed by the lower house producing log-jams. Worse, the voting system tends to produce finely balanced results requiring coalitions. This dilutes necessary reforms which are then often blocked anyway by the Bundesrat.

‘The constitution, and the federal political system as it has evolved also places considerable checks on the Chancellor.-far more than any British Prime Minister. Ironically, a political system with its elaborate checks and balances, designed to prevent the emergence of another Adolf Hitler, is now helping to prevent the emergence of necessary reforms.’
Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian 13th October, 2005

Government 1982- 1998: Centre- Right Coalition led by Helmut Kohl of the CDU. This coalition with the FDP won four elections in a row and Kohl was keen to make it five and become the longest serving Chancellor since Bismarck. In 1994 the SDP led in the polls but the CDU/CSU came up from behind and on 16th October won enough seats-294 from 41.5 per cent- to form a coalition with the FDP-47 from 6.9 per cent- again; the SDP won 252 from 36.4 per cent.
Unification. In 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down Kohl played his master stroke and initiated unification. Mitterand was against it and so was Thatcher, passionately suspicious of the Germans at the best of times. However Kohl had already bought off Mrs Thatcher’s importunate demands for the return of ‘our’ money from the Community and had ‘fixed’ Bush six months earlier on a boat cruise in the Rhine in May 1989. Here the president had accepted the need for ‘a Germany whole and free and in a Europe whole and free’. Kohl also fixed Gorbachev some weeks later. When the Wall came down, Kohl joined Mitterand in pushing for the integrative conference which became Maastricht. At the same time he offered the Frenchman the vision of the single currency which the two countries would co-manage, an enmeshment designed to allay his fears of an over-mighty Deutschmark. ‘A single currency and the political and foreign policy constaints of a European Union were the Mitterand’s price for a unified Germany.’ (Ian Traynor and Martin Walker, Guardian, 25/9/98). Some German politicians were opposed to unification but the public were initially delighted to see their vast state in a single unit again. However it cost the federal government £100bn a year to finance the new eastern province and the influx of East Germans to the west caused much bitterness. German interest rates had to stay high to finance the outflow of money to the east and this caused troubles all over Europe, not least to Kohl’s fellow Conservative government in Britain when ERM membership foundered and sowed the seeds of political downfall for Major.

Single Currency: It was Kohl who drove this project and insisted it go forward when others were less confident of its success. France too was behind it but without Kohl it would not have happened and would not be due to come initially into operation in January 1999 and fully so in 2002. This is another example of Kohl’s vision of a united Europe in which prosperity is entrenched and violent conflict abolished.

East Germany
The source of Kohl’s greatest achievement also proved to be his greatest bugbear. With some 20 per cent of the voters it virtually decided the election. In 1990 they voted gratefully for the man who included them in the German family and promised them ‘blooming economic landscapes’; they probably saved him from defeat. In 1994 they voted less enthusiastically for him but he still got back in. However in 1998 the two parties were so level the key was again in the east where the voters are less experienced in democracy and consequently easier to influence. Here unemployment- over 4 million overall- had been concentrated and neo Nazi activity, with skin-headed thugs, most vigorous.

Economy: Traditionally this has been the biggest and strongest in Europe but over the past two decades Germany’s economy has lost its glitter. Perhaps for too long it has suffered from excessively high levels of tax, social security and wages.

i)Whilst the average manufacturing worker earn 18.80 euros an hour in the USA, in Germany he or she earns $27.60 euros: a differential which inevitably worked through and denied markets to German goods, however good they might be (and quality is still very high). The new Central and east European economies the wage rate is only 5 euros an hour.

ii) The structure of German industrial relations is cumbersome with agreements laboriously reached with unions which provide unrivalled employment protection but which erode competitiveness. German businessmen have long expressed admiration for the British supply side reforms and the flexible labour markets which have helped the British economy become more competitive.

iii) While the economy has not ceased to expand, it has been at a much at a much slower rate than before-maybe 1% per year or a little above. GDP in 2004 was $2.4 trillion compared with $1.7 trillion for UK. This translates to $28.7K GDP per head compared with $29.6K per head for UK. It seems hard to believe but we are marginally more prosperous than the mighty Germans! Germans have enjoyed the fat of the land since they recovered from the grinding poverty, the razed cities which followed their defeat in the war: some solace perhaps, this material comfort for international contempt they had to suffer and to some extent still do.

