Newsbook

Caption competition 23

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:52:57 +0000

CAN you write an Economist picture caption? The excellent standard of entries in our previous competitions suggests that many of you can. Here's a new chance for you to see your wit in print.

The photograph above will accompany an article in the Business section in this week's issue. Nightclubs have long been a fly-by-night business. A typical club is a strictly local enterprise and lasts only slightly longer than a pint of lager at a stag party. But the business is growing more international. And new technology, such as a mobile application that tells you the ratio of men to women in a given club, could affect where people choose to party.

As before, it's up to you to provide the caption: please leave your suggestions in the comments thread below. The captions should be as short and snappy as possible, and ideally no more than about 30 characters long. The best contribution will appear beneath the picture in this week's print edition, which is published on Friday morning. Entries close at midnight London time on Wednesday evening, so you've got a little more than 48 hours. The winner can truthfully claim to have written (at least a few words) for The Economist. Over to you.

A battle of conflicting emotions

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:23:15 +0000

ON May 31st, Ireland will vote on whether to ratify the European fiscal compact, which would impose stricter controls on borrowing and spending

Houla's horror

Mon, 28 May 2012 11:24:08 +0000

COULD the massacre on Friday of over 100 people in Houla, an area of several villages close to Syria's third city of Homs, mark a turning point in Syria's bloody uprising? Politicians around the world expressed outrage after the UN confirmed that 49 children, many under the age of 10, were among the dead, their bodies shown in pictures and video footage. The UN Security Council met on Sunday evening to condemn the killings while the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called for an end to president Bashar Assad's "rule by murder".

This is one of the most brutal incidents in recent months and the bloodiest since UN envoy Kofi Annan's six-point plan to end Syria's fourteen-month crisis officially came into effect in April. Residents of Houla say the army shelled the area before men dressed in military clothing, believed to be regime loyalist gangs from neighbouring Alawite (the sect to which the Assad family belongs) villages, raided the area, using guns and knives to carry out summary executions.

The killings have put paid to the ceasefire which both the regime and rebel fighters had, anyway, already breached. It also calls into question the future of the UN mission in Syria. Protesters and opposition groups are becoming increasingly frustrated with the the UN's failure to end the violence against them. The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of armed opponents to Mr Assad, says it will resume attacks on regime targets if civilians are not protected. The Homs Revolutionary Council, a grouping of activist committees which covers Homs and the Houla area, announced that it will no longer hold political meetings with UN observers, restricting contact to humanitarian matters.

But the massacre, which the regime has blamed on "al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups", is unlikely to lead to any decisive action for Mr Assad or the battered Syrians than another round of condemnation and a flurry of diplomatic activity. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, arrived in Damascus on Monday and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, is visiting Russia, Mr Assad's remaining ally. But the stalemate continues. Russia shows little sign of ending its support for Mr Assad, Western states are loth to intervene militarily, and Mr Assad shows no interest in implementing any kind of political transition that could lead to his ouster. Instead, yesterday Western officials restated the need for the Annan plan to be fully implemented, including the removal of heavy weaponry from residential areas. At the same time, countries hoping to get rid of Mr Assad may increase covert support to the opposition, perhaps even helping the Gulf to send arms to rebel fighters. Syria looks as though it is descending further and faster into civil war.

Kofi Annan reports on Syria

Mon, 28 May 2012 05:48:17 +0000

It's doable, but it's not happening

Sun, 27 May 2012 16:10:55 +0000

AT THE end of another turbulent week in Europe, our correspondents discuss the technical and political obstacles to a euro zone rescue

The count begins

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:16:06 +0000

THE vote-counting is far from over, and the official results are not expected until next Tuesday. But short of a dramatic last-minute change in the numbers or the invalidation of votes, Egypt's next president will either be a man who once called Hosni Mubarak his "spiritual father" or one who was repeatedly imprisoned under his regime.

The success of Mohammed Morsi (pictured above on the left), an engineer and a long-time political strategist for the Muslim Brotherhood who now heads its Freedom and Justice Party, comes as little surprise. Mr Morsi had initially trailed in the polls because he was a last-minute stand-in for another man, Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's strongman. Egyptians jokingly called him "the spare tire." But the Brothers got out the vote and, with an estimated 28%, delivered him the largest share of any candidate.

The success of Ahmed Shafiq (shown on the right) is more of an upset. Mr Shafiq, who was the last prime minister of the Mubarak era and, like the former president, a commander of the Egyptian air force, had a late surge. Critics say that he was helped by the army now running the country, and that his success in some provinces—notably the Mubarak family homestead, Menoufiya—is suspicious. Many people, along with all the leading polls, expected Amr Moussa, another establishment candidate, to do better. But Mr Moussa, whom this newspaper endorsed, is expected to score a disappointing 11%, even though he once was the frontrunner.

For many Egyptians, this outcome is a nightmare: they are being forced to choose between the old regime and an organisational man from the emerging establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, which controls a plurality of seats in parliament. It is made all the more bitter by the fact that the next two candidates, Hamdeen Sabahi, a Nasserist politician and moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abolfotoh, together have more votes than any other candidates and once thought of combining their campaigns.

The early results suggest a majority of Egyptians in the centre want neither the old regime nor the Brotherhood. They cling to the hope that someone—anyone—can dislodge Mr Shafiq from his second place by the time all votes are tallied. But this is a long shot. If current estimates hold, the elusive Egyptian centre will have learnt a painful lesson—if it doesn't take to the streets in protest instead.

Even more tasteless than usual

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:38:24 +0000

IRELAND votes on the EU fiscal compact, the Eurovision song contest takes place in Azerbaijan, the UN Security Council reviews its mission in Syria and Wikipedia changes its rules

Digital highlights, May 26th 2012

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:40:35 +0000

The billion-baht man
Na Kham Mwe, the commander of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, lords it over a tiny strip of Myanmar near the Thai border. His relationship with Myanmar’s government has grown cordial recently. But Thailand’s drug tsar has put a gobsmacking bounty on his head

Battle igloo
Frugal innovation is usually associated with entrepreneurs in emerging markets developing low-cost products. But the process can happen in the rich world, too: a British company planning to entertain festival-goers has ended up disrupting the business of battlefield simulation

The music’s over
As a genre, disco gets a rotten press. It tends to conjure up images of hairy chests, medallions and the worst kind of dad-dancing. But the recent deaths of two disco heavyweights, Donna Summer and Robin Gibb, provide an opportunity for a re-evaluation of its origins and delights

United States: Bringing the Bain
If Mitt Romney cannot defend himself against Barack Obama’s attempt to turn his business experience into a liability, he does not deserve to be president

Technology: Difference engine
Why people drive what they drive

Middle East: Seeds of the future
Online activists continue to play an important role in the Arab spring

China: Blame the messenger
India-China relations might improve if their national press corps were better acquainted, or agreed on the purpose of journalism

Europe: Eurovision diary
Playing host to this year’s Eurovision song contest gives Azerbaijan a chance to show off the fruits of its oil boom

Business: GoodTube
Google wants YouTube, its popular online video service, to become less about entertainment and more like the BBC

Business education: Stop planning
How to make studying entrepreneurship more like being an entrepreneur

Technology: More than just text
Two-dimensional scans of books, while useful, leave out plenty of information

Americas: War of attrition
The stalemate between students and the Quebec government over university tuition fees shows no sign of ending

Sport: The leopard changes his spots
Two British climbers prepare for a daunting challenge in the former Soviet Union

Culture: The price of being female
Depictions of women often command the highest prices at art auctions. Works by them do not. But that is changing

What next for retail banks?

