Friday, 13 July 2018
Even stockmarket bulls are more cautious than at the start of the year
BEARS sound clever; bulls make money. This piece of financial acumen, imparted by a trader to a colleague, is hard to beat for brevity. It also makes a good point. There is something about market pessimism that endows bears with an aura of wisdom that is not always deserved. The cautious sound clever because they appear to have weighed the odds. Optimists seem heedless by comparison. Yet it is only by taking on risk that investors can hope to make money.
So it is telling that even bulls are now sounding cautious. The economy and stockmarket in America have had a good run, after all. The expansion, which started in 2009, is now the second-longest on record. Unemployment is low. The Federal Reserve is hawkish. This mix tends to kill a bull market sooner rather than later. The question is how much further stocks can rise. Is there still time for bulls to make money? Or will being a bear save you money as well as make you sound clever?
In this debate, each side has a distinctive way of looking at...Continue reading
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Why the euro zone hasn’t seen more cross-border bank mergers
MERGERS of euro-area banks from different countries, a banker jokes, are “very much like teenage sex. There’s a lot of talk, but little action. And when it does happen, there’s a lot of disappointment.” In recent months gossip has linked each of France’s three biggest banks (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale), as well as UniCredit, Italy’s largest, with Commerzbank, Germany’s second-biggest listed bank. Lately chatter has connected UniCredit and Société Générale. But no big, cross-border takeover is imminent.
A stream of deals in the 2000s—notably UniCredit’s purchase of HypoVereinsbank, another leading German lender, in 2005—has slowed to a trickle (see chart, top panel). Policymakers at both the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) would like the flow to revive. The euro area’s banking markets are still essentially national ones. “European banking remains as fragmented today as it was in 2012,” notes Magdalena Stoklosa...Continue reading
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Development-impact bonds are costly, cumbersome—and good
IF A girl in a poor country goes to school, she will probably have a more comfortable life than if she stays at home. She will be less likely to marry while still a child, and therefore less likely to die in childbirth. So, not surprisingly, there is an Indian charity that tries to get girls into school and ensure they learn something, and there are Western philanthropists willing to pay for its work. What is noteworthy is how they have gone about this transaction.
On July 13th the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, presents the results of the world’s first large development-impact bond, which paid for girls’ education in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. In this novel way of funding charitable work, a financial institution gives money to a charity, which tries to achieve various specified outcomes. If a neutral arbiter rules that it has succeeded, a donor or philanthropist repays the investor, plus a bonus. If it fails, the investor loses some or all of its money.
This is...Continue reading
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Donald Trump insists on trade reciprocity. But what kind?
IN THE sixth episode of “The Apprentice”, a reality-television show first broadcast in 2004, Donald Trump, as always, fired a contestant vying for a job in his company. She was, he said, the worst negotiator. And she had failed to fight back when belittled by her teammate. The episode was entitled “Tit For Tat”.
That same principle of reciprocity guides Mr Trump’s trade policy as president. And it is animating his tariff war with China. On July 6th America imposed 25% duties on Chinese imports worth about $34bn. (Another $16bn-worth will be hit in due course.) China responded by slapping tariffs on a similar amount of American goods (including a cargo of soyabeans aboard the Peak Pegasus that arrived at the port of Dalian mere hours later).
The two sides disagree, however, about which is tit and which tat. China believes it is responding dollar-for-dollar to American aggression. But America too believes it is retaliating: punishing China for trade and...Continue reading
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Mini-grids could be a boon to poor people in Africa and Asia
A FORESTED village in Jharkhand state, eastern India, Narotoli is home mainly to adherents of Sarna, a nature-worshipping tribal religion. In more ways than one, it has long been off-grid. Drive past a police checkpoint a few miles away and you are in territory loyal to “the guys”, a euphemism for Maoist guerrillas. That makes Narotoli more marginalised than most places. A few months ago it became one of the last in India to benefit from a push by Narendra Modi, the prime minister, to supply electricity to all the country’s villages. But the power lines are so “reliably unreliable”, says an Indian executive, that they might as well be washing lines.