iv) Placing the problem in its wider context, the German economy has had to survive five huge shocks to its health:
a) globalisation
b) EU and its enlargement, including the appearance of economies on the scene with much lower wage rates.
c) Introduction of euro and need to keep interest rates low.
d) Opening up of central and eastern Europe- see b) above.
e) German re-unification- this has entailed huge annual transfer payments to the east and still continues with the east having unemployment of 20%.
That it has survived rather well, is a sign of its fundamental robustness.

v) Domestic demand: is lagging behind and suffocating economic growth. Germans are rich yet do not feel so and tend to save and not spend. Some of the problem is that interest rates are set for the whole of the euro-zone and are designed to keep inflation at bay. Lower rates would stimulate demand and help the German economy expand. The stability and growth pact in any case prevents euro-zone members from borrowing to spend their way back into expansion.

German Economic Recovery?

On 20th August The Economist’s main leading article was on the chances of German economic recovery.
i) Hartz IV: this was a restructuring of unemployment programme, designed by a businessman to encourage/goad/force more workers back into employment, especially the 1.8 million who were classified as ‘long-term unemployed’. Whilst criticized by some, this has created anew atmosphere in the labour market discouraging excessive wage demands.
ii) Self –employed numbers are on the increase: another sign of vigour in the economy.
iii) Many big companies- Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, VW and many others have cut deals with workforces –lengthening the working week, limiting perks and controlling wages- to ensure a future in the globalized world economy.
iv) Explosion of part-time workers- now 30% of total- makes it easier for employers to control both numbers and costs.
v) Relative unit costs of German goods has been going down very successfully: 12 percentage points since 1999 compared to an increase of 8 for France and Italy (who now face serious economic problems). This has helped German exports to recover and hit new heights in 2004.
vi) Business and Higher Education has set up sector schemes to innovate and over the long term these should pay dividends.
vii) The Berlin Institute for Population and Development has called for more babies from the post 1960 cohort of women to produce workers to help pay their pensions in a few decades time. [In 1960 births were 1.3m; in 2004 700,000.]

Political Dramatis Personae

Social Democrats: Schroeder.
It was 18 years since the last socialist administration in Germany; like Britain there were only two earlier ones since the war. Also like British experience and the leaders of the SDP were desperate to unseat the mighty ‘elephant’ as Kohl was known. Their answer was to choose a politician not unlike Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder. Unlike Blair however, he was born into crushing poverty in 1944, the son of a Wehrmacht conscript killed at the end of the war and a cleaner. He left school at 14 to sell crockery and achieved his ‘arbitur’ at night school and then studied law at Gottingen. His political life was almost exclusively in Lower Saxony in the north of the country.
In 1981, a young socialist lawyer he made his maiden speech in the Bundestag causing the old guard to explode with apoplexy: he was not wearing a tie. He always seemed temperamentally against the establishment, once rattling the gates to the Chancellor’s residence in a drunken prank shouting ‘I want to be in there.’ He proved persuasive however on the television and soon rivalled the party leaders for popularity. But he made enemies in his own party which he compared to a cowshed (‘smells a bit as you come close, but once you’re inside, it’s nice and warm.’). Some say his fatherless family background encouraged unstable emotions: he has married four times, the last time to journalist, 19 years his junior. On policy he has been as vague as any New Labour luminary and on unemployment talked airily of ‘training’ and a ‘new alliance of workers and employers.’ The keywords of his campaign were ‘New Centre’, ‘modernisation’ ‘social justice’ and ‘innovation’. His seven year period in power has seen Germany’s economy become frail and, whilst voters wanted it to revive, they were not prepared to pay the price asked in terms of reform. With 11% unemployment and a budget deficit of 60 billion euros Schroeder’s record looked unimpressive as he led his party into the campaign last August. His ‘Agenda 2010’ programme of reform was a brave attempt to solve problems long diagnosed in the German economy but his left of centre party found it hard to swallow them and this led the Chancellor to bring forward the election by a year in a desperate attempt to win a popular mandate to overrule his own party.

