The Week Middle East - 3 April 2016

8/18/2019 The Week Middle East - 3 April 2016

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The main stories…4 NEWS

THE WEEK 3 APRIL 2016

It wasn’t all bad

We’d better steel ourselves for more atrocities of this sort, saidThe Economist; they are likely to become “the new normal”

in Europe’s major cities. That ISIL couldmount synchonised bombings in the “heartof Europe”, days after the arrest of SalahAbdeslam, a chief suspect in the Paris

bombings, and despite 18 suspectedterrorists across six European countriesbeing under arrest for their suspected rolein that attack, is a clear indicator of what a“resilient” and well-supported organisationit is. Abdeslam had been hiding for severalmonths in Brussels’ Molenbeek district, “juststreets away from his home”, shielded by

“sympathetic friends and neighbours”– people who may nothave been willing to “dip their own hands in their compatriots’blood”, but were prepared to “endorse” his methods. ISIL’scontinuing ability to recruit local terrorists is not in doubt.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has characterised theBrussels attacks as a battle in the “war” engulfing Europe, said

The Guardian. And France itself is under a state of emergencywhich grants the police sweeping powers of search and arrest.But to speak of a “war” in Europe is wrong and “dangerous”:it hands ISIL the propaganda victory it craves and places unduestrain on “Europe’s democratic fabric” during peacetime. Thekillers in Brussels weren’t soldiers: they were simply terrorists.

Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels lastweek, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Europe was inneed of a “security union” to combat the

fast changing terrorist threat in thecontinent. Meanwhile, there has beenmounting criticism of the security serviceswithin individual EU countries. In Brussels –the heart of the Union – the only suspect tobe detained in connection with the attackon Brussels was released on Monday. FayçalCheffou, a self-styled journalist, had beenidentified as the “man in the hat” – one of three men seen inCCTV footage taken at Brussels airport minutes before thebombings. Two of the men, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and NajimLaachraoui, blew themselves up in the airport’s departurelounge; the third, whose explosive-packed trolley was safelydetonated by security officials, fled the scene. A fourth man –Khalid el-Bakraoui, the brother of Ibrahim and, like him, a

petty criminal known to police – blew himself up on the Metro.In total, 35 people were killed. Mohamed Abrini, who isalso believed to have been involved in attacks on Paris lastNovember, is now suspected of being the “man in the hat”.Several links between the Paris and Brussels atrocities havealso emerged.

What happened What the editorials said

Security after Brussels

This is just one more horrifying example of the intensifying“terrorism that has plagued Pakistan for 20 years”, said The

Times. At least 12 militant Islamist groupsnow compete to “show themselves the mostbrutally committed”: in the past 15 monthsthey have killed nearly 500 people. Their aim?To render Pakistan “generally ungovernable”.And there is every reason to be alarmed bythat threat. A nuclear-armed nation crucial tothe security of South Asia “today stands onthe brink of becoming a failed state”.

The best hope is that the bombing will spurthe authorities into further action, said TheGuardian. When they launched a crackdownafter the Peshawar killings, for example,support for the extremists faded significantly.

But though there have been military operations in many partsof the country, said the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, the govern-ment has always shied away from tackling the problem inPunjab, the second-largest province. That must change: we canonly defeat terrorism through a “truly national action plan”.

At least 72 people were killed and some300 injured in a suicide bomb attack aimedat Christians celebrating Easter in Lahore, thecapital of Pakistan’s Punjab province. Thebomb, packed with ball bearings, rippedthrough crowds at a weekend funfair inone of the city’s largest parks. Explodingclose to a busy playground, it killed at least29 children. Responsibility for the attack wasclaimed by a Taliban splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which said it had deliberatelytargeted the country’s Christian minority.However, most of the dead were Muslim.

The regional government declared three daysof mourning, and Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif,condemned the terrorists as a “coward enemy trying for softtargets”. The attack was the deadliest that Pakistan had seensince the 2014 massacre of 134 schoolchildren at a military-run academy in Peshawar.

What happened What the editorials said

The playground bombing

One of the world’s rarestmammals, the Sumatran rhino,has been encountered inIndonesian Borneo for the firsttime in 40 years. A female rhinowas captured by conservationistslast month, and is due to be flownto a new sanctuary. The plan thenis for more animals to join it, inthe hope of starting a breeding

population. There are now fewerthan 100 Sumatran rhinos inthe wild, owing to hunting andloss of habitat; and they werepreviously thought to be extinctin Indonesian Borneo.