Two years before the grid arrived, however, Mlinda, a social enterprise, had set up a “mini-grid”, a bank of batteries charged by solar panels and hooked up to homes, to guarantee round-the-clock power independent of the national network. Mini-grids are different from the rooftop solar panels and batteries (sometimes linked up in...Continue reading
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Drug Supply Chain Feels the Trump Effect
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Thursday, 12 July 2018
The case against impeachment
ALAN DERSHOWITZ has had a pair of alternative covers mocked up for his new book, “The Case Against Impeaching Trump”. On one, which the celebrity legal scholar means to brandish as proof that his pre-emptive defence of President Donald Trump is apolitical, the word “Trump” has been replaced with “Clinton”. A lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the 79-year-old Harvard man says he is “still devastated” that she lost the election and would be making the same constitutionally grounded argument on her behalf had she won. The other option is a humorous acknowledgment that not many in Mr Dershowitz’s thinning crowd of liberal friends and admirers are likely to be impressed by that. To encourage at least furtive reading of his book, the second mock-cover is a plain brown paper wrapper, “like they used to use to cover pornography”.
No one need feel sorry for him. Mr Dershowitz, once a brilliant scholar and defender of celebrity clients, including Claus von...Continue reading
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Brett Kavanaugh could shape the law for the next 40 years
BRETT KAVANAUGH, President Donald Trump’s second nomination to the Supreme Court in as many years, enjoys coaching girls’ basketball and feeding the homeless. He has twin degrees from Yale. He clerked for three judges, including Anthony Kennedy, the man he will probably replace. Since 2006 he has been a judge on the second-most powerful tribunal in America, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Mr Kavanaugh is highly qualified, an unremarkable choice for a Republican president. Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio might have picked him.
Yet Mr Kavanaugh is also a political animal. He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel charged with investigating Bill Clinton’s liaison with Monica Lewinsky and the suicide of Vince Foster, a friend and colleague of the Clintons. Mr Starr’s report, partly written by Mr Kavanaugh, set out the case for impeachment. Mr Kavanaugh then worked in George W. Bush’s...Continue reading
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What Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ought to talk about in Helsinki
FECKLESS freeloaders they may be, but none of America’s NATO partners has displayed graphics of missiles raining down on Florida, or designed a torpedo which could cover the west coast in radioactive sludge, rendering it uninhabitable. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has done both. To judge by Russia’s rhetoric and declared intentions, and by the increasing role of nuclear weapons in both countries’ strategic calculations, the meeting between Mr Putin and President Donald Trump in Helsinki comes at a fateful time, though there is little evidence that such thoughts are uppermost in Mr Trump’s mind. He likes strongmen, thinks America and Russia should do business and does not care for Ukraine. He has already shaken hands with Kim Jong Un, so why not Mr Putin? However, there is a lot that America and Russia ought to be talking about.
For people who still believe in negotiated disarmament, the summit is a last chance. Kingston Reif of the Arms Control...Continue reading
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Worker shortages could heal America’s economy
SINCE 2015 many hawks have continually suggested that the American economy is at or close to maximum sustainable employment. They have some explaining to do. Fully 5.8m more Americans are in work than in December of that year, when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. That is two-thirds as many as lost their jobs during the Great Recession. In May the unemployment rate fell to 3.8%, its lowest for 18 years (it has since risen back to 4%). Yet the economy has not yet overheated. Only recently has inflation hit or exceeded 2%, the Fed’s target, for three straight months—and that is partly because of a worldwide recovery in oil prices.
Nevertheless, the hand-wringing has continued. The latest supposed problem is a labour shortage. For the first time since data began to be collected in 2000, there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers (see chart). Nearly 90% of small businesses who are hiring or trying to hire workers report that there are few or no qualified applicants,...Continue reading
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Why a mayor in Lebanon has dressed policewomen in hot pants
THE mayor of Broumana, Pierre Achkar, has a problem. Rich tourists from the Gulf, who spend big and stay long, no longer holiday in his mountain town. The mayor wants to entice tourists from the West to plug the gap, but Lebanon’s reputation for violence and instability keeps them away, he says. His solution: to hire young women as police officers and dress them up in black hot pants.