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:38:32 +0000

WHAT does the future hold for your high street bank? Jonathan Rosenthal is The Economist's banking correspondent, and author of our special report on international banking. His report argues that fusty old retail banking faces its biggest shake-up in 200 years. The internet and mobile phones are at long last turning a boring business into an exciting industry, and improving services for consumers.

On Tuesday, May 21st Mr Rosenthal answered questions about his special report on Twitter. An edited view of the conversation follows below (and we hope readers will forgive us the grammatical crimes therein). Readers asked about mobile banking, open data and whether local bank branches will survive. Our thanks to all who took part.

Seeds of the future

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:10:50 +0000

AS PEOPLE watch to see what sort of country Egypt will become after this week’s elections, they should keep an eye on a shy-mannered but ruthlessly determined young man called Maikel Nabil. His views, boldly disseminated across cyber-space, are unlikely to win agreement from more than a handful of his compatriots. He is a self-declared atheist, a pacifist, a supporter of better relations with Israel and holds liberal opinions on social issues.

But the fate of people like Mr Nabil and his kind is a good bellwether for the atmosphere in the Middle East. He spent much of last year in prison, and some of that time on hunger-strike, because he was deemed to have insulted the army. Whether he remains free to proclaim his (in Egyptian terms, idiosyncratic) ideas will say a lot about the country’s new order.

At the very least, the advent of electronic and social media has vastly improved the ability of individuals like Mr Nabil to act as a catalyst for change in the Arab world, stimulating and galvanising people to think and act more freely, even if they disagree with his views. Earlier this month at the Oslo Freedom Forum—an ever-more important gathering for those who defy tyranny—the stars of the show were young Middle Eastern cyber-activists like him: some relishing the half-completed democratic change which they helped to bring about, others still labouring under regimes that wish they would disintegrate.

When half a dozen of them (including young veterans of cyber-protest from Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and Bahrain) held a public debate, every word they said was tweeted within seconds by Sultan al-Qassemi, an Emirates-based activist, to his 110,000 or so followers. As a master of that medium, he played a significant role in last year’s uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, not least by providing an instant translation service between English and Arabic.

Later, the Norwegian gathering of activists (from former victims of sex-slavery in Indochina to critics of indentured labour in Nepal) listened spell-bound as Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman, described her campaign for the right of women in the kingdom to drive (she began by posting a film of herself at the wheel on Youtube, which duly went viral and earned her nine days in detention). She said the advent of the internet had freed her from the "small box" of rigid, rule-bound thinking imposed upon her as she was growing up.

On a lighter note, a puckish young Sudanese called Amir Ahmad Nasr used the Oslo gathering to announced the winding up of his popular blog "The Sudanese Thinker" tracing his adventures as a "sarcastic Afro-American goofy genius" whose philosophy evolved from conservative Islam to Sufism via atheism. Henceforth, he told his followers, his eager mind would be focusing on the study of Islam and social media.

Social media has proved a mixed blessing. As the Bahraini activist Maryam al-Khawaja (whose father, uncle, sister and boss are all in detention) put it, "using the social media can get you arrested or killed, but in some countries it can also be a protection." The head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, was probably detained, in part, because of the messages he was sending to at least 140,000 people via Twitter. But the sheer volume of his Twitter followers might also have made the authorities wary of mistreating him physically. Still, the motives of authoritarian regimes are difficult to decipher.

The wider influence of cyber-activists on Middle Eastern politics is also hard to quantify. In the Arab world, the penetration of the electronic media remains relatively low by Western standards but it is rising rapidly. About 1.3m Arabs use Twitter, while just over 40m are on Facebook, according to studies released this month. Facebook penetration ranges from nearly 40% of the population in the Emirates to 12% in Egypt and barely 5% in Iraq.

But Nasser Wedaddy, a Mauritanian-born activist, believes that young, tech-savvy activists have an importance that transcends statistics. "They are the seeds of a future civil society," he reckons. Simply by disseminating facts that are both true and important (about protests, or the behaviour of regimes, or the fate of individuals) they have broken the monopoly over information which until recently a submissive, establishment media enjoyed. The effect of that change seems destined to grow and grow, however hard people try to stamp it out.

The week ahead

Sun, 20 May 2012 22:03:42 +0000

A report from Rankous

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:58:14 +0000

The western half of Rankous, a Syrian village of 25,000, is a ghost town. The eastern part is occupied by the army and security forces; there, life continues
Source: The Economist
Shoes lie amid the ashes of one house in Rankous. The regime's forces shelled the town twice in November and January and then set fire to houses
Source: The Economist
Shelling has destroyed whole walls of this house which locals say used to be home to supporters of Bashar Assad
Source: The Economist
The regime's forces also burned cars during the raid. Inhabitants of Rankous now use motorcycles to get around
Source: The Economist
Amid the remains of the living room in one house that was torched lie a television and plastic furniture melted by the heat of the fire
Source: The Economist
A gaping hole in a wall of another house in the west of the town made it uninhabitable. Locals say many families left before the regime began its second assault
Source: The Economist
The top floor of this house collapsed after it was shelled. Its residents, like many others, have fled to Damascus or left the country
Source: The Economist
A sobia, a diesel heater used in Syria, sits in the middle of the living room another burned-out house. Locals say expensive possessions were stolen before the attack
Source: The Economist

THE houses in the western half of Rankous, a small town north of Damascus, reek of acrid smoke. A burned shoe lies on the floor while fans droop from the ceilings like dead flowers. The living rooms are the most haunting: the televisions that were once a centrepiece of family life are crumpled and withered, a testament to the heat of fire. Walls have gaping wounds in them; some have been demolished entirely. The top floor of one house has collapsed.

Osama, a slender man with bloodshot eyes, gives a tour of the area with the detailed manner of a museum guide (a respected schoolteacher, he has been fetched by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the few people living in this part of the town). The regime shelled the western neighbourhood of Rankous twice. Government forces then moved in and set fire to the houses, having first smashed or stolen everything inside, says Osama.