Ashima Shiraishi is arockclimbing prodigy. Just aweek before her 15th birthday,the New York City high schoolerscaled a massive boulder onJapan’s Mount Hiei withoutropes or harnesses. The climbhad a difficulty rating of V15 outof V16 – about as tough as aboulder climb can get. Thatmakes Shirashi not only the firstwoman to complete a V15 but

also the youngest person – maleor female – to ever do so.“Ashima is unstoppable rightnow,” says Angie Payne, a topUS climber. “I don’t see thatslowing down anytime soon.

When an Australian womanpicked a sperm donor, all sheknew was that he was a “happyand healthy” farmer. What shedidn’t realise is that she’d end upmarrying him. Having lost twosons in infancy, Aminah Hartdecided four years ago to try onelast time for a healthy baby, usingIVF. It worked: she gave birth to adaughter, Leila. Hart then decidedthat she’d like Leila to know

her father, and contacted donorScott Anderson through the IVFregister. The pair met when Leila was one, and fell in love. Last week,Hart said they were very happy – but warned that she wouldn’tadvocate IVF as a dating service. That they met and liked each otherand fell in love “still seems far-fetched to me”, she said.

The airport bombers in Brussels

A child injured in the attack

S O U R C E : B E L G I A N F E D E R A L P

O L I C E

© D E M I L E E P H O T O G R A P H

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3 APRIL 2016 THE WEEK

Europeansecurity servicesare facing fresh

criticism, following the terrorist attacks in Brusselslast week, just four months after the terror attacksin Paris. In this week’s issue, we examine Europeansecurity in the aftermath of the recent bombings.Meanwhile, Pakistan faced one of the worstterrorist attacks in recent years, when a bomb wasplanted near a children’s playground in Lahore, thecapital of the country’s Punjab province, killing 72

people including 29 children. The attack by a Talibansplinter group was allegedly aimed at killingChristians as they celebrated Easter Sunday. Could the atrocities push Pakistan’s authorities totake greater measures against militant groups? (see Main stories, above).

What next?

One thing is clear from this atrocity, said Michael Burleigh in the Daily Mail: At the centre ofthe European Union, Belgium’s dire intelligence services simply aren’t up to the job. They failedto pass on tip-offs about the Paris attackers; they ignored a warning from Turkey, whichdeported Ibrahim el-Bakraoui to the Netherlands in 2015, that he was probably a militant; andafter the bombing, it took them more than a day to discover that the terrorist they were chasinghad died in the attack. The EU’s security arrangements are “a terrifying shambles”, said Fraser

Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. You’d have thought that by pooling intelligence, the EU wouldhave improved the counterterrorist response: in reality, it has proved to be a mess. Its securitydatabase contains 90,000 fingerprints, but there’s “no means of searching it”; member statescan’t even “agree on how to spell Arabic names”. Whatever reasons Britain has for staying inthe EU the claim that it’s essential for the UK’s collective security is not one of them.

That’s because most European security bodies are of little consequence, said Richard Dearlove,former head of MI6, in Prospect. The vital business of counterterrorism is largely conductedthrough “bilateral relationships”, more often than not with Britain, which is far and awayEurope’s leader in intelligence and security matters. So a Brexit is unlikely to make Britain any lesssafe. It might well make Britain safer, said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. The doctrine offree movement of peoples, “built into the EU’s constitution”, prevents us from subjecting EUcitizens to the systematic checks we use on other foreigners; and the terrorists are EU citizens.

But they also tend to come from the countries they bomb, said David Aaronovitch in The

Times. The London bombers were British; the two brothers in the Brussels attack were Belgian.To imagine that a Brexit will have any impact on the radicalisation that leads to these bombingsis a case of what Freud called “magical thinking”. Besides, “underfunded and overstretched” asEuropol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, may be, it represents our one real hope of defeatingISIL, said Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Times. Like ISIL, Europol is a kind of network. And ittakes a network, not countries acting on their own, to defeat a network.