“People in the West don’t visit Lebanon because they think it’s a country of Islamic extremism,” explains Mr Achkar. “We want to show that we have the same way of life as the West. You wear shorts and we wear shorts. We have democracy. Our women are free.” The mayor’s stunt has caused a stir and split opinion. Some are pleased, but others say it exposes the young women to sexual harassment, or worry that they will distract drivers and cause road accidents. The mayor is undaunted. “Why would we hire ugly girls?” he asks.
The new hires...Continue reading
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Saudi women want more sway in religious affairs
TO KEEP women quiet, Saudi Arabia’s clerical hierarchy once damned their voices as awra, an Arabic word for genitalia. The late Sheikh Abdelaziz Bin Baz, the kingdom’s top official cleric, opined that women should stay at home to reduce the risk of adultery. In 1994 he ordered the kingdom’s withdrawal from a UN conference because its support for equality between the sexes was “against God’s law”.
Two decades on Saudi female scholars are widely heard. They are penetrating the courts, mosques and universities, and can be heard giving sermons online. Nawal al-Eid, a preacher with her own women’s centre in Riyadh, has 5m followers on Twitter, more than almost any male cleric. “As long as you are qualified, you can speak up,” says Noura al-Hassawi, the director of research at Princess Nourah University’s Islamic Sciences department, the kingdom’s largest for women. “As a scholar, my opinion is equal to a man’s.”
Secular Saudi...Continue reading
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The fight against Islamic State is moving to Africa
THEIR hair tightly braided, two young girls sleep head-to-toe in matching pink dresses with gold trim—a sight to gladden the heart were it not for the startling white bandages around their arms and legs. The beds in this ward are overflowing with patients, the rounded stumps of their amputated limbs pointing at the ceiling. Colour-coded tags hang near the door to sort casualties: red for the most urgent cases, black for those beyond help. They attest to the grim efficiency of the surgeons from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), gained from dealing with the unrelenting flow of bomb and gunshot victims. Their clinic is, perhaps, the only thing that works well in Maiduguri.
Nigeria’s main north-eastern city is at the centre of a series of jihadist campaigns stretching in two broad belts across Africa on either side of the Sahara. The northern one hugs the Mediterranean, from Egypt through Libya and Tunisia to Algeria. The southern one extends from Somalia and Kenya in the east...Continue reading
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Transcript: Interview with General Mark Hicks
MAJOR GENERAL MARK HICKS, who commands about 1,200 special-operations troops assigned to missions in Africa, spoke with The Economist in Niger on April 9th on the sidelines of Flintlock, a military training exercise. He was joined in the discussion by several members of his staff. Below is a transcript of parts of the interview. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Some of General Hicks’s comments are included in an Economist report on security in the Sahel that can be found here. A leader on the issue is available here.
The Economist: What is your area of biggest concern at the moment?
General Hicks: I’m concerned about youth bulges in...Continue reading
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Latin America’s new media are growing up
DURING Nicaragua’s current unrest, the president, Daniel Ortega, tried a tactic that had worked before. In León, a stronghold of government support, thugs loyal to his Sandinista regime tried to put university students onto buses heading for Managua, the capital, to use them to help suppress protests there. The students refused. They had seen videos of police beating demonstrators and wanted no part of it. Their resistance, reported on independent news websites, inspired more protests.
After Mr Ortega was elected in 2006 he sold half of the state broadcasting channels, put his children in charge of the other half and let his wife (who is also his vice-president) drone on for 20 minutes a day on national television. But a proliferation of social-media pages are covering the protests, while more established outlets, like 100% Noticias, a TV news channel, have stopped censoring themselves. “People are no longer interested in news provided by the regime,” says Carlos Fernando...Continue reading
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Daniel Ortega is causing a bloodbath in Nicaragua
IT BEGAN three months ago with a protest against cuts in pensions decreed by Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president. Now his Central American country is witnessing a full-blown civil insurrection with mass casualties. Although it has received far less attention, Nicaragua is following the script of Venezuela, in which an elected dictator clings to power though repression and at the cost of economic destruction. And as in Venezuela, restoring peace and democracy is a task for which outsiders seem to lack both the will and the tools.