The first attack on the town began on November 27th, a barrage of shelling. The second came on January 27th by which time most people, left homeless, had fled to Damascus. Locals reckon around 25 have been killed here (the FSA men claim to have killed many more of the regime's men). While voices and laughter drift over from the eastern side of the town, there is little movement here. The occasional traactor rumbles by. In one of the few houses that escaped the onslaught, a child in plastic flip-flops peeks, dazed, around a black gate.

Locals think the area was targeted to rout out opposition fighters sheltering there. But Bashar Assad's forces punished the area indiscriminately using tanks and helicopters. Rankous's tragedy, repeated time and time in hamlets, towns and cities across the country, has gone unseen. No observers have entered the town and journalists have mostly headed to the battered neighbourhood of Baba Amr in Homs.

In this small hilly town of 25,000 everyone knows everyone. With their blackened interiors the houses all look the same, but they were the homes of families, friends, relatives, a local shopkeeper, says Osama. Each had its own style, items of furniture saved up for, ornaments brought back from Damascus or trips further afield.

He points to an area outside one house. They shot a group of men here, he says. He pauses outside another gate: a woman, a mother of five, died here, he continues. She had taken her children away for their safety but had come back with her husband to collect some belongings. A shell fell: it killed her but not him. Passing by another pillaged and burned house, Osama exclaims: "These people were regime supporters!"

Strands of wire are wound through the handles of the metal front doors of many houses to hold them together. Some owners came back to close them up to prevent wild animals getting in. Their efforts seem somewhat futile given the holes in the walls and blown-out windows. Soon most slipped away. There was no salvaging most of these homes. "We knew they were bad," Osama says of the regime. He shakes his head: "But not to this level. How could they do this?"

Gallery and Charts:

20120519_syriarubble

Television debates replace tear gas

Thu, 17 May 2012 23:53:53 +0000

EGYPTIANS begin voting for a new president, markets eye Greece with anxiety, Nato and G8 summits in America, and nuclear talks with Iran

A very fragile situation

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:27:18 +0000

AS Greece faces a second election and Spain's banking crisis worsens, our correspondents discuss the uncertain future of the euro zone

Covering the crisis

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:21:07 +0000

The euro-zone crisis, as told through Economist covers

IN MAY 2010 The Economist put Europe's debt crisis on its cover for the first time, accompanied by a decent filmic pun and an image of the Parthenon. Since then, the continent's financial woes have kept our cover designer busy conjuring up various ways to depict doom and despair. From waterfalls to plugholes to sieves, here are 15 of the best.

In covers: The euro crisis

May 19th 2012 It is not a good idea for Greece to leave the euro. But it is time to prepare for its departure

Related stories

The euro crisis:
The Greek run
May 12th 2012 Amid growing risk of a Greek exit, the euro zone has yet to face up to the task of saving the single currency itself

Related stories

The euro crisis:
Europe’s Achilles heel
November 26th 2011 Unless Germany and the ECB move quickly, the single currency’s collapse is looming

Related stories

The euro zone:
Is this really the end?
November 5th 2011 The markets are not the euro’s only threat. Voters may be too

Related stories

A euro referendum:
Greece’s woes
October 29th 2011 This week’s summit was supposed to put an end to the euro crisis. It hasn’t

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Economic crisis:
Europe’s rescue plan
October 1st 2011 Unless politicians act more boldly, the world economy will keep heading towards a black hole

Related stories

The world economy:
Be afraid
September 17th 2011 It requires urgent action on a huge scale. Unless Germany rises to the challenge, disaster looms

Related stories

Europe's currency crisis:
How to save the euro
July 16th 2011 By engulfing Italy, the euro crisis has entered a perilous new phase—with the single currency itself now at risk

Related stories

Italy and the euro:
On the edge
June 25th 2011 The opportunity for Europe’s leaders to avoid disaster is shrinking fast

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The euro crisis:
If Greece goes…
March 12th 2011 This may be remembered as the week Europe began to split apart. One woman could stop that

Related stories

The euro and the European Union: Can Angela Merkel hold Europe together?
January 15th 2011 The euro area’s bail-out strategy is not working. It is time for insolvent countries to restructure their debts

Related stories

The euro area:
Time for Plan B
December 4th 2010 The euro is proving horribly costly for some. A break-up would be even worse

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The future of the euro:
Don't do it
November 20th 2010 Ireland’s woes are largely of its own making but German bungling has made matters worse

Related stories

The euro-zone crisis:
Saving the euro
July 10th 2010 Yes: the European Union will thrive if its leaders seize the moment in the same way they did 20 years ago

Related stories

Europe's future: Can anything perk up Europe?
May 1st 2010 The Greek debt crisis is spreading. Europe needs a bolder, broader solution—and quickly

Related stories

Europe's sovereign-debt crisis: Acropolis now

Gallery and Charts:

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Digital highlights, May 19th 2012

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:03:39 +0000

A charmed life
At last week’s annual meeting of the Giving Pledge in Santa Barbara, a group of America’s richest individuals discussed giving half of their wealth to philanthropic causes. We sat down with Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, two attendees, to discuss why they give

Rankous report
Our correspondent sends a dispatch from Rankous, a small town north-west of Damascus. Houses have been burned and most people, apart from a few locals and men from the Free Syrian Army, have fled since Bashar Assad’s regime shelled the town earlier this year

School’s out
The appearance of interns around the office is a sure sign that summer has arrived. Business-school students, aware that such placements are the best way to secure a full-time job upon graduation, are keen to impress by showing a bit of initiative. But they can go too far

United States: Julia’s world
The Obama campaign’s poorly conceived cartoon slideshow has inspired a silly debate

United States: Truth in campaign advertising
Both parties are bad at simplifying their messages, though for different reasons

Business: Europe against the world
Only Chinese and Indian airlines are failing to comply with the EU’s controversial aviation policy

Asia: Keep on truckin’
Pakistan will reopen its roads to NATO convoys bound for Afghanistan. But it would have liked an apology first

Writing: Remembering Peter David
During a 28-year career at The Economist, Peter wrote on everything. Here is some of his best work, chosen by his colleagues

Europe: A walk in the park
Moscow’s protesters are trying out some new tactics. But not everyone is playing along

China: Who is the mightier?
Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng represent opposing visions of political power

Culture: England, my England
A new exhibition at the British Library considers the way writers have long been inspired by the country’s landscape

Technology: Difference engine
How might technology help the severely obese perform everyday tasks?

Technology: Ungunkable
A new way to make materials better even than Teflon at repelling gunk

Debate: Are bank branches obsolete?
Will banks follow bookshops in disappearing from the high street? Or will people still prefer to trust their money to institutions with a presence on every corner?

