DUBAI BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

Not for kids

The UAE has launched yet another crackdown on the use of child camel-jockeys, after the failure of its previous efforts drew widespread international criticism. Camel racing is a popular and highly competitive sport among Arab locals in Dubai and throughout the UAE, with prize-winning camels changing hands for millions of dollars.

Male jockeys as young as four, mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, are popular with some owners thanks to their light weight. But human-rights groups such as Anti-Slavery International say it is dangerous for children to race at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. They also claim many of the boys are in effect sold into the profession by their impoverished families in Asia. Some of the boys are underfed to keep them light, allowing the camels to race faster. In 2002, the UAE announced a ban on jockeys under the age of 16, but many camel owners have ignored the ruling. The new law will be strictly enforced at ports and airports, as well as at race tracks, ensuring boys under 16 or weighing less than 45kg (99lb) do not race, reported the WAM, the official UAE news agency.

Judge thy neighbour?

An unmarried Asian housemaid will suffer 150 lashes of the whip after an Islamic court in an outlying part of the United Arab Emirates found her guilty of adultery. The unnamed maid was arrested after her UAE national sponsor found out that she was pregnant. The case has served to highlight the stark contrast between Dubai, a glitzy 21st-century metropolis, and its more traditional neighbours.

The sharia court (Islamic law court) in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah said the sentence would be carried out in two stages, and afterwards the maid will be deported to her unnamed country of origin. While strict Islamic judges will even sentence adulterers to death by stoning, Dubai’s relatively liberal regime turns a blind eye to expatriates who co-habit out of wedlock.

A load of bull

The stockmarket flotation of Dubai’s Arab International Logistics was some 80 times oversubscribed, highlighting bullish investor sentiment on the city’s bourse. Dubai’s stockmarket reached record highs in March, after more than doubling in 2004. Analysts say the bull run is partly based on strong fundamentals: in 2004, corporate profits in Dubai’s banks, property and investment companies rose by an average 50%. But the market may be overheating. Analysts fear a repeat of 1998, when the UAE's stockmarket crashed following a sharp rally. It then took around five years for investor confidence to return. The UAE's central bank has ordered banks to cut lending for stockmarket speculation in a bid to cool the market.

Dubai bowls over London

The International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, is moving to Dubai after creaking under the tax burden in its historic home in Britain. The ICC has been based at Lord’s cricket ground in London since 1909, but will move to Dubai later this year to benefit from the emirate’s tax-free status, not to mention its cricket-mad population of expatriate Indians and Pakistanis. Dubai lobbied hard to persuade the ICC to move here. The organisation may be small in size, but it is very significant in cricket-playing countries such as India, Pakistan and Britain, all of which are important sources of workers, tourists and investors for Dubai.

Bibles bashed

In a move that underlined the limits of Dubai’s religious tolerance, the emirate's police arrested and jailed two American Christians for handing out bibles on the city’s streets. Marie Bush, a 55-year-old member of the First Baptist Church in Waxahachie, Texas, and Vivian Gilmer, a 72-year-old from the First Baptist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, had been distributing bibles and Christian DVDs at Dubai’s popular Global Village marketplace in late February. They were arrested and detained for 12 days before being sent back to America. Both said they were well-treated by Dubai Police. Dubai is a Muslim state, but is home to a large community of Christian churches and Hindu temples, serving the majority expatriate population. However, while worship is accepted, preaching to Muslims in public places is not.

Catch if you can

April 2005

Luciano Pavarotti: the farewell tour

April 7th 2005

At 69, Luciano Pavarotti, a legendary tenor, has decided to hang up his coat-tails with a global swansong: a 40-city farewell tour. He deserves the rest, after selling more than 100m records over a career spanning 40 years. His plan is to retreat from stage operas in 2005 to spend time with his partner, Nicoletta Mantovani, and their daughter. It should be an impressive show. It follows in the footsteps of a concert by Jose Carreras—another of the Three Tenors—who performed in Dubai last month.

Madinat Arena, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. Tickets: Dhs475 and VIP Dhs975 (including dinner). Call the Talent Brokers on Tel: +971 (0)4 391-3465. See the Madinat Jumeirah website.

More from the Dubai cultural calendar

HONG KONG BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

Out with the old...

Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, resigned on March 10th, citing health reasons. He has been given a new appointment as an adviser to China's parliament, a position often offered to retired officials. Despite his denials, many believe that he was fired by Chinese leaders.

Mr Tung has been chief executive since China took control of the former British colony in 1997. He was due to step down in 2007, buAt Beijing has become increasingly unhappy with his performance. Mr Tung had little administrative experience before becoming Hong Kong's leader, and his tenure has been remarkable for its ineffectiveness. He impressed few with the way he handled everything from the Asian currency crisis to the SARS scare in 2003. Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2003 and 2004 drew attention to his growing unpopularity, and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have been urging for his resignation.

...in with the new

Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Hong Kong’s acting chief executive, began his term denying that China forced the resignation of his predecessor, Tung Chee-hwa. Mr Tsang, a savvy statesman, said Mr Tung's departure—two years before the end of his second five-year term—would not hinder democratic reform. “There is no question of going back,” he explained. “The next stage will be more democratic than it is now.” Mr Tsang will serve as acting chief executive until July 10th, when formal elections will determine who will serve the remaining two years of Mr Tung’s ten-year term. He is favourite to win that election. A devout Catholic famous for wearing bright bow-ties, Mr Tsang was a surprise replacement, given his prominence in the British administration before the 1997 handover. In 1995, he became the first Chinese financial secretary, and was well regarded for his resolve during the Asian financial crisis.

Blue skies

Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong’s flag carrier, is flying steadily again, having recently reported a 2004 net profit of HK$4.42 billion ($567m). That surpassed estimates of HK$4.07 billion, and also the carrier's 2002 earnings of HK$3.98 billion. In 2003, the SARS outbreak dragged annual figures to HK$1.3 billion. But record 13.7m passengers flew on Cathay in 2004, along with 972,416 tonnes of cargo, raising revenues 32.1% to HK$39.07 billion. Profits would have been even higher, had it not been for a sudden jump in the price of fuel: it went from 19.8% of operating costs in 2003 to 23.9% in 2004. Cathay does not anticipate any relief soon: fuel prices are expected to stay high, and regional competition is intensifying. Philip Chen, Cathay's chief executive, has denied plans to increase ticket prices.

Smoking out the bad guys

By March 12th, Hong Kong police arrested 703 people in three days of raids designed to strangle funding for organised criminals, known as triad gangsters. Targeting illegal gambling, drugs, piracy, pornography and prostitution, officers involved in “Operation Windpipe” seized drugs and pirated goods worth $HK3m. The arrested included 351 women, aged between 15 and 86.
Triads are centuries-old secret societies. After fighting for the nationalist forces, triads were banished from mainland China when the Communist Party assumed power in 1949. The gangs resorted to organised crime in pockets around the world, and they are particularly prevalent in Hong Kong and Macau.

A high note

For the first time since the local film industry's 1960s glory years, a Mandarin-language musical is being made by a Hong Kong director. Peter Chan plans to shoot “Perhaps Love” in Shanghai and Beijing, at a cost of $10m. The project will star Takeshi Kaneshiro (star of “House of Flying Daggers”) and Xun Zhou. Ruddy Morgan, the firm producing the film, recently collected a best-film Oscar for “Million Dollar Baby”.

Andre Morgan, a principal at Ruddy Morgan, has some roots in Hong Kong—he first came in 1972, fresh from Kansas, as a 20-year-old Chinese-language student. Hired as a translator and errand boy for the Golden Harvest studio, Mr Morgan moved on to more impressive tasks, such as shuttling Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris to the airport. By 1973 he produced his first film, the martial arts classic “Enter The Dragon”, which was Lee's last film. Mr Morgan hopes Western audiences will adopt Chinese musicals, just as they have martial-arts films. Alas, musicals require far more subtitles than expertly plotted kicks and punches.

Down the drain

A $4.8m toilet, made of 24-carat gold and glittering with gems, was pulled from tourist maps after tourists griped about rude service in the jewellery store that housed it. The 3D Gold store, in Kowloon, claims it attracts 6,000 tourists a day. Since August, 41 of these people complained to the Hong Kong Tourism Board about pushy sales assistants who tried to keep them from leaving. The Tourism Board then rescinded its good-service accreditation. But a gold toilet is a gold toilet: a company spokesman said, “We don't think there will be any impact on our business because it is a must-visit destination.”

Catch if you can

April 2005

Hong Kong International Film Festival

March 22nd-April 6th 2005

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chinese cinema, the 29th Hong Kong International Film Festival features 240 films from 41 different countries and regions. Among the highlights will be the world premiere of the digitally remastered version of “Centre Stage”, a stylised film based on the life of Ruan Ling-yu, a legendary Chinese silent-film star, directed by Stanley Kwan. Maggie Cheung stars in this production, for which she won a Silver Bear (Best Actress) Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. The festival will also present a retrospective of the work of Kinoshita Keisuke, a post-war Japanese auteur, whose films are rarely screened outside of Japan.

This year's festival will also inaugurate the world’s largest outdoor screen, which overlooks Victoria Harbour and the Kowloon skyline. Do try to catch “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Fist of Fury”, two martial-arts classics, which will screen as a double-bill on March 27th.

For more information, see the festival's website.