What the commentators said

Brussels airport will haveto be rebuilt “from the airconditioning to the check-indesks”, according to its CEOArnaud Feist, and though itmay soon resume a partial

service – operating initiallyat around 20% of its normalcapacity – it could be monthsbefore it reopens fully.Meanwhile, EU officials aredue to discuss ways ofbeefing up security at 800European airports. Amongthe possible proposals arebaggage screenings for allpassengers as they enter theterminal buildings. Security is also being steppedup at Belgium’s nuclear

plants, amid growing fearsthat they, too, are vulnerableto attack. Last month severalworkers were stripped oftheir security passes at twonuclear plants.

What next?

The militants have sent a dangerous message to Pakistani policymakers, said Jason Burke inThe Guardian. So far, Punjab, the powerbase of Prime Minister Sharif, has been spared theworst of terrorist violence. But Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is now clearly determined to extend itsoperations beyond its heartlands – the “restive zone” along the Afghan frontier. And theirlatest attack comes at an especially sensitive moment, said Omar Waraich in The Independent.Feelings have been running high in Pakistan over the recent execution of Mumtaz Qadri, theformer policeman convicted of the 2011 killing of Punjab’s liberal governor, Salmaan Taseer.Taseer had dared to speak out against Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws, which are often used topersecute Christians. But many Islamists felt Taseer deserved to die for this, and 100,000 turnedout for Qadri’s funeral last month; others, last week, “laid siege” to government buildings in thecapital, Islamabad. The challenge for Sharif is to avoid capitulating to a “religious mob”. Hemust protect the Christian minority and “assert the state’s resolve to uphold the rule of law”.

So much for the dream of Pakistan’s founding fathers, who sought “adequate, effective andmandatory safeguards” for minorities, said Fatima Bhutto in the FT. Instead, we have a country“fractured along religious and sectarian lines”, where 2.5 million Christians are victims of the“cycle of butchery”. Alas, they are far from alone, said John L. Allen Jr on his Spectator blog.Christians now rank as “by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet”. One recentstudy estimated that 100,000 a year have been killed over the last decade “for reasons relatedto their faith”. Yet their fate goes largely unreported, mainly because Christians are still oftenseen as the “oppressor rather than the oppressed”. The plight of an “entire new generation ofChristians” may be “the greatest story never told of the early 21st century”.

What the commentators said

Sharif reportedly plans todeploy paramilitary forcesin Punjab. The “Rangers”,who will have specialpowers to conduct raidsand interrogate subjects, aresaid to have helped checkterrorism elsewhere, thoughthey have also been accusedof human rights abuses.

Tensions are likely to riseyet further this month asIslamists step up pressurefor the execution of AsiaBibi, a Christian womancondemned to death forblasphemy. Bibi wasconvicted of insulting theProphet Mohammed (PBUH)in 2010, and has been ondeath row ever since.


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6 NEWS Controversy of the week


ISIL’s attacks have a cleargoal, said The Times: onceintended to divertattention from battlefieldlosses, they are now about

“splitting the alliance”,engendering fear andmistrust, and exposingWestern ineffectiveness.“ISIL terror cells in Europeand North Africaincreasingly resemble thevanguard of a militaryoffensive. They are buildingup caches of weapons…Bombs and suicide vests arebeing made in Europeanback rooms.” And thousands of radicalised peopleare travelling to Syria and Iraq, to train in theircamps, before returning, battle-hardened, to their

homes in Europe and North Africa. “The fightagainst radicalisation thus has to be fought athome and abroad.” Yet we should be wary of crediting every attackto ISIL, “because doing so tends to infuse thegroup with power that it does not have”, saidKurt Eichenwald in Newsweek. The perpetratorsof the recent attacks in Europe are not like theal-Qaeda members of old. These younger recruitshave grown up watching wars in Afghanistan,Iraq and Syria and they often know little aboutIslam: in 2014, two British recruits, both 22,bought copies of The Quran for Dummies, andIslam for Dummies, before boarding a plane to

join ISIL in Syria. What lures them into ISIL’sbrutal culture? The answer – which would be“laughable were it not so deadly” – is “peerpressure and what might be called Rambo-envy”.

Interviews withEuropean returneessuggest that 20% havesome kind of mentalillness; many have been

convicted of crimes;most come from “urbanneighbourhoods tornapart by economichardship”. When theyjoin ISIL, they’re doingwhat disaffected urbanyouth all over the worlddo: they’re joining agang, in a search forglory, camaraderie andexcitement. These

terrorists don’t mix with imams in mosques; theirnetworks are made up of friends and relatives,people they’ve met in prison, or on street corners;

and they’re not being directed by ISIL mastermindsin Syria, they’re running their own operations, insmall cells. They’re criminals, albeit unusuallynihilistic ones, and should be pursued as such.