Oskar Lafontaine.
This was Schroeder’s number two, aged 62, some say once the real power behind the plausible yet vacuous Chancellor. He was the party’s candidate in 1990 and led it to its lowest share of the vote-33.5 per cent- since 1957. Like Schroeder he upset the party hierarchy once dismissing Helmut Schmidt’s call for staunchness and duty as ‘secondary qualities’ useful, perhaps for ‘running concentration camps’ In 1990 a crazed woman slashed him deeply with a knife during a rally but he recovered with his ambition intact. Intellectually he is sharper-educated (by Jesuits) - and masters detail with ease. But he was not as popular with the voters and, perhaps a little like Gordon Brown, stood aside for the apparent ‘winner’. However, like Brown too he harboured ambitions for the top job and could not forgive Schroeder his success. Installed as his deputy, Oscar was never happy and resigned after a mere six months, thereupon becoming a baleful and some said, malevolent critic of the SPD administration. He began to criticise the Chancellor for ‘rightwing policies’ and eventually left to lead a new grouping on the (once Marxist) left, known as the New Left. His ‘treachery’ must have hurt Schroeder keenly as they now do not speak to each other.

Joschka Fischer: Greens
56 year old self educated butcher’s son and former taxi driver is one of the country’s most popular politicians. He led the small party which made Schroeder’s rule possible. He is the acceptable face of the Greens, the party many feel they ought to support but are repelled by demands they change their life style in a way they cannot conceive of doing. For example the Greens at one stage proposed to triple petrol prices, limit on the frequency of air holiday travel, halve the number of soldiers in the army and dissolve NATO. From being one of Germany’s fattest public figures-though not in the Kohl class- he lost weight, gave up alcohol and took up marathon running. He set out to reform the Greens and make them more focussed and effective with a national rather than a decentralised regional structure. He served for many years as foreign minister to Schroeder before(apparently) resigning from politics quite recently .

Angela Merkel-CDU
Merkel is soon to be confirmed as Chancellor: Germany’s first female political chief executive. Aged 51 and born in Eastern Germany she is a product of the communist German system. Her parents were a pastor and a teacher in a small town close to Berlin. She studied physics at Leipzig University where she earned a doctorate and then worked in quantum chemistry. She was involved in the democracy movement in 1989 and when her new party merged with the CDU in 1990 her youth and ability caught the eye of Kohl who made her a minister for the environment and then for women. Her training in disguising her true feelings- as part of a communist system- has stood her in good stead. She first married a physicist, Ulrich Merkel but they divorced in 1982 and she remarried chemistry professor, Joachim Sauer in 1998.
When Kohl was involved in scandal in 1999, she was the first to criticise him publicly and, far from attracting opprobrium, was made chair of the CDU- a surprise for a Protestant woman in a Catholic party. This might have been one of the reasons she did not get on with Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian CSU leader who also had ambitions to be Chancellor. But then his challenge faded in 2002 Merkel became leader of the opposition in lower house, the Bundestag. Merkel favours extensive reform of the unions and the welfare state to make Germany’s economy stronger. According to The Economist she intends to strengthen the right of firms to negotiate company level wage deals and to weaken employment protection laws which make it so difficult to dismiss employees. She also aims to simplify the staggeringly complex income tax system as well as reform the funding of the health service- excellent but hindered by insufficient funding. So, while the SPD’s reform programme was faltering through lack of political support, Merkel was advocating a much tougher set of reforms which she insisted are essential to put Germany back on the road to economic success. Merkel supports a strong bond with USA and favoured the Iraq war; some called her a lackey of the USA as a result. She is also against the admission of Turkey into the EU and advises a much looser connection. For a woman from Eastern Germany to have made it to the top in a mere 15 years is a breathtaking achievement.