More from the Hong Kong cultural calendar

MEXICO CITY BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

Even from jail

The city is covered with banners supporting the campaign to preserve Andrés Manuel López Obrador's immunity from prosecution. The city's popular left-wing mayor is charged with building a road to a city hospital across private property, despite a court order against it. This minor legal transgression may knock him out of contention for the presidential election in 2006. But Mr López Obrador says he will petition to run anyway, even from jail.

But that probably won't be necessary. Around 80% of voters are opposed to attempts to strip him of his immunity from prosecution, viewing such efforts as politically motivated. Most seem to regard Mr López Obrador's alleged offences as paltry compared with what the former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) got away with in the past. He remains the most popular candidate in the presidential race. Critics say removing him on these grounds would undermine the democratic credibility of the eventual winner.

Fending for themselves?

As evidence of his austere resolve, the mayor has announced that armed escorts will no longer be provided for anyone in his government except the Procurator General and the head of public security. “No one else should have bodyguards or protection,” Mr López Obrador has declared. “Not even me.”

The move is causing some consternation in Mexico City, where bodyguards are de rigueur for even the most minor officials. Indeed, it seems the mayor did not even check with his own people, as the two men he singled out for protection do not agree with him. Joel Ortega, head of the Ministry for Public Security, says none of his top staff are going to lose their armed escorts, and the Procurator General agrees. Half of the Justice Department’s elite police corps are engaged in bodyguard duties for various functionaries. They’ll just have to give them up, says the mayor. But what about Mr López Obrador’s select guard of young policewomen? “They are just there to help out during demonstrations,” he assured reporters. “They’re not with me all the time.”

A massive operation

Threatened by the imminent demolition of Mexico City’s Chrysler plant, the building it adorns, the huge mural “Velocidad” (Speed) by David Siqueiros is moving. It took a hundred workers to heave the 4x10-metre, 25-tonne mural, and oversee its relocation to the Plaza Juárez, in the city centre. It had been on the side of the Chrysler plant for 50 years.

The seven-hour operation began in the dead of night, in order not to interfere with traffic. But a convoy of 50 police cars, motorcycles and trucks accompanying the artwork created gridlock anyway. Leading the phalanx was a team of tree surgeons, who sawed off branches for the six-metre-tall trailer to pass. More technicians raced alongside, removing obstacles that blocked the way, including traffic lights, telephone cables and road signs. “Velocidad” never made it above a stately 10km per hour.

Unstoppable

The city's much-vaunted new express buses plying the Avenida Insurgentes, one of the capital's main highways, are causing chaos. To ensure the speedy travel of these buses, which run along the avenue’s outside lane, all other vehicles are barred from cutting across their path. What this means, starting in March, is absolutely no left turns off one of the city’s major thoroughfares.

This is not going down well with Chilangos (Mexico City natives), who are not known for road etiquette at the best of times. They are now taking their rage and frustration out on hapless traffic cops. At sections of the road where drivers once made left turns, there is now a cacophony of insults and obscene hand gestures. Despite police cars blocking the way, many drivers are still trying to force through anyway. After one officer was momentarily distracted from his post by a fender-bender, dozens of cars immediately sprinted left.

Ringtones everywhere

There is no escape: mobile-phone users in Mexico City can now keep chatting even on the metro, thanks to underground antennae now being installed by Telcel, a local mobile-phone operator. So far, the system only works in some ten city-centre stations, but the plan is to have all 106 metro stops included by the end of June.

This will put Mexico ahead of many European cities, where no underground networks are yet in place. The system works best for GSM phones (simpler models pick up lines less reliably). The expansion should mean more money for Carlos Slim, owner of Telcel, who was recently declared the world's fourth-richest man by Forbes magazine. But the city will benefit too, as Telcel will pay around $2.4m per year to rent space for the antennae.

Catch if you can

April 2005

The myth of the two volcanoes: Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl

Until June 19th 2005

Even if you can’t see them for the smog, the two great volcanoes that rise above Mexico City loom large in local consciousness. Popocatépetl, the Smoking Mountain, and Iztaccíhuatl, the Sleeping Woman, have been towering symbols of the male-female relationship since prehispanic times, sources of myth, magic and divinity.

This show at the Bellas Artes museum celebrates these two grand peaks with a selection of pre-Columbian pieces, modern literary references, paintings and sculptures. It also affords a nostalgic look at the beauty of the landscape around the Valley of Mexico before it was shrouded in a tobacco-coloured haze.

Museo de Palacio de Bellas Artes, Av Juárez and Eje Central, centre. Open Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Tel: +52 (55) 5512 1410 x 245. See the museum's website.

More from the Mexico City cultural calendar

LONDON BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

Back to Neverland

Can Peter Pan rescue Great Ormond Street Hospital? In early March, the world-renowned children’s hospital revealed it had closed one-fifth of its beds and re-scheduled operations after running up a £1.7m ($3.3m) deficit. Hospital authorities blamed the shortfall on treating more patients than they had funding for; John Reid, the government’s health secretary, pledged to investigate the hospital’s finances.

Help may come from an unexpected source. J.M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan”, assigned the book’s copyright to the hospital in 1929, netting it “significant” royalties since then. The copyright is due to expire in 2007, which explains why the hospital's trustees announced on March 13th that they have commissioned a sequel. The book, tentatively titled “Captain Pan”, will be written by Geraldine McCaughrean, a three-time winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, who was selected from more than 100 applicants. Proceeds raised will be put towards a much-needed renovation of the hospital's ageing facilities.

Jilted at the altar

A shareholder rebellion forced Deutsche Börse to withdraw its £1.35 billion ($2.6 billion) bid for the London Stock Exchange on March 6th. The revolt was led by hedge funds that wanted the Frankfurt-based exchange to pay dividends instead. In response to the news, shares in the LSE fell by 7.8%; those in Deutsche Börse lost 2.6%. This was the second time that a Deutsche Börse bid to buy the LSE has failed.

The LSE's rival suitor, Euronext, is now in the spotlight. The pan-European stock exchange—which already controls Liffe, the London-based international derivatives market—is interested, but has yet to make a formal bid. The LSE said it was “willing to continue discussions” but raised the bar for future offers to £5.90 per share. Euronext’s shareholders are wary of paying too much; some have made clear that they will not accept an offer price much higher than £4. Deutsche Börse has said it may re-enter the fray if a formal bid is made.

Two battles

Peace has been declared in the short-lived “class war” between the mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the Royal Ballet School. Hostilities began in early March when the mayor refused the school permission to improve its crumbling facilities in scenic Richmond Park. His reason? The “remote location...acts against the promotion of inclusiveness”. The school responded by promising to expand its outreach programme, to involve more Londoners from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. This appeared to satisfy Mr Livingstone, who withdrew his opposition. Both the mayor and Conservative-controlled Richmond council are claiming victory.

The Royal Ballet School was not the only institution to find itself involved in a row about its admissions policy. On March 11th, the Times Higher Education Supplement revealed that the London School of Economics (LSE) has been secretly reserving 40 places each year for pupils from poorly performing state schools. The revelation elicited condemnations from the Independent Schools Council, and Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The LSE explained that such quotas were a new experiment.

Depleted

Britain’s oldest and richest local authority, the Corporation of London, is running out of cash. In a sombre speech on March 3rd, Ian Luder, its financial chief, forecast a £9.3m ($17.9m) revenue deficit for 2005-6, rising to £12.2m the next financial year. Falling property income and the ending of a special rebate deal with the government (the “City Offset”) account for most of the shortfall. The Corporation is expected to use its cash reserves to fill the gap—though Mr Luder said these would be exhausted by 2011-12 if finances failed to improve.

Cutbacks now seem inevitable. Indeed, Mr Luder suggested the Corporation—which controls the City, the River Thames and some of the capital’s green spaces—might discontinue some of its services. (It has already decided not re-open some public toilets in the City.) Changes to Hampstead Heath's management, such as charging for swimming and car parking, and cancelling some public concerts, could prove controversial. In 2003, the Corporation sparked a furious row when it tried to close the Heath’s bathing ponds. Mr Luder said the proposed cuts would be presented to the Corporation’s decision-making body in May.

Flying further

Flying into central London is set to become easier. On March 14th, the Financial Times reported that London City Airport, the smallest and most central of the capital’s main airports, is planning a £40m ($77m) expansion. The changes will include an enlarged terminal building and more parking space for aircraft. Richard Gooding, the airport’s managing director, also said he hoped to add services to Glasgow and possibly Newcastle this year. New destinations in 2005-06 could include Copenhagen, Stockholm, Madrid, Milan and Vienna.

The airport's links with the rest of London are also set to improve. An extension to the Docklands Light Railway, scheduled to open this December, will connect it to London’s financial hubs: the City and Canary Wharf. Journeys to both will take around 15-20 minutes. But news that corporate jet take-offs and landings will double to 14,000 by 2007 is sure to irritate local residents.

Catch if you can

April 2005

Caravaggio: The Final Years

February 23rd-May 22nd 2005

Caravaggio's last four years (1606-10) come under the spotlight in this exhibition at the National Gallery. This was a peripatetic period for the painter, whose bold realism had made him one of Rome's most feted artists. Fleeing the papal authorities after killing a man in a duel in 1606, Caravaggio passed through Naples, Malta and Sicily, producing darker, more introspective works—a reflection, no doubt, of his growing anxiety. This small exhibition (just 16 paintings) is evidence that being on the run in no way diminished the painter's extraordinary powers.