We know little of what goes on in the territoriesISIL controls, said Wood, because these areclosed kingdoms, but we gather from its ownstatements that it “rejects peace, as a matter ofprinciple; that it hungers for genocide”; and thatit considers itself a “harbinger” of the “imminentend of the world”. Sooner or later, ISIL’sexcessive zeal may prove its undoing; and if itcontinues to be pushed back in Syria, it may startto collapse, as its ‘caliphate’ shrinks. The West

could hasten that “self-immolation”, but thatwill require us to understand what motivatesISIL; if we do not, we may, through our actions,inadvertently strengthen it.

Only in the UAE

Boring but important

Poll watch HSBC’s formerchief executivehas joined250 businessleaders inpushing forthe UK to leave

the EuropeanUnion. Michael Geoghegan,who led the internationalbank between 2006 until2010, has sided with othersenior business figures insupport of withdrawal.Conversely HSBC’s currentbosses argued a vote to leavewould push 1,000 staff fromLondon to Paris following thereferendum on 23 June thisyear. According to a poll ofmore than 1,000 SMEs,released by Vote Leave, only14% believe the EU makes iteasier for their business toemploy people. However,bosses from 36 of the FTSE100 companies recentlywrote to The Times in supportof staying within the bloc.

A woman has lodged apolice complaint againsther husband after hissisters removed her fromthe family WhatsApp group,reported Emirates 247. Thefamily row allegedly began

when the sisters took issuewith the wife’s “offensive”comments and excludedher from their group. Thingsescalated when the scornedwife attempted to confrontthe sisters-in-law and wasallegedly “verbally abused”by them, said MajorShaheen Al Mazmi ofDubai Police. In angerthe wife reportedly filedthe complaint againsther husband, objecting tohim apparently supportinghis sisters over her, whileasking for protectionfrom the women.MajorAl Mazmi said that areconciliation sessionwill be held between thefamily members.

Petrolprices inthe UAEwill rise bymore than10% this

month,making it the first rise in eightmonths, the Ministry ofEnergy revealed last week.The cost of Super 98 fuel willincrease 10.2% to $0.44 perlitre in April, while Diesel willalso increase 11.4% to $0.42per litre. This month Brentcrude has risen from around$36 a barrel to more than $40.The price increase followsseven consecutive monthsof decline, linked to plungingglobal oil prices, which hasput pressure on many of the

oil-rich government budgetsin the Middle East. The UAEfirst announced plans toderegulate fuel prices in July2015 together with a newpricing policy linked tointernational rates, said GulfBusiness. The Minister ofEnergy previously said thatderegulation would benefitthe economy and alsoencourage people tore-consider their fuelusage. Following the UAE’sannouncement last year,many regional oil-richcountries in the Gulf,including Saudi ArabiaOman and Kuwait, beganre-evaluating their previouslygenerous fuel subsidies.

ISIL: Their criminal, disaffected recruits

Good week for:

Penguin lovers, or just anyone who needs a big dose of cute, asa quartet of baby Gentoo chicks hatched at Ski Dubai last week.Slope officials have named them Litmit, Apple, Pecan and Peter.However, as the latter’s gender is still awaiting determination,there’s a chance they’ll have to change it. “Perhaps Petrina,”suggested What’s On Dubai.

Positive discrimination, as Saudi Arabia ordered foreign firms

to employ at least 75% Saudi nationals. The new ruling isthe result of changes to overseas investment regulations in thecountry. The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority saysthe new rule is aimed at ‘strengthening the economy’ and hasgiven companies two years to implement the changes.

Bad week for:Phone addicts, who are to be banned from using their hands-free smartphones while driving in the UAE, says Gulf News.A minister said the ban would extend to Bluetooth-enabled andearphone calls while a vehicle is on the move, alongside smartwatches and Google Glass.

The Cambridge University women’s Boat Race crew, whoseboat almost sank in “apocalyptic” weather conditions duringa race against Oxford University. Although the Cambridge teamand their boat survived the annual race in the River Thames,they could not keep up with their archrivals, with Oxford sailinghome victorious for the fourth year running.


