James Blitz Livre Blanc: France has learned the lessons of the UK’s defence cuts

May 1, 2013 1:01 pm by James Blitz
(CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)

(CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)

President François Hollande this week published France’s long awaited strategic defence review, setting out what the French armed forces should be aiming to do in the years ahead. The publication of the document – called the “livre blanc” or “white book” – was an important moment for those following European defence.

In recent years, the US has become increasingly concerned that European states are cutting back on defence spending, leaving the US to do more and more of the heavy lifting in Nato. In 2010, Britain, the biggest defence spender in Europe, slashed expenditure by eight per cent in real terms. The big question was whether France was about to do the same.

The good news for France’s allies is that it isn’t taking what might be called the “Cameron approach.” According to Camille Grand, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, France did debate whether to slash defence spending by 10 per cent. “But the French finance ministry lost that argument, much to relief of the service chiefs,” he says. Read more

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Posted in Foreign affairs |

Why Jacob Zuma’s visit to see Nelson Mandela backfired so badly

May 1, 2013 12:05 pm by Andrew England

The “exclusive” footage by SABC, South Africa’s state broadcaster, was rich in content as the country’s top leaders chuckled to the background of clicking and flashing cameras.

There was President Jacob Zuma, his shirt undone at the neck, looking relaxed and carefree. His deputy in the ruling African National Congress, Cyril Ramaphosa, appeared equally jovial and casual.

But there was one major problem – the centrepiece of the clip, Nelson Mandela, looked anything but happy. Rather, the revered former liberation leader and South Africa’s first black president stared vacantly into the distance, frail and apparently unaware of the commotion around him.

The result was the unseemly spectacle of a bunch of politicians parading themselves around an old man lauded as a national treasure, causing a storm of outrage to erupt on social media.


Mandela survived 27 years in prison only to become a prisoner of the ANC marketing machine.
April 30, 2013 12:06 pm via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite
@Trevornoah
Trevor Noah



What the #ANC did, smiling&posing with an evidently ill #Mandela is sick. That is not how we want to remember him. They had no right!
April 30, 2013 7:49 pm via Twitter for BlackBerry®ReplyRetweetFavorite
@amandathandile
Mfengu Queen

In response to the backlash, the ANC felt the need to explain itself in a statement the following day. Read more

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Posted in South Africa |

Running low on ‘juice’: Obama to look beyond Congress

May 1, 2013 12:02 am by Financial Times

By Richard McGregor in Washington

It is remarkable that Barack Obama, only months after a convincing re-election, seems to keep falling back on his self-professed powerlessness when pressed about his second-term agenda.

Be it on closing down Guantanamo Bay, ending the across-the-board budget cuts (known as sequestration), restricting firearms sales or bringing Obamacare into life, Mr Obama talks more about what he can’t get done than the other way round.

The president suffered the indignity at a Tuesday press conference of being asked if his second-term administration still had any “juice” left, joking in response that maybe he should “just pack up and go home”. Read more

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Posted in US politics |

Gideon Rachman India, China and yet another border dispute

April 30, 2013 2:29 pm by Gideon Rachman
Activists of the Indian right-wing Hindu organisation Shiv Sena burn a China national flag in protest against Chinese troops moving onto disputed territory on April 25 (NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images)

Activists of the Indian right-wing Hindu organisation Shiv Sena burn a Chinese flag in protest against troops moving into Indian-controlled territory on April 25 (NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images)

Rising tensions with Japan are evidently not enough to keep China busy. The People’s Liberation Army has now also pitched tents in a bit of disputed territory, controlled by India, creating an embarrassing security dilemma for the Delhi government. Official India’s initial reaction has been to play the incident down. I encountered an Indian diplomat in Beijing last week, who speculated that the whole thing was probably an initiative by an over-zealous local Chinese commander – and assured me that it would all be smoothed over. But that was five days ago, now – and the Chinese are still there.