National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing, Trafalgar Square, London WC2. Tel: +44 (0) 020 7747-2885. Tickets: £7.50. Open: daily 10am-6pm, Wed until 9pm. The National Gallery posts a full programme on its website.

More from the London cultural calendar

BERLIN BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

A landmark victory

A Jewish family won a landmark victory in March, when a court in Berlin ruled that it was entitled to compensation from one of Europe’s largest retail groups. At issue is a piece of property in Potsdamer Platz—now one of Berlin’s smartest districts—on which the Wertheim family opened and operated what became Europe’s largest department store in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Nazis forced the Wertheims to relinquish their store in 1938, and by the mid-1940s most of the family had died in concentration camps or fled to America. Barbara Principe, a surviving granddaughter (who lives in New Jersey), filed a claim for €145m ($190m) in damages from Karstadt Quelle, the retail chain that owns the site today. The chain, already beset with financial troubles, plans to appeal the ruling. But the decision has created a precedent, with implications for thousands of similar cases. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more than 2m people have filed restitution claims in the former East Germany.

Dishonourable events

A 23-year-old Turkish woman was shot by her brothers in February, in Berlin’s latest Muslim “honour killing”. Hatin Surucu, a Berlin-raised mother of one, was apparently punished for divorcing her Turkish husband and adopting a Western lifestyle. In the past four months, five other Turkish Muslim women (some born and raised in Berlin) have died at the hands of former husbands, boyfriends or brothers. Some fear that many other killings have gone unreported.

The shooting made national headlines only after a local schoolteacher took up the issue, sending an angry letter to parents and teachers across Germany. He was enraged by the flip way Turkish boys spoke about the crime in school. In response, teachers around the country have offered detailed accounts of their challenges with integrating second- and third-generation Turkish-Muslim students. At the end of February, Berlin’s largest Turkish association issued a ten-point plan to combat sexism, though it admitted it had little influence over devout Muslims. Meanwhile, women’s groups across Germany are calling for better integration of Turkish immigrants.

A worrying trend

Berlin's neo-Nazis seem to be getting bolder. Plans for a big demonstration in front of Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate on May 8th (the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi party) sent politicians in the Bundestag scurrying to the statute book. The result is a new law banning far-right demonstrators from “sensitive sites”.

In early March, 12 young neo-Nazis from neighbouring Brandenburg were jailed after attempting to set fire to ten foreign-owned shops and snack bars in Havelland, north-west of Berlin. The court in Potsdam ruled that they were terrorists. On March 7th, pilots flying over Berlin’s Tegel airport reported seeing a large swastika carved into the surface of a frozen lake, perfectly visible to passengers landing in Berlin. Police were alerted and the eight-metre-wide symbol was removed (the swastika is banned in Germany), but not before images of it had appeared throughout the German press.

A muted welcome

Thousands of Berliners watched eagerly when Victor Yushchenko beat the odds to become the Ukraine's first democratically elected president last December. Many put oranges on their desks as a show of support for the “orange revolution” that paved his way to power. So a visit from Mr Yushchenko to Berlin in March should have been a happy event. Unfortunately, it coincided with a mounting visa scandal, which found that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, many of them criminals, had been entering the country on tourist visas. The rules for these visas into Germany were relaxed in 2000. The scandal tarnished the reputation of Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, and forced the resignation of his deputy, Ludger Volmer. Instead of a hero's welcome, Mr Yushchenko got a debate about whether he should even speak in the German parliament (he did). Mr Fischer will try to make up for this diplomatic mishap by travelling to Kiev in late March.

The local Berliner Zeitung printed a telling cartoon, in which two gun-toting security officers are searching Mr Yushchenko in front of the Reichstag. The caption reads, “Not so fast Mr Yushchenko. You can't go in before you've explained to us where you got your visa.”

The end of an eyesore

Berlin's Palace of the Republic will finally be torn down. The dilapidated building, which some consider to be a historical treasure, was once the showpiece of the East German government. It opened in 1976 as a home for parliament and a social meeting point for the East German elite. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, city planners have struggled to decide the building's fate, and in the 1990s were forced to spend millions ridding it of asbestos.

A year ago, the building was turned into a temporary (and hugely popular) home for alternative theatre and music. But in March, city planners hired an engineering firm to tear it down. Destruction work will start by December, and is expected to take up to 18 months to complete. The city is controversially planning to rebuild the royal palace that once sat on the same site. Originally built in the 15th century, it was transformed into one of the nation's most magnificent baroque residences in the 18th and 19th centuries. The palace was badly damaged in the second world war, and then the communists blew up the ruins as a sign that the monarchy and elite ruling classes were finished. Critics complain that the bankrupt city is foolish to squander funds on a “Disneyland” palace, but supporters say it will return part of Berlin's former beauty.

Catch if you can

April 2005

Einstein’s Heirs

Until May 31st 2005

Fifty years after his death and 100 years after he developed the theory of relativity, Einstein is garnering a lot of attention lately. Germany is certainly not missing a chance to honour one of its most famous sons. Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor, has unveiled an Einstein quote in bright red letters on the façade of his office (a series of huge quotations will appear on government ministries around Berlin over the next few months), and Gerald Uhlig, owner of the trendy Café Einstein, has commissioned this exhibition of those he dubs the “silent stars”.

It's an odd description, for among the displayed black-and-white images of Einstein's fellow Nobel Laureates are Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, John Nash, Gabriel García Márquez and the Dalai Lama (hardly figures who have toiled in the shadows). The photographs were taken by Peter Badge, a young photographer from Kreuzberg.

See article: Miraculous visions, December 29th 2004

Café Einstein, Unter den Linden 42, 10117 Berlin. Tel: +49 (30) 204 3632. The gallery is open daily, 10am-8pm.

More from the Berlin cultural calendar

ATLANTA BRIEFING March 2005

News this month

Finally caught

A 26-hour manhunt ended on March 12th, when Brian Nichols, the alleged murderer of three people, surrendered. The day before, Mr Nichols had been on trial for rape at the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta when he overpowered a sheriff’s deputy and stole her gun. He then fatally shot Judge Rowland Barnes, a court reporter and another deputy. Later that night, Mr Nichols apparently killed a US Customs agent in north Atlanta and then took refuge in an apartment complex in Duluth, a suburb north of the city. There, he held a woman hostage before surrendering to police surrounding the building in the morning (the woman managed to call them). In court on March 15th, Mr Nichols was told he will be charged with four counts of murder.

Critics have swiftly blamed the court's lax security, with local attorneys claiming that something like this was inevitable. Mr Nichols had been handled by only one deputy while in court. During the subsequent manhunt, Atlanta police made a crucial early blunder by concentrating on finding a green Honda Accord which Mr Nichols had stolen from a reporter for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Mr Nichols had actually abandoned the car and escaped by subway; the car was found in the parking garage it was stolen from. Courthouse security in Fulton County has already improved, with more uniformed deputies in court, and specially trained officers accompanying high-risk inmates.

The plan is set

On March 14th, Georgia’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed the 2006 state budget of $17.4 billion. Sonny Perdue, the Republican governor, was pleased as the budget included several of his proposals, such as a $384m bond issuance to widen several highways. Cuts controversially included the $88,000 salary drawn by the press secretary of Mark Taylor, the lieutenant governor (a separately elected office). Mr Taylor, a Democrat, plans to run for governor this year, and Republicans have ensured that his press secretary does not become an opposition campaign manager.

Some hard decisions remain for the state. The National Conference of State Legislators predicts that states will have to bear some $30 billion in unfunded federal mandates, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In an interview with Stateline.org, a governmental news website, Mr Perdue named “the super-inflation of health care” as his biggest fiscal concern.

Drawn and redrawn

What will Georgia’s congressional districts look like in future? The newly dominant Republicans have made no secret of their eagerness to redraw the district map, last revised in 2001. But while several new maps have been put forward, none have yet been approved by both houses of the state legislature. A map passed on March 10th by the House of Representatives is still sitting before the state senate. Because of its segregationist past, Georgia must have any redrawn map approved by a federal judge, to ensure that it does not dilute the voting strength of ethnic minorities.

Larry O’Neill, a prominent Republican in a district with an air-force base, wants his county to be Republican, reasoning that his party would do better at bringing military jobs to the state. Although the new map will probably favour Republican candidates, not all state Republicans support it.

Voting with their feet

Democratic state lawmakers walked out of the legislature on March 11th to protest a pair of bills on voter identification. Both House Bill 244 and Senate Bill 84 make identification requirements tighter at voting outlets. The offended legislators complained that such measures would limit the ability of poor and minority voters to prove their identity.

The number of identification documents accepted from voters would fall from 17 to six—it would no longer be enough to show a pilot's license, gun license, social security card or bank statement. The debate led to legislative theatrics: one state congresswoman sang a civil-rights song at the podium, while the (white) Republican speaker of the house said, “I know what it’s like to be on the end of the iron fist of the majority,” referring to the long-standing Democratic control of the state legislature.

A strike ends

A week-long machinists’ strike at the Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, north-west of Atlanta, ended on March 15th when workers voted for a new contract by a 3-to-1 margin. It was the second strike in three years at the defence plant; a strike in 2002 against outsourcing measures lasted 49 days.