Some 300 people have been killed since April in a country of 6.2m according to human-rights groups, almost all of them unarmed protesters at the hands of paramilitary thugs acting in cahoots with Mr Ortega’s police. Among the latest victims were at least 20 killed on July 8th when the paramilitaries cleared opposition barricades from two small towns south of Managua, the capital.
That conforms to the pattern of this unequal struggle. Students and other young...Continue reading
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Venezuelan cash is almost worthless, but also scarce
VENEZUELAN hawkers on the border with Colombia call it “money art”. The handbags, purses and hats they sell are made from nearly new Venezuelan banknotes and sold as mementos. Payment is in “real money”, meaning Colombian pesos. The handicrafts cost the equivalent of $5 or so. The raw material—banknotes in denominations of two, five and even 100 bolívares—are still legal tender in Venezuela. But inflation is so high they are worth more folded up into origami objects than as cash. The free-market exchange rate is about 3.5m bolívares to a dollar.
The worthlessness of Venezuela’s currency is the result of inflation, 46,000% a year, which in turn is largely caused by the printing of money to finance the government’s deficit of 30% of GDP. But there is also a shortage of banknotes. In the looking-glass world of Venezuela’s economy, cash itself trades at a premium to its face value, making it slightly less worthless than...Continue reading
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The American president lambasts his allies
DONALD TRUMP’S bark may be worse than his bite, but the bark is a very nasty sound. America’s NATO allies were left with that feeling after a summit in which the American president showed startling rudeness, but in the end raised no objection to a stout pledge of common defence against Russia and other adversaries.
Diplomats had issued careful warnings about the likelihood of robust exchanges at the gathering in Brussels on July 11th-12th, but nobody was quite prepared for the tirade against America’s “delinquent” allies, and Germany in particular, which Mr Trump unleashed on arrival, venting his spleen in front of Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general.
The president accused the Germans of being “controlled by Russia.” He complained that billions of dollars a year were flowing from Berlin to Moscow under a new gas-pipeline deal, while Germany had the nerve to expect American help with warding off Russian threats....Continue reading
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Thanks to Boris Johnson, a farcical west-Balkan summit in London
THERE were moments when a gathering of western Balkan leaders in London on July 9th and 10th seemed like a scene from one of the “Carry On” films, quintessential British comedies of the 1960s and 1970s. For starters, Britain was holding a meeting aimed at helping countries join the European Union, which it is leaving. Then the foreign ministers hung around waiting for Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary—and their host—to show up. They were asked to be patient. He was, apparently, attending an emergency government security meeting in the wake of the death of a woman from a chemical-warfare agent called Novichok. In fact, he was resigning, arguing that the latest Brexit plan would leave Britain as “a colony” of the EU. When the ministers were told the truth, some burst out laughing.
The “Western Balkans Summit” was not an EU meeting but part of a German initiative called the Berlin Process. The London meeting, bringing together various EU leaders plus...Continue reading
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Investors are gorging on American assets
ECONOMISTS think prices, like spilt ketchup, are sticky. They move only slowly as firms digest economic conditions. Financial markets are an exception. Computerised trading by thousands of participants means prices, especially of currencies, can move in a McFlurry.
Since The Economist last updated the Big Mac index (BMI), our lighthearted guide to currency valuation, burger prices have remained constant in 19 of 44 countries. But every currency has shifted in value (see chart 1). Our index uses a nugget of economic wisdom called purchasing-power parity: currencies should adjust until goods cost the same everywhere. If, once converted into dollars, Big Mac prices vary, one or other currency looks dear. Big movements in exchange rates, without similarly supersized shifts in burger prices, can send a currency up or down the index.