As a result, the Indian government is increasingly open to charges of weakness – or even appeasement. Brahma Chellaney, one of India’s most hawkish commentators, fumes that “China is encroaching little by little on Indian land” and accuses the government of Manmohan Singh of “bending over backward at a time of aggression”. Read more

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Posted in China, India |

Smart Reads April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013 1:48 pm by Amie Tsang

More on the Great Tax Race
♦ Luxembourg is set to share currently confidential information about multinationals’ bank accounts, showing how much it wants to shed its image as a tax haven at a time of a political and popular backlash against tax avoidance.
♦ One of the biggest hedge fund service businesses on the Cayman Islands has tried to block sweeping reforms to make the tax haven more transparent.
♦ Jeffrey Sachs writes about how austerity has exposed the threat of global tax havens: “In the new world of austerity following the 2008 crash… they are increasingly seen as a cancer on the global financial system that must be excised.”
The rest of the world
♦ Despite Dutch politics being roiled by waves of populist anger and anti-elitism, Willem-Alexander ascends to the throne amid an outpouring of popular enthusiasm – polls show support for preserving the Dutch monarchy running as high as 85 per cent.
♦ President Hamid Karzai acknowledges that the Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of cash at his office for a decade: “Not a big amount. A small amount, which has been used for various purposes.”
♦ Reuters takes a look through the confidential report prepared for the Cypriot central bank, which found that the Bank of Cyprus had been willing to invest in risky, high-yield Greek debt in its efforts to offset an erosion of its balance sheet from non-performing loans. The report also alleges that 28,000 files, containing emails from a crucial period during which the Bank of Cyprus spent billions of euros buying Greek bonds, were erased before investigators could copy them.
♦ A singer’s lament for Syria, broadcast on “Arab Idol”, has become a hit in the Arab world.
♦ Bangalore, once an advertisement for a new, confident India, is losing some of its sheen.  Read more

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Posted in Smart Reads |
From FT.com April 29, 2013

Barack Obama is meant to be the most powerful man in the world. But it looks increasingly as though he may be dragged into a conflict in Syria, against his own better judgment. Read more

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Posted in Middle East, Syria, US foreign policy |

Emerging eateries: the top 50

April 29, 2013 9:55 pm by Barney Thompson

In at number one: Joan Roca of El Celler de Can Roca (Getty)

Natalie Whittle, of FT Weekend, reports that a gastronomic boom in emerging economies has propelled restaurants from Peru, Brazil and Mexico up the rankings in a prestigious annual list of the best places to eat in the world.

The highest riser in the latest S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, compiled by Restaurant magazine, is Astrid y Gaston from Lima, which jumped 21 paces to number 14. And if you’d never thought of Lima as a gastro-paradise, think on this: it now has the same number of eateries on the list as London.

As for top spot, Copenhagen’s Noma, which has been at number one for three years running, was finally knocked off its perch by the Spanish restaurant El Celler de Can Roca, self-styled purveyor of “emotional cuisine” run by the Roca brothers.

Since many of The World’s readers are the jet-setting type – and, dare we say it, the type that likes to chalk off another long lunch at the planet’s finest restaurants – we supply the top 50 below. Bon appétit… Read more

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Posted in Foreign affairs |

Esther Bintliff Leaving North Korea: a photo gallery

April 29, 2013 7:20 pm by Esther Bintliff

On Friday, South Korea advised the 175 workers left at the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea to leave for their own safety. Photographer Chung Sung-Jun captured part of the journey for Getty Images. In a set of striking photos, cars and vans are shown piled high with factory goods, to the extent that some of the drivers appear to have had no clear view through their windscreens. The workers joined compatriots who have left the zone since work was suspended earlier this month as a result of the escalating tension between Pyongyang and Seoul.

Seven South Koreans were held back on Monday, according to the BBC:

“Officials said the North insisted that some South Korean staff remain to negotiate unpaid wages. They did not believe the seven would be at risk.”

APRIL 27: South Korean workers arriving from the Kaesong joint industrial complex in North Korea at the inter-Korean transit office on April 27, 2013 in Paju, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

The FT’s Song Jung-a reported on the start of the exodus a few weeks ago:

“Long lines of cars and trucks loaded with heavy luggage crossed the border gate into South Korea this week as South Korean workers brought raw material and half-finished products back to minimise losses.”