What he wrote

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:08:14 +0000

DURING his 28 years at The Economist Peter wrote on everything. His colleagues thought of him as a Middle East specialist above all, but he also wrote columns on British and in American politics, as well as stories and leaders on science and business. The 14 special reports he wrote ranged from Islam to banking and from Canada to South Africa. They included one on universities, which seems appropriate since he might have been mistaken for one.

Here, in our view, are some of the best things he wrote.

Peter on the opposition, from Newt Gingrich and others, to the proposed Cordoba centre in New York, from August 2010:

"The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.

Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm." (From "Build that mosque".)

Peter's leader on the "hundred years' war" between the Arabs and Israel, from January 2009:

"The slaughter this week in Gaza, in which on one day alone some 40 civilians, many children, were killed in a single salvo of Israeli shells, will pour fresh poison into the brimming well of hate. But a conflict that has lasted 100 years is not susceptible to easy solutions or glib judgments. Those who choose to reduce it to the “terrorism” of one side or the “colonialism” of the other are just stroking their own prejudices. At heart, this is a struggle of two peoples for the same patch of land. It is not the sort of dispute in which enemies push back and forth over a line until they grow tired. It is much less tractable than that, because it is also about the periodic claim of each side that the other is not a people at all—at least not a people deserving sovereign statehood in the Middle East." (From "The hundred years' war".)

Peter's Bagehot column on the death of Alan Clark, a British politician, diarist and amoralist, from September 1999:

"As a romantic nationalist, former soldier and serious military historian, Alan Clark wanted to be defence secretary just as desperately as a little boy craves a train set. But not even Margaret Thatcher, whose “very pretty ankles” turned him on, and who liked him back, would risk putting the nuclear button near the finger of an habitual inebriate who said that Hitler was a military genius, who named one of his beloved dogs after Eva Braun, and who recommended sorting out Ireland’s “troubles” by sending British commandos one night to kill a couple of hundred IRA terrorists.

Mr Clark’s mad ideas and compulsive political incorrectness (he called Africa “bongo-bongo land”) kept him out of high office. He was not much good at low office. Life as a junior employment minister bored him silly." (From "Why they liked him".)

Peter's final word on post-occupation Iraq, from March 2007:

"It is not enough to say with the neocons that this was a good idea executed badly. Their own ideas are partly to blame. Too many people in Washington were fixated on proving an ideological point: that America's values were universal and would be digested effortlessly by people a world away. But plonking an American army in the heart of the Arab world was always a gamble. It demanded the highest seriousness and careful planning. Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld chose instead to send less than half the needed soldiers and gave no proper thought to the aftermath.

What a waste. Most Iraqis rejoiced in the toppling of Saddam. They trooped in their millions to vote. What would Iraq be like now if America had approached its perilous, monumentally controversial undertaking with humility, honesty and courage? Thanks to the almost criminal negligence of Mr Bush's administration nobody, now, will ever know." (From "Mugged by reality: How it all went wrong".)

Peter's Bagehot column on a famous murder case in Britain, from April 2000 :

"All along, there has been a touch of Edgar Allen Poe about this story. Fred Barras and his accomplices had all of the isolated farmhouses in Norfolk to burgle. Some twist of fate directed them to “Bleak House”. It happens that its owner, Tony Martin, was not your typical farmer. He had, shall we say, a bit of a thing about burglars. On the night in question, as, it seems, on most nights, he had gone to bed fully clothed, boots on, with his illegal pump-action shotgun to hand. He kept rottweiler dogs in his garden and laid traps—man traps—around his house. Bagehot is no psychologist, but cannot help wondering whether, when Mr Martin heard Fred Barras and his friends breaking in, and headed down his booby-trapped stairs with his big gun, one part of him was thinking: “Make my day”. (From "Are you feeling lucky, punk?".)

Peter's leader on the justification for the first Gulf war, from January 1991:

Benjamin Franklin said there never was a good war, or a bad peace. He was half right. Nobody can be glad that, after the failure in Geneva, the stalemate in the Gulf seems this week to be slipping miserably into war. The result of all wars is men killed, maimed or made insane by horror. This time the horrors may include ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, even—if Iraq is foolish enough to lash out at Israel—nuclear ones too. Can any cause be great enough to justify the slaughter?

The answer is Yes. There is no good war, but sometimes a bad peace can be worse than war itself. A peace that left Saddam Hussein unchallenged in Kuwait would be trebly bad. It would mean sacrificing a high principle: no country has the right to over-run and annex another. It would mean abandoning a great interest: secure access to the oil of the Gulf, on which the prosperity of the whole world has come increasingly to depend. And, because of those two things, it would mean accepting a peace that was no peace at all, merely the lull before a bigger explosion. (From "Don't save this face".)

Peter's Lexington column on how Americans holiday, from August 2010:

"And yet neither affluence nor diversity seem to have made it as easy for Americans to relax on holiday in the way that guilt-free Europeans do. The American vacationer unable to silence his inner Puritan for those paltry 13 days a year must combine his holiday with some self-improving experience. Children are sent to camp to learn the Great Outdoors, or taught to fish or light fires by over-earnest fathers. Communing with history is another way to stiffen the laxity of a vacation: famous buildings, battlefields and landmarks are popular and lucrative draws. Not even Disney believes it can prosper by selling escapism alone. Hence its proposal for an American-history theme park outside Washington, DC (a scheme thwarted by the objections of local residents). And if the educational holiday fails, there is always the pilgrimage." (From "The air-conditioned Puritan".)

Peter's special reports since 2000*

Waking from its sleep: A special report on the Arab world (July 23rd 2009)

The revolution strikes back: A special report on Iran (July 21st 2007)

Peace, order and rocky government: A survey of Canada (December 3rd 2005)

In the name of Islam: A survey of Islam and the West (September 13th 2003)

*These long-form stories began to appear on Economist.com in 2000. To confuse readers, we used to call them "surveys". Peter wrote many surveys that, unfortunately, we cannot link to. For the record, they were: "Undoing Britain?: A survey of Britain" (1999), "After Zionism: A survey of Israel" (1998), "The knowledge factory: A survey of universities" (1997), "Back on top?: A survey of American business" (1995), "At ease in Zion: A survey of Israel" (1994), "Recalled to life: A survey of internatinal banking" (1994), "The final lap: A survey of South Africa" (1993), "Out of joint: A survey of the Middle East" (1991), "Squeezed: A survey of the Arab world" (1990) and "Tribes with flags: A survey of the Arab East" (1988).

Don't save this face

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:17:55 +0000

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN said there never was a good war, or a bad peace. He was half right. Nobody can be glad that, after the failure in Geneva, the stalemate in the Gulf seems this week to be slipping miserably into war. The result of all wars is men killed, maimed or made insane by horror. This time the horrors may include ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, even—if Iraq is foolish enough to lash out at Israel—nuclear ones too. Can any cause be great enough to justify the slaughter?