The Campaign for the 2005 Election
In May 2005 she won the candidacy of the CDU for president in the next election, due in 2006. Schroeder called an election a year early- for September 2005- to outflank opposition in his own party to reform measures, not dissimilar to those favoured by Merkel. She began the campaign with a 21% poll lead but she is not a strong campaigner and her stock plummeted after she confused ‘net’ with ‘gross’ income in an interview on TV. Part of her response was to appoint Paul Kirchhof as economic adviser who had some interesting ideas. Unfortunately he had too many ideas and one of them- a flat tax- was ridiculed by Schroeder in a televised debate as a ruse to fill the pockets of them rich; most viewers thought she had lost the debate. From being way out in front Merkel’s campaign began to wobble. Schroeder toured the country making inspirational speeches- attacking the CDU intention to impose the ‘Anglo-Saxon free market model’ and rallying his supporters; twice before he had come from behind to win so the CDU could have been forgiven for being nervous as their supremacy began to look threadbare. Merkel came under intense fire within her own party for allowing a huge and decisive lead to evaporate.

The Results
The gap began to close so that by polling day the 21 point lead had been reduced to a mere couple of points. Merkel was criticised in her own party for being lack lustre on the stump and her prospects looked bleak for a while. On the day it was agonisingly close with CDU/CSU garnering 35% and SDP 34%.This meant that the governing coalition of SPD-Greens had lost its majority, while the challenging CDU-Free Democrat one had not achieved one of its own. The free market Free Democrats polled 10%, the Greens and the New Left Party 8.1 and 8.7 respectively. In Bavaria the right do so badly- Stoiber had unwisely criticised voters in East Germany- that the unthinkable happened: it failed to make 50% of the vote.

Seats Won
SDP….222
Greens.51
New Left..54
CDU….225
FDP….61

Merkel announced she was the winner but Schroeder maintained he was still Chancellor. Behind the scenes both parties sought to find coalition partners. The Free Democrats and the Greens did not have enough seats to help either side and neither would do business with the New Left. For two to three weeks rumours abounded regarding possible alliances involving unlikely coalitions, all of them named by the symbolism of the party colours involved e.g. the ‘Jamaica Coalition’ when the proposal involved the colours of the flag of that country(CDU (black,) FDP (yellow), and green). When the CDU finally won a delayed result in Dresden the moral advantage seemed to pass to Merkel who had been stubbornly resisting Schroeder’s insistence that he should remain as Chancellor, even if the eventual outcome was a ‘Grand Coalition’ between the two big parties. After three weeks of unrelenting negotiation the SPD leader relented and agreed Merkel should be Chancellor. The price- heavy for the CDU was that 8 of the 14 Cabinet ‘policy portfolios’ would be held by the SPD, suggesting that Schroeder’s senior party colleagues, in the final analysis put their own careers before his. The SDP have been allocated finance, foreign affairs and justice while the CDU-CSU has to be content with economics, defence and interior- all lower pecking order jobs.
Merkel has also had to make policy concessions as a four page memo of the negotiations makes clear. The tax system is to be simplified but the exemption from tax for night and holiday shifts will remain. Company level wage negotiations moreover, will not be mandated by legislation to take place on a sector wide basis as the CDU had planned. The final date for cabinet names and coalition details to be finalised is 12th November and a week after that probably then formal election of Merkel as Chancellor will take place. The nationwide parties on both sides will have to first approve the deal struck and this might prove difficult as while the SPD thinks Schroeder’s reform package is too extreme, the CDU-CSU think Merkel is having to sacrifice the very principles on which she fought, and narrowly won, the election. Both leaders face internal opponents and the infighting could both delay Merkel’s final confirmation as Chancellor and- the bane of all such coalitions- frustrate the reforms which Germany so desperately needs. SPD party congresses can be tumultuous. In 1968, when it met to vote on Germany’s first grand coalition, the chairman of the party’s parliamentary party ended up with two teeth missing. Already the youth sections of the CDU have demanded, and won, an inquiry into the electoral debacle over which Merkel presided. Few expect the coalition to survive longer than six months – though some estimate two years. Germany’s embryonic economic recovery could prove to be the most important casualty of such a failure. The Economist concludes that if the attempted coupling of the two major parties fails:

‘The immediate result would probably be new elections- and in the longer term, a loss of confidence in the country’s main political players, apparently incapable of getting their act together, even when the entire nation is urging them on.’(20/10/05).

Bill Jones, November 2nd, 2005.