That explains why the Argentine peso has been the biggest mover since January. Then, it looked 25% undervalued compared with the dollar; today, that has swelled to 51%. The peso tumbled...Continue reading
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Wednesday, 11 July 2018
Courts slap down the Trump administration’s immigration policies
THE Trump administration’s position on immigration is simply summarised: it would like to have less immigrants, whether legal or illegal. But that aim, shared by both President Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, has collided with pesky obstacles like laws, courts and public outrage. It has also provoked chaos on the southern border. A new “zero-tolerance” policy, announced in May, referred adults caught illegally crossing the border to criminal prosecution and required that accompanying children be separated and held in specialised facilities. That resulted in the spectacle of small, terrified children in cages, shocking the world. On June 20th the administration reversed its policy, instead opting to hold families together in detention. Now two legal losses for the administration make this compromise untenable.
The first, decided by a federal judge in San Diego on June 26th, criticised the administration’s “reactive governance responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government’s own...Continue reading
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China frees the widow of a Nobel peace-prize winner
LIU XIA, the widow of China’s most renowned dissident of the 21st century, Liu Xiaobo, had been facing the grim prospect of commemorating the death a year ago of her husband while herself still suffering de facto house arrest in Beijing. But on the morning of July 10th, three days before the anniversary, the authorities allowed Ms Liu to board a Finnair flight to Helsinki for a connection to Berlin, where she has friends. Germany had taken the lead among the many Western countries that had been pressing for her release. China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, happened to be visiting Germany when news broke of Ms Liu’s long-awaited freedom.
Her confinement began in 2010, days after Ms Liu’s husband, then a year into an 11-year sentence for subversion, won the Nobel peace prize. Though never formally charged with any crime herself, she was prevented by security agents from leaving their apartment in Beijing...Continue reading
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Deliverance for Thailand’s trapped footballers
RELIEF engulfs Thailand. After 17 days, ten of them without food or medicine, 12 Thai boys and their football coach emerged from the Tham Luang cave on July 10th. The Wild Boars team became trapped 4km into the complex after heavy rains flooded it while they explored together. Hundreds of divers, rescue workers, doctors and officials worked to bring them to safety. Even Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley luminary, turned up to offer his services and a mini submarine (which, while appreciated, the Thai government carefully explained, was not what was needed). The team eventually swam through the flooded tunnels individually or in pairs using scuba gear. Guide ropes and professional divers helped them find their way through the dark waters.
Heroic tales abound. Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL, died after delivering oxygen tanks to the team on July 5th. Thailand’s King announced shortly afterwards that he would receive a sumptuous funeral paid for by the crown. Ekkapol Chantawong, the young...Continue reading
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Disney's $71 Billion Bid for Fox Is Now Worth $90 Billion
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When Will Trade Battles End? Watch Economies, Not Politicians
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Don't Fall for Pepsi's Sugar High
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Why the Strong Dollar Is Bad for Banks
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Tuesday, 10 July 2018
Ethiopia and Eritrea put an end to two decades of conflict
FOR a cold war it could turn surprisingly hot. Countless skirmishes occurred over the course of the nearly two decades following the bloody conflict, between 1998 and 2000, that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than half a million. In 2012 Ethiopia bombed three military camps in Eritrea used by the Ethiopian opposition. In 2015 it bombed an Eritrean mine and weapons depot. As recently as June 2016 Ethiopian and Eritrean troops came to blows, causing many casualties. Afterwards an Ethiopian official boasted his side was capable of waging “full scale war against Eritrea”.