Until this week the world had assumed that Iraq's dictator would take some sort of step before January 15th to prevent the outbreak of war. After that day if his army remains in Kuwait, Resolution 678 of the United Nations Security Council allows any nation, at Kuwait's request, to remove him by force. It is still possible, as the last few days trickle away, that he will come up with something: a partial withdrawal, or a firm promise to give up his conquest in return for something else. He may be willing to offer to the secretary-general of the United Nations or some other mediator what pride stopped him from offering the United States. But the meeting in Geneva between James Baker and Tariq Aziz left few grounds for hope. America's secretary of state came from Washington. Iraq's foreign minister acted as if he had come from Krypton.

The representative of a country that decided six months ago to delete another, and steal everything in it, refused to accept a letter from America's president on the ground that its language was impolite. Mr Aziz claimed to stand for peace and justice, then announced that if war started Iraq would attack Israel—regardless of whether Israel was a party to the war or not. He insisted, despite the evidence of geography and everything else, that Iraq had destroyed Kuwait to liberate Palestine. But his master in Baghdad did not even allow him to say out loud that Kuwait could be swapped for the West Bank. Indeed, Mr Aziz refrained from uttering the word Kuwait once during his Geneva press conference. "Linkage" between the West Bank and Kuwait was always a preposterous notion. Now it looks as if it may not be on offer anyway.

Because of the long gap between the crime and its punishment, the world's indignation about the stealing of Kuwait has given way since August to anxiety about the cost of a war to retrieve it. But it is important to remember the simple principle that would make such a war legal and just. Since August Mr Hussein has minted a treasury of lies designed to show that Kuwait was an artificial country—corrupt, selfish, undemocratic and undeserving of an in dependent existence. The truth is quite different.

Kuwait was no democracy. But by the standards of the Arab world it was a decent place, tolerantly run, with a freeish press and livelier politics than any Mr Hussein could ever countenance. An artificial state? Tiny, yes, but no more artificial than the other nations of the modern Middle East—Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq itself which were given their borders by former colonists. Iraq's claim to Kuwait rests on the argument that the Ottomans ran it as part of the province of Basra. Britain made it independent which is how Kuwaitis themselves wished it to stay until Mr Hussein turned it violently into a colony again last August.

Foolishly poor, generously rich

Mr Hussein's second great lie is that he invaded Kuwait on behalf of the Arab poor. But Iraq itself is richer in oil than Kuwait was, and would have been prosperous too had Mr Hussein not poured its riches away in eight years of futile war against Iran. Some Kuwaitis made their country unpopular by flaunting their wealth, but their government was a prudent manager of its oil. It kept the price low in order to maximise its share of the market and protect its investments in the world economy not, as Mr Hussein says, because it was part of a Zionist conspiracy to impoverish Iraq. As for being selfish, Kuwait in its heyday dished out a higher share of its GDP (4% in 1982) in foreign aid than any other country, and gave jobs to hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.

Kuwait, though, was a small country. Is it worth fighting a big war, in the name of an abstraction like sovereignty, in order to restore it? The world has come to live with other conquests. China has not been driven from Tibet, Turkey from northern Cyprus, Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. These continued occupations are, and should be, deplored. They do not invalidate the principle that the acquisition of territory by conquest is inadmissible. That principle is no pious abstraction, but a practical rule that helps to keep the world safe.

This is the principle at stake in the Gulf. But there is an interest, too, in which the whole world has a share. It would be nice to believe that Mr Hussein's ambitions would have ended after digesting Kuwait; or that, having seen how badly his invasion had fared, he would learn his lesson and behave better in the future. The evidence suggests otherwise. Mr Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980 exposed his taste for Lebensraum to the east. The subsequent war went disastrously wrong: it took Iraq eight years of fighting and lavish outside help to save itself from ignominy. And yet, far from learning to behave better, he waited only two years before starting all over again—this time sending his armies south, into Kuwait. The full extent of his other territorial ambitions is uncertain, but the explicit aim of the Baathist ideology on which his regime is founded is to sweep away "artificial" borders (plus, naturally, Israel) and unite the Middle East behind himself. Unlike previous Baathists, Mr Hussein has built a war machine that might, if left unchecked, be able to make this dream come true.

Hard luck Middle East? No: hard luck world. It would be dishonest to pretend that the world can think about the Gulf without thinking about the three-letter word that belongs to it. Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait, good-natured people have felt queasy about fighting merely for the sake of oil. They should reconsider that "merely".

Oil is not just any commodity, it is the fuel on which almost every country's hopes for growth and prosperity rest, and will continue to rest until they embrace nuclear power or some technology not yet invented. This war is not being fought for the oil companies or to keep oil "cheap"—no war came after the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979—but to keep the hands of a ruthless blackmailer off the windpipe of the world economy. With Kuwait, Mr Hussein already controls 19% of the world's oil; with Saudi Arabia he would have 44%. Mr Hussein says openly that he needed to control Kuwait in order to control the price of oil, in order to pay for his war machine, in order to . . . This is an impossible position for the world to accept, and no shame attaches to acknowledging the vital self-interest at stake. It would be shameful to conceal it.

How to define victory

This is the case for war, and the test against which any outcome in the Gulf must be measured. First, Kuwait must be restored to uphold the principle of sovereignty. Then the threat Mr Hussein poses to the Gulf must be removed. The best way to remove the danger would be to remove Mr Hussein from power; but at the very least he should be made to emerge deflated from his attack on Kuwait. these aims would certainly be achieved by war. It would be far better if they were achieved peacefully—with a last-minute decision by Mr Hussein to comply, to the letter, with the demands of the Security Council.

Because the indictment against Iraq is so clear, the world's response to August's invasion has until now been exemplary. For nearly half a year the Soviet Union and United States have walked in tandem. The Security Council has passed 12 resolutions against Iraq, demanding its full and unconditional departure from Kuwait. Iraq refuses to go, so war is logically the next stop—barring that last-minute failure of Iraqi nerve. Yet there is also another possibility, one even more dismal than the prospect of fighting. It is the possibility of Mr Hussein keeping his nerve and the alliance cracking first.

Given the balance of forces, political and military, it seems extraordinary that Mr Hussein could stare down the powerful coalition massed against him. No fundamental loss of will is evident among the alliance's chief members. George Bush, whose army would shoulder the main burden of fighting, seems grimly ready for war. Most of Iraq's neighbours, who would suffer directly if it happened, believe the price worth paying. The wavering is in Europe, and notably in France. There the conviction has grown that Mr Hussein must be offered some way to escape from Kuwait without embarrassment. Blessed, sometimes, are the peacemakers. Yet it is clearly not possible both to save Mr Hussein's face and to deflate the menace he poses in the Gulf.