This strike came after machinists voted against a contract on February 27th. Members were worried about higher health-care premiums. But after workers at two California Lockheed Martin plants ratified identical contracts, the Marietta machinists had a weak position to bargain for more. Georgia's congressional representatives, meanwhile, are lobbying against cuts that would curb spending on the FA-22 Raptor fighter and the C-130J transport plane—two specialities of the Marietta plant.

Deadly roads

Though some of the nation’s deadliest roads are in Georgia, surprisingly they are not Atlanta's frenetic highways. A study released in early March by the Road Information Programme, a non-profit group, found that half of the state's 7,800 traffic fatalities between 1999 and 2003 occurred on rural roads, which only host 35% of the traffic. That makes Georgia the state with the seventh-deadliest back roads in the country. Legislators say they plan to improve the roads' safety. Part of the problem is Georgia’s relatively lax seat-belt laws, which don't apply to pick-up trucks, a vehicle popular in rural areas.

Catch if you can

April 2005

“The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer”

Until May 7th 2005

In this Pulitzer Prize–nominated drama, performed by the reliable Actor's Express Theatre Company, the scientist most closely associated with the birth of the atomic bomb meets a femme fatale who rattles his world view. John Ammerman, a longtime member of the Georgia Shakespeare Festival and a professor and resident artist at Emory University, stars as the flummoxed J. Robert Oppenheimer. This is part of the “New American Voices” series, which highlights lesser-known works by living playwrights. A pay-as-you-wish night on April 4th will benefit the National New Play Network.

Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Centre, 887 West Marietta St. Tel: +1 (404) 607-7469. Performances: Thur–Sat at 8pm; Sun 2pm and 5pm. Tickets: $16–21.50. For more information and to buy tickets, see the theatre's website.

More from the Atlanta cultural calendar

A 10-lane road to the future

from the March 23, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0323/p03s01-usgn.html

A mammoth toll highway in Texas could bring new prosperity ... or let it pass by.

By Kris Axtman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

HOUSTON - For four generations, Clarence Friedrich's family has farmed the land in Fayette County, Texas. Like many Germans who settled the area in the 1800s, the family has an attachment to the land that runs deeper than corn or cattle.

It's part of Mr. Friedrich's heritage, his story. But Texas is looking to the future, not the past, in developing a new transportation system that could slice up his 350 acres and countless farms like it.

The colossal $184-billion project would interlace the state with 4,000 miles of tolls roads - up to a quarter mile wide in some places - a Trans-Texas Corridor built entirely with private money.

Planners of the Texas-size project cite a booming state population, bustling border business, and the promise of several million new jobs. But while many praise the project as a farsighted use of public-private partnership, others criticize it as a possible boondoggle that will steal revenue from small communities and affect landowners along three corridors crisscrossing the state.

"We don't have no say-so if the state wants to take our land," says Friedrich, fresh off the tractor after a day of planting corn.

Gov. Rick Perry, who unveiled the plan in 2002, calls the Trans-Texas Corridor the most ambitious transportation plan since the creation of the interstate highway system in 1956. He says it will bring the state billions of dollars in revenue and much needed relief for overcrowded freeways - all with no taxpayer money.

In December, the Spanish firm Cintra was selected to build the first segment, a 316-mile, $7.2 billion road east of Interstate 35 from San Antonio to Dallas. The firm will charge tolls for 50 years while renting the right-of-way from the state.

Such public/private partnerships are the way of the future, says John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Already, dozens of projects are in the works in states across the nation, with the miles of toll roads expected to double to about 10,000 in the next 10 years.

Projects include:

• In California, State Route 125 South, a 12.5-mile highway from the east of San Diego to the Mexican border.

• In Colorado, E-470, a 47-mile beltway along the eastern edge of Denver.

• In Virginia, the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project, a 23-mile transit system through Virginia's Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

"There are many other toll projects under way in the United States, but nothing rivals the scale of what Texas is engaged in," says Mr. Horsley.

One of the most important things Texas is doing is identifying and preserving corridors to serve its transportation needs for several generations, he says. "Very few states are thinking that far out."

But identifying and preserving those corridors is making many counties nervous. Though the routes are not yet finalized, a dozen counties have already publicly opposed the corridor because it diverts revenue from their communities. The Trans-Texas Corridor has no provisions for off-ramps, and it gives developers exclusive rights to build gas stations, restaurants, and hotels to service the toll roads. Communities worry that a significant source of their revenue will dry up.

David Stall, who founded Corridor Watch to monitor the project, began questioning the project when he was city manager of Columbus, Texas. Through traffic on Interstate 10 accounted for 80 percent of the city's sales tax, he says, twice what property taxes pulled in. "Yes, we need roads. Yes, we need rail," says Mr. Stall. "But don't go out and take thousands and thousands of acres of private land to generate revenue for a foreign corporation just because the state can ride along and take a piece of the profit."

Texas economist Ray Perryman says the plan would generate more than $13 billion per year in state revenue upon completion and create some 2.6 million permanent jobs. In addition, he says, the state will be able to lure industry by offering more efficient shipping routes.

The plan calls for 10 lanes for cars and trucks, six rail tracks, and pipelines for oil, natural gas, water, electricity, and telecommunications. The price of the tolls is undetermined, but the speed limit would be 85 miles per hour.

Several legislators believe the plan is too big, too secretive, and too costly, and three bills have been introduced this session in an effort to scale it down. Environmentalists and landowners are also lining up to label the project as overkill.

Joe Maley of the Texas Farm Bureau says the 146 acres per mile allotted for the corridor is excessive. He warns about farms and ranches being split by a road with few ways across.

But for many, the protest is about more than business. Letting his mind wander back to his childhood when he would play dominoes on the porch, fish in the creeks, and hunt in the woods, Friedrich gets emotional about his family's land and the possibility of a river of asphalt running through it. "They say you can't stop progress," he says, "but this progress is going to hurt a lot of people."

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Cooperation takes root in Australian forest

from the March 24, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0324/p14s01-sten.html

By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BALOOK, AUSTRALIA - On maps, the low rolling mountains east of Melbourne are titled the Strzeleckis. Locally, they're known as the "Heartbreak Hills." Their steep slopes, fragile soils, and heavy rainfall have conspired to defeat nearly every effort to scratch a living from them.
One industry has survived, however: logging. The mountains are home to towering eucalyptus trees, prized for their hard wood. These trees once soared to heights that would have left California redwoods green with envy.

Now, the Strzeleckis are the target of an ambitious effort to preserve the mountains' patches of old native forest and their unique mix of plants and animals, while still allowing the timber industry to fell trees in a sustainable way.

Last fall, the company that owns the rights to log the range and two environmental groups signed an agreement to work together to manage the land in ways that put biodiversity on a par with its timber resources. Signing a "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) to cooperate, rather than inking a clear long-term conservation plan, may seem almost trivial. But it's a major step for Australia and comes at a time of heightened global concerns over legal and illegal logging to meet skyrocketing demand - especially in Australia's backyard, Asia.

Forests in the region face increasing pressure. For example: While China has made significant strides in protecting some forests and replanting others, its demand for wood is so great that within five years it will be unable to supply even half its industrial demand, says a report released by World Wildlife Fund International earlier this month. Yet China's largest suppliers - Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia - are countries in which illegal logging in ecologically significant forests is a big problem. The WWF claims much of that illegal wood is finding its way to China.

In Australia, "this is a very important case study," says Kevin Roberts, manager of sustainability and environment for Latrobe, one of several cities in the region interested in the Strzeleckis' economic and ecological future. If replacing confrontation with cooperation on forestry issues works here, he says, "it will be a model for how we move forward elsewhere. We are being watched."

"This is an exciting project," agrees Malcolm Tonkin, environmental services manager for Hancock Victorian Plantations, the timber firm involved in the MOU.

For Australia, Asia is a huge market for forest products. And the island-continent is facing its own internal demand. Some 160,000 homes are rising in the country each year - a small number by United States standards, but large compared with the country's population of 10 million people.

The key questions: Can logging and additional conservation coexist here? And is it possible to design an agreement that will last if Hancock decides to sell its interest in the land? The broad answer the parties seem to have reached is yes. The devil is in the details.

"It's a matter of looking at how boundaries are defined, and how appropriate they are," says Michael Looker, director of Australia's Trust for Nature, which - with advice from the US-based Nature Conservancy - is trying to seal the deal. "We also need to figure out how to go about funding the value Hancock is giving up" for land that any final agreement might take out of production.

The MOU covers a varied landscape. Along the logging roads, tracts of fallen timber are interspersed with stands of replacement trees. Some patches contain pines originally imported from coastal California; others consist of relatively fast growing blue gum, one type of eucalyptus.

In the ravines and in tiny Tarra-Bulga National Park, however, lie some of the range's true biological gems. Giant tree ferns spread their canopies like oversized patio umbrellas, mingling with eucalyptus and other dense vegetation, vestiges of cool temperate rain forests that once covered the region. Eucalyptus came to Australia roughly 60 million years ago, Mr. Tonkin explains. But, he continues, the rain forests are remnants from far earlier, when Australia was part of a southern supercontinent known as Gondwanaland.