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NEWS 7Middle East at a glance


Ankara, Turkey

Secret trial for journalists: The trial oftwo leading Turkish journalists – a caseseen as the latest assault on press freedomby President Erdoğan – is to be held insecret, after a court accepted theprosecutors’ argument that it concernedstate secrets. Can Dundar and Erdem Gül,

the editor and Ankara correspondent ofCumhuriyet, the oldest upmarket dailypaper in Turkey, were arrested inNovember after Erdoğan complainedabout a front-page story alleging theTurkish state was shipping weapons toIslamist rebels in Syria. The pair spent 92days in prison awaiting trial on espionagecharges, but were released on bail lastmonth when a court ruled their rightshad been violated. The closed-door trialis due to begin on 1 April.

Palmyra, Syria

Ancient city retaken: ISIL fighters weredriven out of the ancient city ofPalmyra last Saturday by Assadregime forces backed by Russian air

power. ISIL had held the city sinceMay 2015, and destroyed several of its

most iconic ancient buildings while incontrol of it; the city’s recapture by Syriangovernment forces is a major reversal forthe self-declared caliphate. Initial reportssuggest the overall level of destruction atPalmyra at the hands of ISIL is not as greatas had been feared; experts are nowassessing the damage.

Baghdad, Iraq

Terror bombing: ISIL claimed responsibilityfor a suicide bombing that killed 22 people inthe Iraqi capital’s Tayaran Square. The blasthappened on Tuesday morning as supportersof influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadrstaged a sit-in, less than one kilometre away,to demand political reforms. A separatesuicide bombing killed 41 people andinjured 105 at an amateur football matchlast Friday. The attack, also carried out by

ISIL, happened at a small stadium in thevillage of Iskandariya, just south ofBaghdad. Earlier in March, at least 60people died in Hillah, central Iraq, whena fuel tanker packed with explosivesslammed into a security checkpoint.

Cairo, Egypt

Regeni “gang killed”: TheEgyptian authorities claimed lastweek it had found and killed acriminal gang which it claims wasresponsible for murdering andtorturing the Italian student GiulioRegeni, who was studying for a PhDat Cambridge. Regeni, who had writtenarticles critical of Egypt’s militarygovernment, disappeared on 25

January, the anniversary of the 2011uprising; it is widely believed that hewas abducted by the Egyptian securityservices, who tortured him for a weekor more, and then murdered him. Lastweek the interior ministry in Cairosaid security forces had killed fivemembers of a criminal gang whichhad “specialised in impersonatingpolice officers, kidnapping foreigners

and forcibly robbing them” – and thatthey had found Regeni’s passport inthe gang’s possession. Italian politicianshave described the Egyptian accountsas “ridiculous and offensive”,a “mockery” and a “farce”.

Abu Dhabi, UAE

Extremists sentenced: Ten members of aterrorist group that planned to bomb mallsand hotels in Dubai were jailed for life.Khalid Abdulla Kalantar consideredhimself a caliph and preached extremistideology at the emirate’s Al ManaraMosque. He was one of 41 men sentencedfor involvement in the group, Shabab AlManara, at the UAE’s Federal SupremeCourt last Sunday. Kalantar groomed andrecruited young social outcasts withcriminal records. During interrogation,members said they had been influencedby the late al-Qaeda leader Osama binLaden. All confessed to joining ShababAl Manara and planning to use terrorism

to undermine the Government, but onlytwo pleaded guilty in court. Sentencingthe men, Judge Mohammed Al JarrahAl Tunaiji said: “Terrorism is one of thegravest of crimes. It uses religion as apretext to achieve its goals.”

Alexandria, Egypt

“Lovesick” plane hijacker: A lovesick manwho hijacked a plane in a bid to win backhis ex-wife was branded an “idiot” byEgyptian authorities. Seif El Din Mustafa,59, forced EgyptAir Flight MS181 todivert from Cairo to Cyprus after boarding

in Alexandria. He later produced a letterand asked that it be delivered to his Cypriotformer spouse. Upon landing in Larnaca,Mustafa’s suicide belt was established to be

fake and he surrendered to authorities. He has since been detained in a secure hospital.Eighty-one people, including 15 crew members, were aboard the Airbus 320. Allescaped unharmed. While a senior Cypriot official said Mustafa appeared “psychologicallyunstable”, staff at Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs were less tactful. “He’s not aterrorist, he’s an idiot,” a representative said. “Terrorists are crazy, but they aren’tstupid. This guy is.”