If face-saving is bad enough in itself, the means by which the French hint they might achieve it are worse. The idea is to pretend to believe the third of Mr Hussein's great fibs: his claim to have invaded Kuwait for the sake of Palestine. This is a more blatant lie than his argument that he invaded Kuwait because it was "artificial", or on behalf of the Arab poor. It only occurred to him to utter it ten days after the invasion, when he understood that his adventure was turning sour. But it is also, alas, a powerful lie.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has continued for 23 years against the wishes of their inhabitants, and should end. But conflating the problems of the Gulf and of the West Bank is the surest way to make both insoluble. "Linkage" may sound neat in Paris, and among the Arabs of North Africa. Once you move inside Iraq's missile range, enthusiasts are harder to find. Linkage holds little appeal for most of the Arab governments of the Middle East: the Saudis, the Egyptians, the five (surviving) states of the Gulf Co-operation Council or even the Syrians. Why? Not because these countries are soft on Palestine but because it is they along with Israel, who would have to pay for a "solution" that enhanced Mr Hussein's stature in the region.

Ever since the creation of Israel, Arab dictators in trouble have found it expedient to wrap themselves in the flag of Palestine, usually—remember Nasser and 1967—to the detriment of the Palestinians themselves. Yet linkage, if it works at all, works in reverse. Israel's intransigence on the West Bank comes partly from religious motives, mainly from the fear that the Arab world will never accept Israel's presence. By invading Kuwait and threatening daily to douse Tel Aviv in chemical fire, Mr Hussein simply makes that fear stronger.

And so to war

It is sobering, so soon after the collapse of Eastern Europe's dictatorships and the ending of the cold war, that fighting men are once again strapping on their boots and preparing for battle. Half a year ago, many people in the democratic and newly democratising world had begun to hope that war had become obsolete, a shameful anachronism. That was before August 2nd, when Saddam Hussein's army shot its way into Kuwait. Mr Hussein has a few more days to return peacefully what he stole by force. If he does not, the fighting men can evict him from Kuwait, their consciences clear.

Slouching towards the drachma

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:04:06 +0000

PITY Karolos Papoulias. The 82-year-old president of Greece has spent over a week trying to persuade the country’s fractious political leaders to form a government after a general election on May 6th failed to produce a clear winner. Mr Papoulias, a soft-spoken former foreign minister, handed out mandates to various party leaders, none of whom could deliver, and made a three-day effort of his own, before finally giving up yesterday.

Success would have given Greece breathing space, if only for a few months, to pursue urgent reforms—such as recapitalising its insolvent banks and getting on with privatisation—to help restore its credibility with European partners and financial markets. Instead, another election now looms, on June 17th. Until then the country will be run by a caretaker government under Panagiotis Pikrammenos, Greece’s most senior judge. Lucas Papademos, the ex-European central banker who has run a coalition government for the last six months, overseeing a €206 billion sovereign-debt restructuring and Greece's second bail-out, was not asked to stay on.

The transcripts of Mr Papoulias’s last three meetings, made public at the request of Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, a hard-left coalition, and Greece's rising political star, reveal a disturbing lack of vision among the men who are supposed to be Greece's leading politicians. Rather than tackle serious issues, such as how to keep Greece in the euro, they swapped insults and shrugged off a warning that a bank run was imminent. “They’re all irresponsible, none of them is capable of ending this crisis,” says Aristomenes Antonopoulos, a lawyer. “How to vote now?”

Support among Greeks for staying in the euro is up from 70% to 80% over the past three months, according to opinion polls. Yet fears that prolonged political instability could trigger a “Grexit” are also increasing. Greek savers withdrew €3 billion from local banks—about 2% of total deposits—as hopes of forming a coalition collapsed. Greece has seen a steady erosion of bank deposits over the past two years, yet few bankers were prepared for such a rapid acceleration of withdrawals. Deposits had increased in March and April, thanks to smooth handling of Greece’s partial default.

Today, cash was being taken away from the banks in orderly fashion. There were no queues outside branches in central Athens or its suburbs. Customers ordered cash by telephone and picked it up 24 hours later. Some went straight into safety-deposit boxes at the same bank; some was stashed beneath mattresses in case Greece has to re-adopt the drachma. "People are taking preventive measures," says one veteran banker. "If you own a pile of euros, you’ll feel rich in a drachma environment."

Despite their enthusiasm for holding on to the euro, Greeks are fed up with the austerity that German politicians say is the price of continued membership. Syriza suggests that such views are compatible, arguing that Greece can stay in the euro but also reverse the reforms imposed by the "troika" (the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

This is a message Greek voters appear to like. A recent poll found that Syriza would win the next election with 20.5% of the vote, just ahead of the pro-euro New Democracy party on 19.4%, but well short of an overall majority. The PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), the only other electable party that supports reform, would come a distant third with 11.8%.

Mr Tsipras is reorganising his party and renewing his campaign, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, in Athens and other cities. His rhetoric is sharper than ever, yet his dream of forming a left-wing government is no closer to being realised than at the previous election. Potential partners have sounded more cross than co-operative since Mr Tsipras bounced into second place behind New Democracy on May 6th.

Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy leader, will pull out all the stops. If his centre-right party cannot form a government this time, his career will be over. A new alliance with a small liberal party should give him another couple of percentage points at the election. As for Evangelos Venizelos, the Pasok leader and a potential coalition partner, he is struggling to prevent more voters defecting for Syriza.

Even with the extra 50 seats that go to the party that comes first, the two pro-bailout parties will still struggle to form a government after the second election. The long-suffering Mr Papoulias is likely to be back in action on June 18th.

The Frangela show

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:42:47 +0000

FIRST he got soaked in heavy rain when riding in an open-roofed hybrid car down the Champs-Elysées. Then his presidential plane was struck by lightning shortly after taking off for Berlin, forcing him to return to Paris and board another. François Hollande, who was sworn in as France's new president yesterday at a low-key ceremony at the Elysée Palace, had promised a “normal” presidency, but his first few hours turned out to be anything but. Still, with a sang-froid that may come to mark his term, Mr Hollande seemed unperturbed, and focused on setting the tone for what he billed as a presidency of “dignity but simplicity”.

Accompanied by his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, and with the slow presidential walk and solemn look he has been perfecting these past months, in the style of France’s only other Socialist president, François Mitterrand, Mr Hollande climbed the steps of the Elysée, briefly waved goodbye to Nicolas Sarkozy and promised the French “calm, reconciliation and unity”. Before heading off for international summits in America, the leader who has never held ministerial office named his first prime minister and dropped in—finally—on Berlin for his first meeting with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

The pair put on a good show of unity last night, each promising to keep the Franco-German couple strong, and agreeing to try to help Greece remain in the euro. The two leaders acknowledged “differences”, but insisted that there was room “to find common ground”.