The Strzelecki rock formation that underlies these mountains is exposed along the coast, yielding a trove of prehistoric fossils. Today, portions of the forest echo with the calls of kookaburras and lyrebirds, and are home to a genetically diverse population of koalas.

Initially, the state of Victoria saw the region as one ripe for resource development, Mr. Roberts says. The mountains were mistakenly thought to be among the southernmost reaches of the eastern coast's Great Dividing Range. Because land there had been set aside for national parks, little thought was given to keeping the Strzeleckis free of development.

By the 1920s, it was clear that farming had failed, Tonkin adds, after unfurling a display of aerial photos of the mountainscape. The government started to buy the land back in the 1940s and started to replant the land with eucalyptus regnans, the giant among eucalyptus often seen as the hallmark of old-growth forests here.

"The government planted the trees, the government sold the land to us as plantations, so they're plantations," and not old native forest, Tonkin says.

Meanwhile, a small but growing group of researchers and policy analysts hold that Australia's best hope for sustainable development, particularly in the face of climate change, is to make greater use of native plants and animals. They argue that these already are well adapted to the continent's daunting climate. That would mean, in part, greater cultivation and use of eucalyptus of all types.

"We're growing endemic species now," Tonkin says, "yet we're running the risk of people saying that the land looks so good now that we don't want you to harvest from it because of its biodiversity values."

For his part, Roberts is skeptical about some of the photos. "You can bias the sample amazingly," he says. But what the photos do show is that despite clearing for various uses, "the land had good vegetation cover even though the land was heavily used. Therefore, the wildlife managed to survive." Preserving that resilience is a key hope behind last fall's MOU. Without the boundaries, he adds, the flora and fauna supposed to be protected by Tarra-Bulga National Park won't survive.

He says the MOU process represents the best hope for reconciling what appear to be competing values on a highly charged issue.

"If we can pull this off, everyone will feel like a winner," he says, adding: "We're at the point of no return."

In the past, if a patch of forest was destroyed by fire or human activity, he says, "there were other patches nearby where species could recolonize." But now, "you don't have the recolonization options you used to have. If we lose it now, we lose it forever."

Shades of meaning

• Native forest: Composed of species native to the site, which may consist of managed, unmanaged, planted, or naturally regenerated stands.

• Ancient woodland: Managed or unmanaged forest that has been wooded since 1600 (Britain) or before European influence (United States).

• Old forest: Forests more than 120 years old without any major disturbance.
• Pristine forest: Stands never disturbed by humans.

• Old-growth forest: Stands originating through natural succession, with significant proportions of old trees and dead wood. They contain concentrations of biodiversity or have naturally occurring species with natural patterns of distribution and abundance.

Source: Stora Enso

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A seaweed soaks up TNT - and may help clean oceans

from the March 24, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0324/p14s02-sten.html

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Tucked away in Donald Cheney's office desk is a cookie tin containing six paper-thin sheets of dried porphyra - a type of seaweed commonly known as nori.

It's the same stuff used to wrap sushi.

But the real surprise lies down the hall, where Dr. Cheney, a research biologist at Northeastern University in Boston, has transformed the Japanese treat into a "super sponge." So far, it can sop up and neutralize TNT leaking from unexploded shells in coastal bombing ranges. But if Cheney and other researchers are right, the seaweed has the potential to scrub everything from polluted rivers to oceans.

There's just one catch. The first edition of the cleanup seaweed is genetically engineered. Not only do current regulations prohibit its release into the environment, but some activists want to keep this version dry-docked.

"Whether it's genetically engineered salmon or seaweed, we're looking at biological pollution plain and simple," says environmentalist Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth. "We have every indication from our experience with alien or invasive species that we don't want to go down that road because we don't know the consequences."

Not long ago, Cheney was focused on porphyra's dietary benefits. Then in 2002, the United States Office of Naval Research came knocking, wondering if the professor could possibly modify seaweed to detoxify leftover TNT seeping into the ocean at its coastal-training sites. The Navy was eager to clean up the residues from unexploded bombs dropped in its training sites.

Natural seaweed usually dies in heavily TNT-tainted waters. So Cheney and his graduate students began work on a genetically modified version that would thrive. Last month at a conference in Washington, D.C., they announced a breakthrough: a new seaweed strain that can absorb TNT and neutralize it 5 to 10 times as fast as any terrestrial plant can. The porphyra actually eats away at the nitrogen molecules that make TNT toxic, lessening its toxicity. So there's no need to gather and dispose of the seaweed.

"It's the first instance of a foreign gene being introduced into seaweed, enabling it to detoxify an ocean pollutant," Cheney says. He dubs this technique "marine phytoremediation," the seagoing version of the land-based process that uses plants to soak up pollutants. The results suggest that seaweed has the potential to be one of nature's best aquatic cleanup tools. He and other researchers are pushing the biological boundaries to develop varieties that can, for instance, filter nutrient pollution from salmon-farm aquaculture.

Even unmodified kelp can act like a pollution sponge when deployed around salmon pens to soak up fish waste and excess nutrients, says researcher Thierry Chopin at the University of New Brunswick at Saint John in Canada. "The Chinese have done this for centuries. We are just trying to refine the process [and] figure out how many tons of seaweed and shellfish we need to achieve a balance."

One of seaweed's more unusual traits is its ability to survive in intertidal zones, where it lives sometimes in salt water, sometimes in fresh. Now, Ira Levine, a University of Southern Maine researcher, is using chemicals to flip the porphyra's internal physiological switch. His idea is to create a full-time freshwater seaweed for upstream salmon hatcheries to absorb excess nitrogen and fish waste that can foul streams.

"It's only one cell thick, like a sheet of paper, but it grows fast," says Dr. Levine. "That's why it can absorb nutrients so quickly." It also gives hatcheries another crop they can harvest for the valuable pigments and fatty acids in porphyra. If successful, the technique could be used in salmon aquaculture around the world. It might also be used to detoxify more widespread pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

The US coastline could use a cleanup. River estuaries "are like a sink," Cheney notes, since they receive society's waste, which then becomes buried in sediments. Instead of staying put, though, the toxins often begin working their way into plant life and on up the food chain, as has happened with mercury in fish tissues.

Overall, the nation's estuaries are rated "fair" - with about 8 percent of estuary sediments in the Northeast rated toxic and in "poor condition," according to the 2005 report from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Major pollutants in those sediments include PCBs, mercury, and other heavy metals.

Right now, one of the few techniques for dealing with sediment pollution like this is costly dredging. But that still leaves a mountain of toxic waste to be removed and disposed of. "We are hopeful we might discover or select a native seaweed that can remediate or detoxify PCBs buried in sediments in river basins around the world," Cheney says.

Ironically, Cheney's TNT-sopping seaweed can't be tested in the wild because it might spread out of control or have some other unintended effect. So the professor and his students are now using natural selection instead of genetic engineering. They've already bred a natural version that is nearly as effective as the genetically engineered variety, he says.

"The professor is wise to think about the ecological considerations with the engineered organism," says Jane Rissler, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "It's a good idea to keep the genetically engineered version in a bottle if a naturally selected seaweed can do the same thing."

For his part, Cheney harbors hope that he might return one day to studying the nutritional benefits of porphyra. But in the meantime, he's pleased that the seaweed's potential environmental benefits have made the task of attracting top graduate students into his classroom easier.

"These students are eating sushi in the cafeteria - and growing the same seaweed species up here in the lab," he says. "Now they're finding out that nori is the super seaweed that's good for you - and the environment."

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Around the dinner table, talk of end-of-life care

from the March 24, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0324/p01s01-ussc.html

The Schiavo case provokes deeply personal questions about living wills and last wishes.

By Brad Knickerbocker Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For millions of Americans, the Terri Schiavo case raises the most profound, the most deeply personal, questions. What would they do in such circumstances for their loved ones, and what would they want done for themselves? Put this way, end-of-life care - and beyond that, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide - become far more than legal abstractions or political debating points.

With longer life spans and medical advances, as well as the increasing attention to problems like AIDS and Alzheimer's - diseases that today are believed to be treatable but incurable - the questions become more relevant for everyone. This is particularly true as the baby boomers enter their advanced years, wanting to maintain as much personal autonomy as possible.

All of this involves not only the nuts and bolts of end-of-life care, such things as hospice treatment and living wills, but deeper questions about human will and cognizance, what defines a "family" (spouse, parents, same-sex partner?), and quality of life.

The definition of "quality of life," of course, varies from individual to individual depending on their religious and philosophical views, family support system, and general outlook, including that ineffable quality called "courage."

Interviewed outside a Kroger grocery store in Nashville, Tenn., building maintenance worker Tony Gray points to the living will forms sitting on the front seat of his truck. He's just picked them up, and he and his wife will talk about it that evening. But he's already made up his mind.
"I just don't want somebody hooking me up to a machine," he says.

Leaving the store with a cart full of groceries, Carey Johnson takes a different view. "It's God's purpose to take a life or not," she says.

"He might have something in store for her," she says, referring to Mrs. Schiavo. "She might get better. She might not. She might touch someone else's life. It's not for us to decide."

When polled, most Americans (63 percent, according to an ABC survey) - including most who identify themselves as conservative, Republican, or religious - support the removal of life support in cases like Schiavo's, whether it's their spouse or their child who appears to have no chance of recovery.