So the arrival of peace on July 8th seemed unimaginable just a few months ago. In a display of unexpected warmth, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s new prime minister, embraced Issaias Afwerki, the ageing Eritrean dictator. In the Eritrean capital, Asmara, which no Ethiopian leader had visited since the war, the two pledged to normalise relations, putting an end to one of Africa’s most bitter conflicts....Continue reading
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Brett Kavanaugh is Donald Trump’s new pick for the Supreme Court
ON JULY 9th, in a prime-time ceremony, President Donald Trump announced that he had chosen Brett Kavanaugh to be his new pick for the Supreme Court. As his nominee walked into the East Room of the White House flanked by his wife and two daughters, the president praised his “impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law”. Mr Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court in as many years, has twin degrees from Yale. He clerked for three judges, including Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man he hopes to replace. He worked for Kenneth Starr in the investigation of Bill Clinton. He spent five years as a lawyer in George W. Bush’s administration. And since 2006, he has been a judge on the second-most powerful tribunal in America: the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Mr Trump settled on 53-year-old Mr Kavanaugh after a reality-show style build-up in which three less decorated contenders—including Thomas Hardiman, the runner-up when Mr Trump chose Neil...Continue reading
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Winning the Fox Bidding War Is Just the Beginning
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Chinese Auto Sales Run Into a Lending Roadblock
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Twitter's Wings Needed a Clip
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Don't Worry About the Earnings Slowdown Yet
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Monday, 9 July 2018
Sonos Can Play Its Own Tune
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A Stock Market Crash With Chinese Characteristics
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Saturday, 7 July 2018
The Imperfect Science of How Much Tariffs Will Hurt
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The boss of Pakistan’s ruling party is sentenced to ten years in jail
EARLY on the morning of July 6th reporters began to assemble their tripods outside Avenfield House, a posh apartment block on London’s Park Lane. The air of wealthy anonymity that hangs around the red-stone building belies its notoriety; in Pakistan, there are few addresses more famous. The assembled hacks were hoping to catch sight of the alleged owner of flats 16, 16a, 17 and 17a: Pakistan’s former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.
The four apartments are thought to have been knocked into one, and Mr Sharif is thought to be staying inside it. But it was from his son's nearby office that he gave his response to the verdict that Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an anti-graft court, delivered later in the day, as to whether Mr Sharif and his family paid for the property with money that they had not properly disclosed to the Pakistani authorities. The NAB—pronounced “nab”—found Mr Sharif guilty just 19 days before a general election in which his party...Continue reading
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Japan is finally starting to admit more foreign workers
WHEN Sakura no Mori hospital and care home in Kawaguchi, 20km north of Tokyo, hired its first foreign workers six years ago, some of the patients would shout “gaijin” (“foreigner”) to summon them; others were wary of having anything to do with them at all. Today Verlian Oktravina, a 26-year-old Indonesian nurse, says the Japanese she works with are more curious than hostile. Yoko Yamashita, the director of the care home, says patients can see that foreign workers are as good as Japanese ones: “They accept them.” She herself, she admits, was initially sceptical about hiring immigrants, but has since changed her mind.
Acceptance of foreign labour is gradually increasing in Japan, one of the world’s most homogenous countries, where only 2% of residents are foreigners, compared with 16% in France and 4% in South Korea. A poll conducted last year found opinion evenly split about whether Japan should admit more foreign workers, with 42% agreeing and 42% disagreeing....Continue reading
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Turkmenistan finds a novel solution to mass emigration
CITIZENS of Turkmenistan are definitely allowed to leave the country, its immigration service insisted in a statement in mid-April. The declaration came in response to reports that men under the age of 30 were being prevented from boarding international flights. But in recent weeks reports have begun emerging again of men as old as 40 not being allowed to travel abroad. The authorities are so desperate to stem emigration, it seems, that they are simply stopping their countrymen from getting on planes.
With the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves and a population of just 5m, Turkmenistan should be prosperous. But its rulers have fallen out with both Iran and Russia, leaving China as their sole customer for gas. Much of the revenue from sales to China goes towards repaying the loans taken out to build the pipeline through which the gas flows. Some of the rest has been squandered on white elephants, such as a vast, empty, falcon-shaped airport and a ritzy...Continue reading
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The Thai cave rescue
TEN days after a flash flood inundated a 10km-deep network of caves in Thailand which 12 boys and their football coach had been exploring, the missing team was found alive by rescue divers. But the 13, who were discovered 2km into the cave, are still unable to leave. The way out remains flooded. The monsoon rains are impeding efforts to pump the water out. Some of the boys do not know how to swim. The water trapping them is murky and fast-moving and the tunnels they must pass through are narrow and winding in places. As The Economist went to press, rescue workers were trying to teach the children the rudiments of swimming and diving, to allow them to be guided out.