In terms of mood music, it was a better start than that made by Mr Sarkozy, who also flew to Berlin hours after his inauguration. The epithet “Merkozy”, to describe an austerity-driven approach to euro-zone stability imposed by the former pair, masked what was in reality an often prickly relationship. Mrs Merkel may have openly backed Mr Sarkozy for re-election, but she and Mr Hollande, both measured and rational, are a better match by temperament.

In the short run, however, things look tricky. Mr Hollande faces parliamentary elections in June, and needs something to show for his efforts to lead the fight against austerity. The Socialist party spokesman, Benoît Hamon, declared this week that: “We did not cast our votes in order to get a president of the EU called Mrs Merkel.” With the force of a fresh mandate, Mr Hollande may want to flex his muscles. Yet he represents a country that has not balanced its budget since 1974.

Any attempt to defend a slacker approach to fiscal deficits—even if only for troubled peripheral countries—would risk looking like a pretext for backsliding at home. At the same time, Mr Hollande’s promise to fight austerity will look empty if he takes as tough a line as Germany on Greece—or if he is forced to impose an austerity plan at home.

Mr Hollande was elected on a pledge to reduce the French budget deficit to 3% of GDP in 2013, but also to increase spending by €20 billion over five years. The European Commission now forecasts that the 2013 deficit will reach 4.2%, implying that an extra €24 billion of savings need to be made next year alone.

Part of the responsibility for that will fall to France's new government. At its head will be Jean-Marc Ayrault, the 62-year-old leader of the Socialist parliamentary group and mayor of Nantes, who Mr Hollande yesterday appointed as prime minister. The appointment of Mr Ayrault, a loyal party man, marks a return to the traditional political division of labour in France whereby the president manages foreign policy and the prime minister runs domestic affairs. Such an approach will also provide Mr Hollande with a handy scapegoat if things go wrong.

Like his boss Mr Ayrault has no ministerial experience, but he is a good match for the anti-elite mood. Like Pierre Mauroy, Mitterrand’s first prime minister, his roots are even more provincial than Mr Hollande’s, and more modest: born to working-class parents, he is not a graduate of France’s elite universities. The pair share a consensus-seeking character, unflashy taste and—despite My Ayrault’s youthful foray into far-left politics—pass for moderates in the Socialist party.

Mr Ayrault is close to France's parliamentarians, and is a fluent German-speaker who makes regular visits over the Rhine. But he is almost unknown to the French. One popularity poll last month ranked him in 46th place, chiefly because people had not heard of him.

Further government appointments will be made later today. Michel Sapin, Mr Hollande's head of policy, is tipped for the finance job.* Some of Mr Hollande's former Socialist rivals, such as Laurent Fabius and Arnaud Montebourg, may be brought into the cabinet. The biggest surprise is that Martine Aubry, Mr Hollande's chief rival during the Socialist primary last year, will not join the government after she turned down a relatively junior role. This raises the spectre of future conflict, something the Socialists thought they had put behind them.

*Update: Pierre Moscovici, Mr Hollande's campaign manager, and not Michel Sapin, was this evening named France's new finance minister. The other appointments are as in the original story.

An opportunity for an opportunist

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:33:01 +0000

ISRAEL'S prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has convinced the biggest opposition party, Kadima, to join his coalition, which could reset relations with the Palestinians

A well Krafted win

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:20:23 +0000

IT IS easy to get carried away with the results of yesterday's election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state. It was the worst ever performance in the state for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which governs Germany and is headed by Angela Merkel, the chancellor. It was a triumph for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, who will continue to govern the state, this time with a clear majority in the Landtag (state parliament).

Surely, say some, this is part of the left-wing, anti-austerity wave that swept François Hollande into the French presidency on May 6th and could knock Mrs Merkel out of power when Germany votes in the federal election in September 2013. Maybe Mr Hollande should be flying to Dusseldorf tomorrow to meet Hannelore Kraft (pictured), NRW’s re-elected premier, rather than to Berlin to see Mrs Merkel.

This is a little premature. The main reason for the CDU’s poor showing in NRW was not Mrs Merkel or her advocacy of Europe-wide austerity, but the awful campaign conducted by the party’s chief candidate, Norbert Röttgen, who is also the German environment minister. Mr Röttgen dithered about whether he would return to Berlin if he lost, which made his commitment to NRW look half-hearted. At one point, to Mrs Merkel’s horror, he claimed that the vote was a referendum on her management of the euro crisis. His Berlin colleagues quickly slapped him down.

Similarly, the SPD’s victory had a lot to do with the popularity of Mrs Kraft, a down-to-earth electrician’s wife from the Ruhr, who managed her minority coalition with the Greens fairly deftly (it fell after less than two years because of a dispute with the opposition over the budget). Mr Röttgen tried to paint Mrs Kraft as a free-spending leftist. Instead, voters bought her argument that more investment in education and other “preventive” social policies now would save the state money in the long run.

But it is a big jump to assume that the NRW results are a harbinger of next year’s federal election. Mrs Merkel remains Germany’s most popular elected politician. While much of Europe is falling apart, Germany has a relatively strong economy and low unemployment. Voters give Mrs Merkel credit for that. In national polls the CDU maintains a lead over the SPD of six to eight percentage points. And it is not clear that the SPD can field a convincing challenger to Mrs Merkel next year. Mrs Kraft, who looks like the strongest potential candidate, has committed herself to NRW.

Also helpful to Mrs Merkel is the rise of the Pirate Party, which won seats in the NRW Landtag for the first time. This is its fourth state-wide election success since last September. If the upstart party manages to enter the Bundestag at next year's federal vote, it will be harder for the SPD and Greens to form a coalition.

But this does not mean that Mrs Merkel can rest easy. The stunning recovery of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), a junior partner in her coalition, is not unadulterated good news. The pro-business party seemed to do everything wrong since joining Mrs Merkel’s federal coalition government in 2009, and just a few weeks ago appeared to be at death’s door. But it stormed back in an election in Schleswig-Holstein on May 6th, beating expectations by winning 8.2% of the vote and re-entering the Landtag.

Its 8.6% showing in NRW was even more impressive, since it represented a gain on its performance in 2010. This is largely down to the FDP’s charismatic chief candidate, Christian Lindner, who took the leap from Berlin to Dusseldorf (he plans to remain there as an opposition leader) that Mr Röttgen had balked at, and made the anti-spending argument more effectively than the CDU man did. Many of the FDP’s votes came from CDU supporters disgusted with Mr Röttgen’s fecklessness.

What this means for Mrs Merkel is unclear. Perhaps a less-panicky FDP will be a more reliable partner in her troubled coalition, though that is far from certain. Fights loom over proposals for a minimum wage (which Mrs Merkel supports but the FDP does not) and benefits for parents who do not put their children in day care (ditto). Moreover, there is no guarantee that the FDP will repeat its regional success in the federal election.