APRIL 27: South Korean workers arriving from the Kaesong joint industrial complex in North Korea at the inter-Korean transit office on April 27, 2013 in Paju, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
Kaesong began operating in 2004 – the product of the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, and a symbol of the potential for economic cooperation between the two Koreas.

According to a US congressional research note from 2011, products manufactured in the industrial park include “clothing and textiles (71 firms), kitchen utensils (4 firms), auto parts (4 firms), semiconductor parts (2 firms), and toner cartridges (1 firm).” Read more

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Posted in Asia, North Korea |

Smart Reads April 29, 2013

April 29, 2013 2:37 pm by Amie Tsang

♦ In the first installment of our Great Tax Race series, Vanessa Houlder examines how the Netherlands and Luxembourg managed to book more foreign direct investment than the US, UK and Germany together. Exploitation of cracks in the international tax system has ignited intense anger from an austerity-weary public. Matt Steinglass looks at how the Netherlands wants to change its tax haven image, but is wary of scaring businesses away.
♦ Italy has a new government and it has already been met with mayhem.
♦ Just after winning the most votes in Iceland’s parliamentary elections, the head of the centre-right Independence party has said the government needs to focus on restoring growth.
♦ Anne-Marie Slaughter thinks President Obama should keep the Rwandan genocide in mind when weighing up action in Syria.
♦ The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur who was kidnapped by the Tsarnaev brothers describes his harrowing experience. The Boston Globe has also pulled together a timeline of the hunt for the bombing suspects.
♦ William Zinsser, author of “On Writing Well”, is still counselling people on the subject at the age of 90. He holds one-to-one sessions with people who read their writing out to him, as he cannot see, and only accepts sandwiches as payment.
♦ Maryam Sharif takes to the street to canvass for her father who is likely to become Pakistan’s PM for a third time: “It’s a beautiful feeling to be loved”. Read more

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Posted in Smart Reads |

Global austerity: a primer

April 29, 2013 12:24 pm by Lindsay Whipp

(DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty)Austerity appears to be an increasingly dirty word in Europe. The past week alone has seen European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Bill Gross of Pimco and Italy’s new prime minister Enrico Letta calling for an easing of austerity.

Spain’s surpassing of the 6m unemployed mark on Thursday added fuel to the debate. But even in Germany, the austerity police of the eurozone, cracks are beginning to show ahead of the elections with the emergence of an anti-euro party.

a) Are there any austerians left? Yes. Here are some of them.

- UK: Chancellor George Osborne hit back at criticism over his apparent excessive austerity by claiming there is no other alternative. And after a tough week when he was criticised by the IMF over the excessive pace of his austerity programme, this week has brought better fortunes for his stance as figures showed a lower deficit and the economy expanded 0.3 per cent in the first quarter.

- Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s view as articulated this week couldn’t be clearer: “I call it balancing the budget. Everyone else is using this term austerity. That makes it sound like something truly evil.” Germany is the only eurozone country with a 2012 budget surplus.

- US: The situation here is different because of sequestration, which triggered automatic spending cuts and tax rises. And the White House faces a July deadline to raise the borrowing limit or default on its debt.

- Latvia: The tiny Baltic state is emerging from a state of uber austerity – part of its bid to join the euro later this year – and it could end up being seen as a poster child for successful deficit cutting implementation, with real growth of more than 5 per cent in 2011 and 2012, despite the broader recession in Europe.

- Spain: The push by Europe’s fourth-largest economy to cut spending and raise taxes has led to record unemployment topping 6m for the first time in its recent history. The government of Mariano Rajoy announced economic reforms and structural measures on Friday.

- Italy: The technocrat government of Mario Monti has been steadfast in carrying out fiscal consolidation. All eyes will be on Mr Letta, who has already said: “Europe’s policy of austerity is no longer sufficient”. Read more

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Posted in Global economy |
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