"Polling also consistently shows a majority of Americans support doctor-assisted suicide when a patient has a disease that cannot be cured and the patient requests it," says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. Although the American Medical Association officially opposes the practice, most doctors polled recently (57 percent) agree that "it is ethical on the grounds that it may be a rational choice for someone who chooses to die due to unbearable suffering."

Jay Fisher, a doctor from Las Vegas visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, agrees. "I believe a person should have the right to choose," Dr. Fisher says.

"But the manner [in the Schiavo case] is disturbing," he adds. "I hate to think of someone starving to death. But if they don't want to suffer anymore, a person should be allowed to die."

Boom in living wills

Along these lines, people now are much more likely to write living wills or to name what's called a "durable power of attorney for healthcare." These spell out the degree to which end-of-life care will be provided and who will make the final decisions about continuing or ending treatment. Living will forms are easy to download from the Internet.

There's also been increased interest in finding out about the ways one can end one's own life, should it come to that. "The right-to-die movement has more support than ever," says Derek Humphry, who founded the Hemlock Society and wrote "Final Exit," the best-known text on what advocates call "self-deliverance."

The public family fight over the Schiavo case "is an aberration," says Mr. Humphry. "Thousands of people a year are disconnected from life-support systems and allowed to die." What's more, says Humphry, hospitals around the country increasingly have medical ethicists on staff "to sort out disputes and feelings of guilt" over efforts to prolong the life of a relative.

Beyond cases like Schiavo are questions about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

Oregon's "Death with Dignity Act" specifically prohibits "lethal injection, mercy killing, or active euthanasia." But it allows mentally competent adults who declare their intentions in writing and are diagnosed as terminally ill to take a lethal drug themselves orally after a waiting period. In the seven years since the law was passed, 208 people have taken suicide drugs. So far, Oregon's law is the only one of its kind in the country, but other states - including California - are considering similar proposals.

Euthanasia, in which a doctor ends the life of a patient - either with or without that person's explicit permission - is outlawed in this country. It's legal under certain circumstances in the Netherlands and Belgium. There has been some evidence hat the practice is more widespread than reported - including in the United States.

Discussion around the dinner table

As the Florida case proceeded along its legal and political track, the drama prompted many deeply serious dinner-table discussions.

Like many people these days, Anna Pistorio, says, "I think we're learning how important it is to talk with family early on so you don't have to be in [Schiavo's] situation."

"In this case, I can understand the husband's perspective. But starving to death by removing the feeding tube bothers me," says Ms. Pistorio, a special education teacher in Evanston, Ill. "My dad has said to me, when we visited his mother in a nursing home, 'Please, don't ever let me be in a place like this.' "

Nick Monteleone, a youth coordinator in the Bronx, sees it as a moral and humane issue. "There's got to be something better than letting a person starve to death," he says. "The choice should be a personal and individual one, as long as there are clear instructions." But for him, he says, "In cases where there's doubt, the choice should lie with life."

"If I hadn't left instructions, I wouldn't want someone making the choice to take me off a feeding tube," says Mr. Monteleone. "I'd want to go on living."

While the congressional vote regarding Terri Schiavo lined up along opposing political lines, it also reflected this uneasy ambivalence expressed by many Americans. Rep. Brian Baird (D) of Washington is a clinical psychologist who has worked in Veterans Administration psychiatric hospitals and community mental health clinics - often with patients and their families facing very tough circumstances and life-changing decisions.

"I do not know what to do tonight," he said as lawmakers prepared to vote on the bill sending the Schiavo case to federal court. "I honestly do not."

In the end, Mr. Baird voted for the bill, although it gave him no great pleasure to do so. "Life is tremendously complicated and tremendously fragile and tragic at times," he told an interviewer. "However people voted, I would not question their motives or their compassion for this woman or for the family."

• Ann Stein in Evanston, Ill., Amy Green in Nashville, Tenn., and Courtney Allison in New York contributed to this report.

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Kennan's profound global effect

from the March 21, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0321/p09s03-cods.html

By Daniel Schorr

WASHINGTON - George Kennan is forever attached to one letter and one word. The letter is "X," the pseudonym he chose for an unorthodox article on Soviet policy in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1947. The word was "containment," the essence of the policy of maintaining peaceful pressure on the Soviet Union until a collapse of Communist rule that he regarded as inevitable.

His views had been communicated to the State Department in 1946 in what became known as "the long telegram." In it he declared that Moscow was "impervious to the logic of reason" but "highly sensitive to the logic of force."

Mr. Kennan had a strong affection for the Russian people and strong contempt for its rulers. In 1952, serving in his fifth month as ambassador to Moscow, he went out to West Berlin on leave. There, he remarked to a reporter that life in Moscow was like life in a German prison camp, except that in Moscow "we are at liberty to go out and walk the streets ... under guard."

Josef Stalin declared Kennan persona non grata, and the diplomat returned to Washington where he soon became embroiled in strong disagreements with President Eisenhower's hawkish secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.

Kennan had reservations about the war in Korea and opposed intervention in Vietnam. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and he advocated negotiations with the Soviet Union for mutual withdrawal of forces from Germany. He got little support within the Eisenhower and Truman administrations.

But the scholar-diplomat also urged the American government to "withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights" - a position that would not sit well with the Bush administration today. And Ambassador Averell Harriman once said that Kennan understood Russia better than he did the United States.

Kennan wrote that Americans, especially Californians, were "childlike in many respects, fun-loving ... unanalytical, un-intellectual ... preoccupied with physical beauty and prowess ... given to sudden unthinking seizures of aggressiveness."

Yet, it is hard to think of America and the world today without the profound effect that Kennan had on averting a hot and possibly nuclear war instead of a half-century of cold war, that ended as he predicted it would.

• Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

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Why Schiavo is a cause célèbre

from the March 21, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0321/p01s03-uspo.html

Leaders of Congress intervened over the weekend in a highly charged case.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - From a bedside in a Florida hospice to the halls of the US Congress, the fast-moving fight to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo is eclipsing war, budgets, and the looming battle over Social Security as a cause célèbre in Washington.

Behind the move by many Republicans on Capitol Hill is a desire to advance a "culture of life" agenda that they think will be important in the 2006 elections and beyond. At the same time, many conservative groups see the fight to save Mrs. Schiavo as an extension of the war over judicial nominations and "activist" judges.

But the decision of congressional leaders to intervene in the case, which played out dramatically over Palm Sunday weekend, reflects a highly charged mix of religion and politics that critics say could have broad and unintended consequences.

"Congress's overreaching flies in the face of our entire system of checks and balances, trashes the partial sovereignty of the states, and flouts the protections our laws afford state adjudication from drive-by attacks by those disaffected with the results," says Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University law professor.

The speed and intensity of the issue surprised many on Capitol Hill. Most members had already left Washington for a two-week recess and long-planned travel overseas when doctors removed the feeding tube from a brain-damaged woman in Florida on Friday.

In an unusual move, the Senate was called back for an extraordinary session on Saturday evening, opening the door for House and Senate votes expected during early Monday morning hours. The bipartisan compromise worked out between House and Senate leaders on Saturday asks a federal court in Florida to consider the parents' claim to restore the feeding tube.

President Bush said he would return to the capital to sign the bill.

Mrs. Schiavo has been diagnosed by doctors as "in a persistent vegetative state" for the past 15 years. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, says that his wife would not want to have her life extended - a view her parents reject. She left no written directive.

For many conservative activists, the Schiavo case is a proxy for expanding a pro-life agenda on everything from abortion rights to judicial nominations. "It's a real showdown with the courts," says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who has been in continuous contact with congressional leaders and "our grass-roots across the country" on the case. "This case is important to family members of Terri Schiavo and to our country as a whole - that we not move down this path where people are forced to die," he says.

Last week, as both houses of Congress were rushing to pass resolutions on the president's FY2006 budget, GOP leaders began discussing the case. Physician lawmakers in both the House and Senate disputed the attending physicians' claims that Mrs. Schiavo was in a "persistent vegetative state."

Senate leader Bill Frist, a surgeon, said that "From a medical standpoint, I wanted to know a little bit more about the case itself," so he reviewed the 2001 tapes on which the case was based. "Scores of neurologists have come forward and said that it doesn't look like she is in a persistent vegetative state," he said last week.

GOP leaders in both houses describe this case as having to do with the "culture of life" theme expected to be central in the 2006 congressional races. "Their gamble is that the general public will be divided on the issue and will not vote on the subject come 2006, but that the Republican-base ... group of conservative Christians will remember this vote forever," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Meanwhile, while individual Democrats have spoken out strongly against congressional intervention in this case, their leadership, which Republicans describe as "very cooperative," has stayed out of the debate. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has supported "pro-life" positions, including votes against abortion rights. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi spoke with Speaker Dennis Hastert from her travels in Egypt.

Still, some Democrats tried to rally their party to defeat the measure. "The tragic and complicated matter is only made more difficult with congressional intervention," said Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

Congress's move to elevate this case to federal courts comes as Republicans and Democrats are ramping up for a battle over the process for confirming judicial nominations. It also follows a bipartisan vote to move many class-action cases out of state courts, dubbed by some Republican lawmakers as "judicial hellholes," into federal courts.

The Schiavo case is already one of most extensively litigated right-to-die cases in history. Mr. Schiavo began court action to remove his wife's feeding tube in May 1998, eight year after she fell ill. Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Greer has ordered the feeding tube removed three times. In 2003, the Florida legislature passed a bill to reinsert it, a move later ruled unconstitutional, setting in motion the current legislative battle.