If it does, there is growing speculation that it could join a three-party “traffic light” coalition with the SPD and the Greens, bringing Mrs Merkel’s chancellorship to a close. That would be unprecedented and may be impossible. The gap between the liberal FDP and the left-leaning opposition on issues such as taxation, minimum wages and the handling of the euro crisis may be unbridgeable. But Mr Lindner, who may now become the FDP’s de facto leader, is thought to be open to such an alliance. Mrs Merkel has reason to worry.

A bigger concern may be the issues that are now Mrs Merkel's greatest strength: her management of the euro crisis and of the economy. The euro zone itself could unravel if Greece is forced out after new elections, which are likely to take place in June. That could shred Germany’s economy and Mrs Merkel’s reputation as a crisis manager. Her fate depends more on events in Athens than on the politics of Dusseldorf.

JAS's cartoon

Mon, 14 May 2012 03:33:20 +0000

Adrift

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:14:36 +0000

AFTER five days of talks Greece is no nearer to forming a government than at the start of the week. A triumphant Alexis Tsipras, whose radical left coalition Syriza came second in the general election held on May 6th, appears to be gambling on his momentum being sustained should a fresh election be held. An opinion poll published on May 11th showed that 28% of voters would back Syriza, a big increase from the 17% it won on polling day. That would put the leftists ahead of their rivals but still leave them a dozen or so seats short of an overall majority in the 300-member parliament. Mr Tsipras could then become Greece’s next prime minister with backing from other leftwing parties and perhaps, even, the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), which lost many votes to Syriza.

On the evening of May 11th Mr Tsipras appeared to squelch hopes of forming a three-party coalition with Pasok and the centre-right New Democracy party, claiming their leaders were not taking him seriously. A slim chance of forming a government remains: a meeting of the leaders of all the parties represented in parliament chaired by President Karolos Papoulias is expected to take place on May 14th. Politicians are sceptical that it will bring results; all three parties are already gearing up for a second election to be held on either June 10th or 17th. A caretaker government under a high state official—a lawyer or judge—would run the country meanwhile.

Members of Syriza, a fractious coalition of a dozen leftist parties from moderate pro-euro groups to radical revolutionaries, appeared overwhelmed by their unexpected success: the grouping came close to quadrupling its share of the vote. Mr Tsipras is its undisputed boss: he serves as the leader of Synaspismos, Greece’s former euro-communist party and the political home in the 1980s of many of the country’s intellectuals, which claims an 80% stake in the coalition.

Mr Tsipras insists that Greece can renegotiate the austerity programme agreed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund in return for a €130 billion ($168 billion) bailout, yet remain in the euro—a policy based on advice from at least three Greek university professors, a former communist who served briefly as finance minister and a senior trade unionist. This week they shrugged off warnings from Brussels and Berlin that Greece must stick to its current reform programme—which includes another €11.5 billion of spending cuts to be legislated by the incoming parliament—or risk having to leave the single currency.

Greece’s political class is reeling at the sudden rise of the left. Yet it is hardly surprising: the unemployment rate reached 21.7% in February, a new record. Youth unemployment is far higher at 53.8%. The social safety net is fraying under the strain of austerity: there are no longer any subsidies for hiring young workers on temporary contracts, while benefits for the long-term unemployed are minimal. “People are becoming desperate,” says Thanassis Sotiropoulos, one of many supermarket owners who contribute food close to its expiry date to a charity that distributes it to soup kitchens around Athens.

There are already calls for Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy leader, and Evangelos Venizelos, his Pasok opposite number, to make way for politicians closer in age to the 37-year-old Mr Tsipras. No strong candidates have yet emerged in either party. Both leaders are expected to fight the next election—yet they may find themselves forced to resign the next day. Greece is adrift but in desperate need of a competent captain.

Tea time with the rebels

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:12:02 +0000

THE noise of clanging pots and pans emerges from the kitchen of a house used as a base by members of the Free Syrian Army in Rankous, a small town north-west of Damascus. It is near midnight. Most of the ten men living here lounge around sipping mate, the Latin American infusion popular in Syria, and watching the National Geographic channel. Their guns, RPGs and hand grenades lie abandoned, piled in a corner.

The door swings open and one man starts handing round plates of coconut cake. Fresh from the oven it is warm, the perfect density, with a still-caramelising sticky layer of sugar on the top. It is delicious. "Who made this?" I ask, impressed. Two of the young men, Ahmed and Mohammed, look abashed and point at each other, pleased by the compliment but reluctant to admit to their culinary prowess, usually the premise of women.

Undeterred, I persevere. "How did you make it?" Ahmed, owning up as head chef, starts to reel off the list: "It's easy," he says. "Flour, sugar, coconut..." "You forgot eggs," pipes up Abdelkarim, who at 61 is something of a father figure and is served second only to me, the guest. "Oh yes, egg, too," says Mohammed, the sous-chef. "It's very good, isn't it?" asks Abdelkarim, who until a minute ago was passionately railing against the regime's brutality. The men continue munching, their tales of the horror of Bashar Assad's crackdown temporarily laid aside.

Before Rankous was attacked by regime forces who shelled and burned houses, these men were mechanics, farmers and shop-workers. Now they are fighters. The more senior FSA members are hiding out in nearby farmhouses, leaving these armed civilians as the vanguard in this western neighbourhood. But few residents remain for them to protect; most have fled to Damascus or Lebanon. For now, while there are no attacks in Rankous, they have turned their attention to baking rather than buying light weapons. They seem to have discovered something of a talent (cakes in Syria are usually bland and have the texture of a foam mattress).

An empty plate here is the trigger for a refill, so I pace myself. But the men are not done: they disappear into the kitchen to return with another round of plates piled high. This time it is an almond cake. It has the same perfect moist, springy texture and glazed sugary fix on top, but is studded with whole nuts. "This is second type they make," says Abdelkarim, proudly surveying the smiling young men. "Where did they learn to make cake that good?" I ask the mother of two brothers among the group as she lays out breakfast the next day. She laughs. "Not from me. My son learned some cooking during military service but not that. But they have taught themselves many things since the revolution began."

Newsbook

Caption competition 23

A battle of conflicting emotions

Houla's horror

Kofi Annan reports on Syria

It's doable, but it's not happening

The count begins

Even more tasteless than usual

Digital highlights, May 26th 2012

What next for retail banks?

Seeds of the future

The week ahead

A report from Rankous

Television debates replace tear gas

A very fragile situation

Covering the crisis

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Digital highlights, May 19th 2012

What he wrote

Don't save this face

Slouching towards the drachma

The Frangela show

An opportunity for an opportunist

A well Krafted win

JAS's cartoon

Adrift

Tea time with the rebels