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Australia’s states offer to make treaties with aboriginals
PATRICK DODSON was there on the day, 30 years ago, that prime minister Bob Hawke promised aboriginals a treaty that would at last acknowledge their rights. At the time Mr Dodson was the manager of one of the many “land councils” that aboriginals had formed in an effort to reclaim their traditional lands. He helped Mr Hawke draft his declaration. “It was a breath of fresh air that at long last Australia was prepared to sit down and discuss the way in which the country was taken from first-nations people,” the senator from the Labor party recalls.
Mr Hawke said that negotiations could be concluded within three years, but his plans were scuttled by the conservative opposition. “The whole notion of a treaty got pushed further and further to the background,” says Mr Dodson. Today, aboriginals are no closer to an agreement with the federal government than they were in 1988. Instead, the current conservative coalition had offered to hold a...Continue reading
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Malaysia’s former prime minister is charged with breach of trust
“IF YOU are listening to this message,” began the recording posted on the Facebook page of Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister unseated in elections in May, “it means action has been taken.” The action in question was Mr Najib’s arrest, on July 3rd. After a night in jail, he was charged with three counts of breach of trust and one of abuse of power, all tied to the disappearance of billions of dollars from 1MDB, a state development fund. Mr Najib pleaded not guilty and has been released on bail, although he is not permitted to leave the country. His trial will begin in February.
The arrest had been a long time coming. News of the scandal first emerged in 2015. But Mr Najib sacked the attorney-general and any other colleagues who wanted it properly investigated. He airily dismissed the $681m that had appeared in his personal accounts as a gift from an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family, since returned. Authorities in America, Switzerland, Singapore and elsewhere...Continue reading
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From dusty villages to Delhi, Indians seek people to persecute
WHEN the two old friends set off in early June for a day in the country, they had no inkling of what was in store. Abhijit Nath, a 30-year-old businessman, liked cooking, dogs and fancy pet fish. Nilotpal Das, 29, a dreamy, dreadlocked sound technician, had recently motorbiked the breadth of India, from the beaches of Goa in the west all the way back to their shared hometown, Guwahati, capital of the north-eastern state of Assam. Both loved the outdoors, which is why they steered Mr Nath’s shiny black SUV out of the city towards Kangthilangso Falls, three hours to the east, in jungle-wrapped hills.
Accounts vary, but the outcome is not in question. Towards dusk, as the two friends headed down from the falls into flatter, more open country, a crowd of villagers surrounded their car. Many carried clubs or metal bars and shouted, “Child-snatchers!” Footage of the scene captures the bloodied victims pleading that they are not child-snatchers nor even outsiders, but native Assamese—to no...Continue reading
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Friday, 6 July 2018
Italy’s government proposes to limit fixed-term job contracts
SO INGRAINED is the dream of the “posto fisso” in Italian culture, that the highest-grossing film of 2016 was a comedy about a man who stops at nothing to keep his permanent job in the country’s public bureaucracy. A series of reforms in recent years has liberalised Italy’s labour market. On July 2nd the government introduced legislation which changes tack.
The “dignity decree” aims to limit the prevalence of short-term job contracts and of firms shifting jobs abroad and simplifies some fiscal rules. (It also bans advertising of gambling, except for government-run lotteries). Businesses are livid; unions have offered mild praise. But the real impact on the job market may be less than its political effect.
The reform is the first big bit of legislation by the month-old government, an uneasy coalition between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, led by Luigi Di Maio, and Matteo Salvini’s right-wing League. It is the brainchild of Mr Di Maio, minister...Continue reading
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Poland’s government sacks a third of its Supreme Court
JUDGES are a pampered caste of crooks, according to Poland’s governing Law and Justice party (PiS). On July 3rd its new law on the Supreme Court took effect, the culmination of a series of judicial changes pushed through by the party. The European Union has urged the government to back down, warning that it is undermining the rule of law. Poland represents a vital battle for Brussels. If the EU cannot defend its fundamental values, including the rule of law, within its own borders, other illiberal leaders will surely take note.