Should a bill on Schiavo pass the Congress and be signed by the president, as expected, the case still faces judicial review - and a ticking clock. Last week, the Supreme Court rejected without comment a House committee's emergency request to order the feeding tube reinserted while appeals were pending.

"It would appear to be the kind of legislative grandstanding that Chief Justice Rehnquist, if he were up to speed and in good health, would swat away in an instant," says Patrick Gudridge, a law professor at the University of Miami.

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Book that freed a hostage was already making waves

from the March 21, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0321/p11s02-lire.html

'The Purpose-Driven Life' has spread the ideas of a California preacher everywhere from the Chinese government to the hands of Fidel Castro.

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When ex-hostage Ashley Smith appeared on TV and told how she gained her freedom - and her captor's surrender - by reading to Brian Nichols from "The Purpose-Driven Life," her stirring story sent thousands off in search of the book.

Author Rick Warren, though, didn't really need her help. His work was already the bestselling nonfiction hardback in US history. Since the book's release in October 2002, people apparently hungry for a clearer sense of purpose and direction have snapped up more than 22 million copies.

Indeed, the story behind "The Purpose-Driven Life" is every bit as remarkable as that of Ms. Smith and the book's recent spurt in sales. It's the tale of a 20-something pastor who settled in a community full of "the unchurched," and, beginning in 1980, built Saddleback Valley Community Church in southern California into one of the largest megachurches in the US. And of how his paradigm for personal and church growth has since influenced tens of thousands worldwide.

Rick Warren has been a guest at two state dinners in China, where he told the country's leaders they couldn't have real economic progress without the underpinnings of freedom of religion and information. Fidel Castro has asked for an autographed copy. In the Philippines, the government wants to make use of the study program linked to the book - called 40 Days of Purpose.

Management guru Peter Drucker calls Warren "the inventor of perpetual revival" and his organizational model "the most significant sociological phenomena of the second half of [the 20th] century."

Yet there's also criticism that the purpose-driven approach reflects too much of a corporate mindset, and that its seeker-sensitive model goes too light on the demands of Christian living.

Despite a desire for a low profile (he gives few interviews), Warren is thrust increasingly into the spotlight. During a recent stop in Boston, he spoke at Harvard University and at a breakfast of the Marketplace Network - to some 600 evangelical business leaders. The tall, solid, sandy-haired pastor revealed his penchant for simple, straightforward language flecked with humor and clarity, and free of religious jargon.

"I'm more interested in [fostering] a relationship with God than a religion," he said. And he challenged the idea of just looking within for life's answers.

"I didn't create me, so I can't possibly tell myself what my purpose is," he told the curious, but somewhat skeptical Harvard crowd.

As a teenager in Northern California, the son of Baptist missionaries already hoped to help friends find God, starting a Christian club and newspaper and holding rock concerts after school. As a pastor fresh from divinity school, he shied from a traditional assignment to form a church designed for those who didn't attend church.

Going door-to-door for 12 weeks in his new California community, Warren says he found the main reasons people strayed from church were not theological: "Church members are unfriendly to visitors;" "Sermons are boring and don't relate to my life;" "They are more interested in your money than in you as a person."

So he designed his church services in response to those concerns. And, intent on showing that church was not about a building, he refused to build a church structure for 15 years, until the membership reached 10,000. (Now more than 20,000 attend each week.)

As Warren's stature grew, he declined a television ministry and focused instead on teaching local pastors of many denominations how to renew their churches. "Churchianity and Christianity are not the same thing," he says. And the great need is "to move churches from self-centeredness to selflessness."

Today, he also has a global Internet community that mentors more than 100,000 pastors around the world, and he travels abroad "planting" new churches.

Yet whatever the task, the laidback pastor - who at Saddleback gives 15-minute sermons attired in Hawaiian shirt and khakis - always draws on the same direct message: "if you turn your life over to [God], He'll do amazing things."

"The Purpose-Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For?" is an antiself-help book, taking the reader on a personal spiritual journey. The book explores God's intent for each of us, the essential role of a church community, the need to become like Christ, the importance of serving God and others and undertaking mission. Warren's church-growth strategy focuses on the same principles of worship, growth, community, service, and outreach.

Grace Chapel in Lexington, Mass., participated in the "40 Days of Purpose" program a year ago.
"People were amazed at how ready their friends and neighbors were to talk about spiritual things and to read the book," says the Rev. Bryan Wilkerson, senior pastor. Some churches say the program helped them grow by 30 percent or more.

But Warren's "purpose-driven" approach also has its critics. Some take issue with what they call watered-down theology (light on repentance and sin); others criticize the focus on numbers and a "market-driven methodology." ("The Purpose-Driven Life" was launched with a mass-marketed CD of songs, a radio campaign, and an invitation to churches to join the 40-day program.)

"It's been somewhat maligned, but it provides a necessary corrective to trends in conservative Christianity such as the prosperity gospel," says Scott Thumma, of Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

Still, some younger pastors say its appeal is more attuned to baby boomers than to young people, who want more theological questioning.

Saddleback's pastor says that the message of Christianity stays the same and only the methods need to change. With his new-found affluence and influence, however, he's also had to take stock personally. To show he is not looking for money, he says, he has repaid all his salary of the past 25 years, and is tithing 90 percent and living on 10 percent of his income.

Praying to know what to do with his growing influence (he's considered second only to Billy Graham in his impact on churches), Warren says God woke him up: "He told me to use my influence for those who have no influence."

When Ashley Smith picked up "The Purpose-Driven Life" and read to her captor, Warren was in Africa, working with pastors on a new plan to strengthen churches there and meet the dire needs their people face.

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Mission improbable

Cuba and human rights

Mar 23rd 2005 HAVANA
From The Economist print edition

Neither American toughness nor a European charm offensive is likely to persuade Fidel Castro to reverse his crackdown on dissent

EVERY Sunday the wives of 75 dissidents jailed by Cuba's communist government in 2003 put on white clothes and attend mass at the church of Santa Rita in Miramar, a once-elegant district of Havana. After the service, they quietly walk up and down ten blocks of the avenue outside, before gathering briefly in a park. On March 18th, to mark the second anniversary of the heaviest crackdown by Fidel Castro's regime since the 1960s, they marched to the offices of state-run television to demand that it cover their cause.

These sustained public displays of opposition are almost unprecedented in a tightly controlled country. Hitherto, the government has chosen to ignore them. But on Palm Sunday, the wives felt the regime's wrath. They were besieged by 200 members of the government-backed Cuban Women's Federation, screeching insults, chanting slogans and waving the national flag. The previous day a mob had attacked a dissident supporter.

Two years on, Mr Castro's grip looks stronger than ever as his government prepares to fight the annual ritual in which its arch-enemy, the United States, seeks to have it condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, whose sessions began this week in Geneva. Thanks to help from Venezuela and China, Cuba's moribund economy is reviving. In a six-hour speech this month, Mr Castro claimed that the island is finally “leaving behind” the “special period” of penury that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, formerly its chief benefactor. The government has handed out the first 100,000 of a promised 2.5m Chinese-made electric rice-cookers—whose virtues the elderly ruler praised for some two hours of the speech. Electricity shortages will soon be over, he promised. Thus fortified, the government has rolled back many of the timid economic reforms it ordered a decade ago. Mr Castro has taken to ending public meetings by singing the “Internationale”, a Marxist anthem.

Cuba's president may also be emboldened by deepening splits in the way the outside world deals with him. On the one hand, George Bush last year announced measures to tighten the long-standing American trade embargo against the island. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, named Cuba as an “outpost of tyranny” along with the likes of North Korea and Iran. The administration has doubled aid to Mr Castro's opponents and started calling for “regime change” in Havana. As always, Mr Castro uses a more aggressive stance from the United States to rally Cuban nationalism and as a pretext for repression. Thus, officials label the dissidents not as a political opposition (this does not exist, they assert) but as “mercenaries” in the pay of the United States.

On the other hand, largely at the behest of Spain's socialist government, the European Union has abandoned the tougher stance it adopted against Cuba when the dissidents were arrested. This weekend, Louis Michel, the European commissioner for aid, will become the most senior EU official to visit the island since the crackdown. But Mr Castro offers few prizes to those who promote engagement with his government. In January, when the EU announced that it would suspend its diplomatic sanctions for six months, pending greater respect for human rights, Mr Castro retorted that he did not need anyone's pardon for jailing enemy mercenaries. However, he did release 14 of the dissidents last year in the run-up to the EU's decision.

Cuban officials are also comforted by the advent of a clutch of left-of-centre governments in Latin America. Many of these may cleave to market orthodoxy in economics, but satisfy their traditional supporters by embracing Mr Castro. Since 1998, the UN resolution against Cuba has been presented by a Latin American country. This year, the United States will itself present it. Cuban officials see that as a victory. They are pushing the Europeans to oppose the UN resolution. In return, they have offered a dialogue on human rights, a moratorium on the death penalty and perhaps the release of more ill prisoners.