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Europe at a glance8 NEWS


London, UK

Rescue migrant kids: A former childrefugee who was saved from the Nazis byBritain’s Kindertransport programme isurging the UK to take in unaccompaniedmigrant children, mostly Muslims, stuck inmakeshift tent camps in France. Lord AlfDubs, a Jewish Labour member who was

transported from Prague to London at agesix, pushed a bill through the House ofLords last week to allow in 3,000 children;the bill still needs to go to the House ofCommons, where it faces opposition fromthe Conservative government. “I owe it toBritain – and to the children – to do asmuch as I can to get this provision into thelaw,” Dubs said. Labour parliamentarianYvette Cooper warned that children in thecamps were being recruited by pimps anddrug gangs into “modern slavery”.

Brussels, Belgium

“Nazis” disrupt vigil: Hundreds ofblack-clad protesters, some of them givingNazi salutes, stormed a candle-lit vigil inmemory of the Brussels bombings onSunday. Around 450 demonstrators,many of them drunk, invaded thecommemoration in the city’s Place de laBourse, shouting anti-immigrant slogans,and harassing immigrants in the crowd,until the mourners fled. They then squaredup to riot police, who drove them backwith tear gas and water cannons. “Wewant answers from the government. Thereare too many fanatics in this country,” said

one protester, who said he was a“hooligan” from Ghent. “We don’t believein candles and flowers.” Brussels mayorYvan Mayeur said the chaotic scenes were“disgraceful”, and complained that policeand government had failed to act onwarnings that such a show of force wasimminent. Separately, a planned MarchAgainst Fear had to be called off afterpolice said they were too stretched toprotect it.

Paris, France

Blow to Sarkozy:Nicolas Sarkozy’shopes of returningto the ÉlyséePalace suffered apotentially fatalblow last weekwhen a courtcleared the wayfor the formerpresident to standtrial on corrupt-

ion charges relating to illegal campaigndonations. Sarkozy (pictured), who alreadyfaces a tough challenge in winning hisparty’s 2017 nomination – Alain Juppé is

the current front runner – had hoped thatthe Cour de Cassation would rule thatwiretapped evidence in the case was illegaland inadmissible. Instead, it ruled thatinvestigators had done nothing wrong.Sarkozy may now face trial later this year.

Vatican City, Vatican

Weapons of love: Pope Francis has urgedChristians to counter the “blind and brutalviolence” of terror attacks with the“weapons of love” – and condemned thosewho fail to help refugees from the warsand terror wracking the Middle East andelsewhere. “All too often, these brothersand sisters of ours meet along the waywith death or, in any event, rejection bythose who could offer them welcome andassistance,” he said, in his Easter Urbi etOrbi (“to the city and the world”) addressfrom St Peter’s Square. Separately,concerns were raised about the health ofthe octogenerian Pope Benedict XVI. ThePope Emeritus resigned in 2013, saying he

didn’t feel he had the strength “of mindand body” to fulfil his duties; he now livesin a former convent in the Vatican. “Heturns 89 in April: he is like a candlewhich is slowly, serenely fading,” saidArchbishop Georg Gänswein.

Lesbos, Greece

Detention camps: Officials on the Greekislands of Lesbos and Chios say they arefacing a major humanitarian and publicorder crisis, owing to NGOs closing theirprojects on the islands. Five organisations,including the UNHCR, Médicins SansFrontières (MSF) and Save the Children,suspended Greek operations last week inprotest at the EU’s deal with Ankara:under its terms, asylum seekers arriving onGreek shores are to be sent back to Turkey;in exchange for every Syrian returned, theEU will take a Syrian refugee from a campin Turkey. The deal was supposed to stemthe tide of migrants, but thousands havecontinued to arrive: rather than being

allowed to continue their journeys, theyare being locked into makeshift detentioncamps. MSF said it objected to the waythey were being prevented from seekingasylum in the EU, and the conditions inwhich they are being held.

Dublin, Ireland

Easter Rising remembered: Hundreds ofthousands of people lined the streets of Dublinlast Sunday for a military parade – the largest inthe Republic of Ireland’s history – marking thecentenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Theinsurrection lasted only six days, and failed toend colonial rule, but its bloody suppressiongalvanised nationalist sentiment and paved theway for the war of independence, in 1919, andthe establishment of the Irish Free State, in 1922.