The latest judicial reform lowers the retirement age from 70 to 65 for judges on the Supreme Court, which, among other responsibilities, rules on the validity of elections. As the law took effect on July 3rd, more than a third of its 72 judges were forced to step down. Some have asked the president for permission to stay on for the rest of their six-year terms, but critics fear the only judges to be granted that permission will be the pliant ones.
The...Continue reading
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Angela Merkel’s flawed deal on migrants
THE drama roiling German politics lately had little to do with the bare facts. Notionally the dispute between Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), its more conservative Bavarian sister party, concerned asylum-seekers who are registered and meant to stay in other EU countries, especially Italy, but then travel to Germany. The number of such “secondary” arrivals so far this year is under 20,000: eminently manageable in a country of 83m. The subject did not even come up during coalition talks between the two parties (and the centre-left Social Democrats, or SPD) this spring.
Yet until July 2nd, when the CDU and CSU reached a shaky compromise, it seemed this modest subject could fracture that young government and even end Mrs Merkel’s long chancellorship—because for both sides it was the symbol of something larger. The CSUers were driven by years of frustration at what they deem the chancellor’s complacent and haughty leadership...Continue reading
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Europe’s anti-immigrant parties are becoming more gay-friendly
AMID a sea of rainbow flags, Sebastian Tynkkynen sings along to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and waves a pro-gay placard. “Christians, don’t hate us. Islam, don’t kill us” reads his sign. Like many others at an LGBT pride parade in Kokkola, a small town in Finland, Mr Tynkkynen is proud to be bisexual. Unlike most of them, he is also proud to be anti-immigrant.
Mr Tynkkynen (pictured) represents the nationalist Finns Party (formerly the “True Finns”) on the city council of nearby Oulu. He also used to lead the party’s national youth wing. Last year a court fined him €300 ($350) for inciting hatred after he wrote a Facebook post that said: “The fewer Muslims in Finland, the better.”
Mr Tynkkynen’s gay-friendly Islamophobia is not unusual. Nationalist and anti-immigrant parties in Europe’s more socially liberal countries are trying to shed their old reputation for gay-bashing. Partly, this is because...Continue reading
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Europe is moving towards the tough immigration policies of Sebastian Kurz
IT WAS all smiles this week as Austria assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, one of the club’s law-making bodies. But behind the scenes Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s young chancellor, provokes knotted brows. Mr Kurz’s political identity, more than that of most other European leaders, is bound up with illegal immigration. Fans say his tough line, honed as foreign minister during the 2015-16 refugee crisis, blunts the appeal of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), the junior coalition partner to his centre-right People’s Party. Foes say his shift towards harshness makes it hard to tell the difference between moderates and extremists. “Kurz is on a dangerous course,” said Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, this week.
In office for barely six months, Mr Kurz has made his share of enemies. Some detect a whiff of demagoguery. There have been mis-steps: a meeting with the Bavarian government, which raised eyebrows in Berlin; Mr Kurz’s call for a European...Continue reading
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French vegans are tormenting France’s butchers
THICK, fleshy, severed cow’s tongues, their tips curled neatly on to the butcher’s tray. Skinned whole rabbits, limbs stretched taut as on a rack, eyes glassy. A moist pink blooded pig’s brain, decorated jauntily with a sprig of parsley. A butcher’s counter in France is a feast for carnivores—and a shop of horrors for the squeamish. Now it has also become the object of a violent anti-meat campaign, which is stirring a resistance movement among the country’s bouchers.
In recent months, a growing number of boucheries, particularly in northern France, have been vandalised or sprayed with fake blood. “Meat is murder”, or “Stop speciesism”, a campaign message designed to halt abuse of one species by another, are the attackers’ signature graffiti. Such has been the concern among butchers that last month they sent a joint letter to Gérard Collomb, the interior minister, to demand...Continue reading
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