Such gestures may persuade the Europeans to persist with their mission of engagement. But the harsh reality in Cuba is that the pro-democracy movement on the island is tiny, isolated and divided. The lengthy jail terms, averaging 19 years, imposed on the dissidents have had a chilling effect. Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, refused to condemn last weekend's mob action against the dissidents' supporters. The message is clearer than ever: as long as Mr Castro remains in charge, democracy and political change are off the agenda.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

A relationship reconsidered

America and China

Mar 23rd 2005 BEIJING, SEOUL AND TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

But the problems of North Korea and Taiwan still rankle

“CHINA”, wrote Condoleezza Rice when George Bush was first running for the American presidency, “resents the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region”. During a visit to China as part of an Asian tour in her new role as secretary of state, she diplomatically avoided such bluntness, remarking instead that America and China shared common interests in regional and global stability. But on two of the region's paramount security issues, North Korea and Taiwan, Ms Rice did not find the Chinese all that helpful.

She made clear that America was growing impatient with the lack of progress in the Chinese-hosted six-way dialogue on North Korea's nuclear programme that also includes South Korea, Japan and Russia. On March 21st, at the end of her six-nation trip, she told reporters in Beijing that America remained “committed” to the talks, even though North Korea is now refusing to participate. But she also said that if North Korea remained obdurate, “we will have to look at other options”.

What might these be? Cracking down harder on North Korea's trade in weapons, drugs and counterfeit dollars would be one possibility. Taking the problem back to the United Nations Security Council might be another. To America's undoubted annoyance, China's leaders showed no obvious sign of willingness to step up pressure on the North to re-enter the talks, let alone make concessions.

America has not made clear quite how it would like China to lean on North Korea. China provides vital food and energy supplies, but is opposed to the imposition of economic sanctions on its communist neighbour and notional ally. It is worried that such measures could destabilise the impoverished country in ways that could threaten China.

Adam Ward of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London says America has no real expectations that China will impose sanctions at this stage or agree to put the issue to the Security Council. But he argues that the Americans would at least like China to signal to North Korea that it might be willing to adopt a tougher policy and that North Korea's claimed (though not yet proven) possession of nuclear weapons is an issue that also affects China's security.

Some Chinese officials may indeed want to be more co-operative with the Americans, not least because North Korea's nuclear programme gives the United States an excuse to maintain a strong security presence in East Asia and Japan an excuse to bolster its armed forces. But others worry that undermining the North Korean regime could allow America to dictate the terms of eventual reunification of the peninsula and deprive China of a strategic buffer against American forces.

The Russians show no interest in pressuring North Korea either, and even South Korea is at times disturbed by American rhetoric. During her swing through the region, Ms Rice was at pains to reassure all involved that America respected North Korea's sovereignty. She insisted that America has no plans to attack or invade the country. Such remarks were well received in South Korea, where there had been fears of escalating tension between America and North Korea following Ms Rice's description of the north as an “outpost of tyranny” in January. She repeated American offers of economic assistance as part of a settlement of the nuclear issue.

On China's relations with Taiwan, Ms Rice said China's adoption last week of an anti-secession law, which threatens the use of “non-peaceful means” against the island should it assert its independence was “not a welcome development”. She was considerably blunter in her criticism of the European Union for considering lifting the embargo on the sale of weapons to China it imposed in response to the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. More than once, she warned the Europeans not to do anything that would alter the balance of power in Asia. “It is the United States—not Europe—that has defended the Pacific,” she said.

The Europeans at least may be paying heed. On March 20th, Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said political problems relating to the embargo's lifting had become “more difficult” as a result of lack of progress by China on human-rights issues as well as the passing of the anti-secession bill. Recently, European Union officials had suggested that the embargo could be scrapped by the middle of the year, albeit with the introduction of restrictions on the sale of weapons to China.

Yet for all their differences, the Americans and Chinese both appeared keen not to let human rights get in the way of their discussions. Shortly before Ms Rice's visit, China freed a prominent political prisoner, Rebiya Kadeer. Ms Kadeer, a businesswoman from the western province of Xinjiang, was arrested in 1999 while on her way to meet an American congressional delegation. She was accused of harming national security. In apparent response to her release, America said it would not seek to censure China during this year's meeting in Geneva of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which began last week. Notwithstanding Mr Straw's concerns, Ms Rice said in Beijing that there had been “some progress” on human rights in China in recent months.

Ms Rice's eagerness not to ruffle feathers in China was also evident in Tokyo, where she was asked to explain her description of China as a “strategic competitor” before she joined the Bush administration. It shows, she said, that you should not write an article and then go into government: “People might actually read it.”

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Are they winning?

France and the European Union

Mar 23rd 2005 PARIS
From The Economist print edition

The shocking risk of a non to the European Union constitution

IT WAS not supposed to happen this fast. When President Jacques Chirac decided to advance France's referendum on the draft European Union constitution to May 29th, the idea was to avoid the “Maastricht scenario”. In 1992 support for that treaty sank over the summer months from 65% to just 51%. This time, with two months still left, two new opinion polls suggest that backing for the constitution has already collapsed: the no vote is now at 51-52%. Is France, architect of Europe, really set to reject its first constitution?

single poll could be a freak. Although the yes vote has clearly been slipping (from 69% in December to 63% in February, according to CSA, the pollster for Le Parisien), such a crumbling of support in one month looks decidedly odd. Yet a second poll conducted by Ipsos for Le Figaro has now agreed with the first one. The yes vote has plunged from 60% in early March to 48%, according to Ipsos.

The two results could still be a blip. Plenty of voters are undecided, know little about the constitution, or see no great issue at stake. If Maastricht is a guide, prediction is perilous: four weeks before the 1992 yes vote, BVA, another pollster, also registered a no of 51%. The shock of the new polls could also galvanise pro-voters—and higher participation should favour a yes. Stunned French politicians have duly begun to dramatise the vote. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a former president who chaired the convention that first drafted the constitution, has talked of an “open crisis” if France says no. Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission, has talked of a “cataclysm”.

Whether they represent a new trend or not, the new polls show that a French no is now a real possibility. How to explain such a surge of Euro-hostility? Partly, no doubt, it is a protest against an unpopular government, led by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, which seems to have lost its way at a time when voters are most anxious about jobs and pay. Unemployment is over 10%. Growth is still sluggish. Rents are rising. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets. Yet the government lacks any serious plan to revive the economy or increase jobs. Moreover, a whiff of sleaze hangs in the air, after the resignation of Hervé Gaymard as finance minister over a housing scandal, not to mention the opening this week of a corruption trial that fingers colleagues of Mr Chirac when he was mayor of Paris.

Yet something structural is going on as well: the rise of a new Euroscepticism. In France, a founder member of the European club, this sentiment has in the past belonged largely to the political fringes: the hard left, or Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front. From a tender age, French voters are taught the virtues of Europe. For political leaders, on left and right alike, Europe has been the means of preserving and projecting French power in a world that was otherwise eroding it. In short, Europe offered comfort: protection from decline; reaffirmation of their social model; the foundation of peace.

This sense of comfort is now falling away. In its place, Europe is increasingly seen as a menace: a destroyer of privileges and a source of new threats. Take the two issues that vex the French most just now, neither related to the constitution, but both overshadowing it: the European Commission's directive to liberalise services, which Mr Chirac ripped apart, just as he had earlier torn up the euro area's stability and growth pact, at this week's EU summit; and Turkey's possible EU membership. The first, introduced by Frits Bolkestein, a Dutch liberal, has become an emblem of French fears about an “ultra-liberal” Europe. There may be genuine concerns about lower wages or safety. But nobody has even tried to explain the merits of the measure, although it was approved by the two French commissioners at the time (one of them, Michel Barnier, is now foreign minister). It has rather become, as one socialist puts it, a symbol of “Europe's drift towards liberalisation”.

Frustration with the services directive is intense. There is incomprehension over how Brussels failed to grasp French sensitivity. After Mr Chirac telephoned José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, to complain about the directive, Mr Barroso replied this week by swiping at French political leaders. “The referendum is not about the Bolkestein directive,” he declared, adding that any confusion in French minds was “not our fault”, that France was not the only EU member, and that he had no intention of shelving his economic programme just because of the French referendum.

The prospect of Turkish entry has unleashed comparable levels of exasperation among the French. In this case, Mr Chirac is in favour, but most French voters are against—and they have not been appeased by the promise of another referendum before Turkey joins. Opposition is not provoked by a large Turkish population in France, nor is it only about the problems of taking in a big, poor and mainly Muslim country. Rather, the inclusion of Turkey is seen as yet another symbol of the transformation of the EU into a loose confederation, lacking political ambition, and far removed from the founding French idea.

It is this notion of the “wrong sort of Europe” that mobilises the no campaigners. Laurent Fabius, the Socialist Party's number two, supported Maastricht, and still calls himself “fundamentally pro-European”. But now he fears that “Europe will become just a free-trade zone”. Better to return to the Nice treaty, and start again. His views have been influential, despite efforts by François Hollande, his pro-constitution party leader, to drown them out. The two new polls confirm that most of the growing no sentiment is on the left. Among supporters of the ruling UMP party, 70% say they would vote yes. On the left, support has dropped from 54% to 45%.

French Euroscepticism is thus the polar opposite of the British variety: it is not anti-Europe but rather anti-liberal Europe. It represents a desire to go back to the comfort zone. But this is surely a delusion. For it is highly unlikely that the French, any more than the British, would secure a new EU treaty that is any more to their taste should they reject the draft constitution.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.