The insurrection began on 24 April 1916 – Easter Monday – when Patrick Pearse,the leader of one of three rebel groups involved, proclaimed independence on the stepsof the General Post Office in Dublin. By the end of the week, 1,600 rebels were battlingmore than 18,000 British troops; 485 people had been killed (more than half of themcivilians) and much of the city centre reduced to rubble. Hopelessly outnumbered,Pearse surrendered. In the next few weeks, 3,400 people were arrested, and 14 rebels,including Pearse and James Connolly, were executed at Kilmainham Gaol, where IrishPresident Michael Higgins laid a wreath last Sunday “on behalf of the people ofIreland in honour of all those who died” – rebels, civilians and British soldiers.


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The world at a glance10 NEWS


Brasília, BrazilRousseff isolated: Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff suffered apotentially crippling blow this week when the country’s biggestparty, the centrist PMDB, decided to leave her fragile rulingcoalition – vastly increasing the odds of her being impeached byBrazil’s Congress within weeks. If Rousseff were to be suspended andimpeached, her place would be taken by the vice-president, the

PMDB’s leader Michel Temer. Rousseff, a one-time Marxist guerrilla,has been contending with an economic crisis, the Petrobras corruptionscandal, which has engulfed several senior figures in her Workers’Party, and a massive fall in public support. The potential impeachmentcharges relate to claims that she manipulated government accounts toaid her re-election in 2014 (see Best international, page 21) .

Buenos Aires, ArgentinaUS regret: As he continued his tour ofLatin America last week, PresidentObama visited a memorial to the victimsof Argentina’s “Dirty War” – and expressed regret for the roleWashington played in that conflict. “The United States, when itreflects on what happened here, has to examine its own policiesas well, and its own past,” he said. Obama was careful not to go

into any details about what Washington’s role might have been,but conceded that the US had been too slow to condemn therights abuses committed by the military regime that overthrewArgentina’s democratically elected government 40 years ago, on24 March 1976. The junta, which ruled until 1983, murdered or“disappeared” tens of thousands of its opponents and critics.

Washington, DCRepublicans get ugly: Theincreasingly acrimoniouscontest between DonaldTrump and Ted Cruz becameyet more personal last week,as the Republican frontrunners traded insults over

each other’s wives and privatelives. The latest round of hostilities kicked off when a pro-Cruzsuper PAC produced a campaign ad featuring a nude photo ofTrump’s wife, Melania. Taken when she worked as a model, itbore the words: “Meet Melania Trump. Your next First Lady.” Inretaliation, Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife,Heidi, and retweeted a picture of her scowling alongside a pictureof his own wife. Cruz denied having anything to do with thePAC’s advert, and branded Trump a “snivelling coward” forgoing after his wife. He also accused the mogul of beingbehind a National Enquirer story implying that he,Cruz, has had several extramarital affairs.In the less heated Democrat race, Bernie Sanders

regained momentum with big wins in Washington,Alaska, Idaho, Utah and Hawaii. His victories knocked Hillary

Clinton’s pledged-delegate lead to around 270, despite her ownsolid win in Arizona. A Sanders nomination remains more thanpossible. However, it would depend on him performing stronglyin some affluent states which, judging by her record elsewhere inthe contest, are more likely to go to Clinton.

Washington, DCNixon’s war: America’s “war on drugs” was launched to enablethe Nixon administration to target its political enemies, accordingto a newly published interview with a key Nixon aide. JohnEhrlichman allegedly made the claims five years before his deathin 1999, to journalist Dan Baum. However, Baum only publishedthem this week. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the NixonWhite House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war Left and

black people,” he quotes Ehrlichman as saying. “We knew wecouldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, butby getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana andblacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we coulddisrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid theirhomes… and vilify them night after night on the evening news.Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Los Angeles, CaliforniaStewardess makes a run for it: An air stewardess randomlychosen for a security search at Los Angeles airport ran off,abandoning bags containing 68lb of illegal substances with astreet value of up to $3m, investigators have revealed. A formerrunner-up in a Miss Jamaica beauty contest, Marsha GayReynolds was wearing her “known crew member” badge whenshe was selected for a bag search last month. But as security staffguided her to the search area, she dropped her bags, kicked off

her Gucci high heels, and sprinted barefoot down an up escalatorand fled the airport; a day later, she got on a flight operated by herown airline, the budget carrier JetBlue. Reynolds handed herself into police at JFK airport in New York last week.

Havana, CubaFidel lashes out at Obama: Fidel Castro– conspicuous by his absence duringBarack Obama’s visit to Cuba lastweek – has now made his views on thehistoric fence-mending trip clear in ascornful article for Granma, a state-runnewspaper. The former president

(pictured), 89, reminded readers of the US’ long history ofaggression against the communist state, insisted that “we don’tneed the empire to give us anything”, and said “BrotherObama’s” warm words were so “honey-coated”, they riskedgiving Cubans a heart attack. Some recent opinion polls haveindicated that Obama is now more popular in Cuba than eitherFidel or his brother and successor, Raúl.


11/44

NEWS 11The world at a glance


Luanda, Angola

Rapper jailed: Angolan rapperLuaty Beirãoand 16 otherdissidents havebeen sentenced totwo to eight years inprison for allegedlytrying to overthrowthe government. The charges stem from abook club meeting last year, at which Beirãoand some friends discussed Americanscholar Gene Sharp’s 1993 book onnonviolent resistance, From Dictatorship toDemocracy. Beirão, 34, who performs underthe name Ikonoklasta, is an outspoken criticof Angola’s government and has called for afairer distribution of the country’s oilwealth. Amnesty International called the

sentences “an affront to justice” and theAnonymous hacking collective shut downabout 20 Angolan government websites inretaliation. President José Eduardo dosSantos has ruled the former Portuguesecolony as a dictator since 1979.

Wellington, New Zealand

Flag retained: New Zealanders voted tokeep their flag – complete with the Union

Jack – by 57% to 43% in a referendumlast week. The rejected alternative designstill featured the four red stars representingthe Southern Cross constellation, butinstead of the Union Jack in the corner ithad a silver fern. PM John Key – who had

championed the change, on the groundsthat the existing flag is too similar toAustralia’s, and places too much emphasison the country’s colonial history – said hewas disappointed by the decision, but thatthe whole country should “embrace” it.

Brazzaville, Congo

President’s flawed victory: The veteranpresident of the Republic of the Congo– in power for 32 years – has secured anew five-year term following electionswhich the opposition claimed weremarked by “massive fraud”. Formerparatrooper Denis Sassou Nguesso, 72,

won 60% of the vote in the tense poll.The oil and timber-rich country hasbeen on edge since October, whenSassou Nguesso won a controversialconstitutional referendum to allow himto stand for another term. The EU haddeclined to send observers to the electionon the grounds that conditions for a fairand transparent vote had not beenmet; and after the poll – held during amedia blackout – there were protestsabout the result.

Pyongyang,

North Korea

Famine coming: Amonth after the UNimposed sweeping newsanctions on NorthKorea over its recentnuclear tests, North

Korean state media iswarning that thecountry could fall intofamine. “Another arduous march, when wewould be forced to eat grass, could comeabout, and we are left in isolation to fightagainst the enemy,” declared state newspaperRodong Sinmun. The 1995-98 famine killedmillions when North Korea diverted food tothe army and the people starved to death.The same day as the famine warning, statemedia showed photos of dictator Kim JongUn and his wife touring luxury shops.

Pyongyang, North Korea

Vultures shun North: Eurasian black vulturesare no longer botheringto stop in North Koreaduring their annualmigration south fromtheir Mongolian breedinggrounds. According toscientists from SouthKorea’s EcologyEnvironment Institute,who track their migratory

routes, “this seems tohappen because in NorthKorea, the vultures canbarely find animal corpses,which are major food

resources for them”.

Tokyo, Japan

Grey crime wave: Japan’s “grey crime”is intensifying, with crimes committedby over-65s now outstripping thosecommitted by youngsters aged between 14and 19, according to police figures. In onerecent headline-grabbing case, an 83-year-old woman suspected of multiple offences

was caught pickpocketing at a station inTokyo. Some 35% of shoplifting offencesare committed by over-60s – up from 20%in 2001. There has been speculation thatthe rise is related to changes in traditionalfamily structures. Older people who wouldonce have lived with their families are nowcoping alone, on meagre pensions: it’spossible some may find being cared for inprison a better option. The proportion ofviolent crimes committed by over-65s isalso rising: it increased by almost 11%in the first half of 2015.

Beijing, China

Who wrote thatletter? Chineseauthorities havedetained andquestioned more thana dozen people in aneffort to discover whowrote a letter callingfor President Xi

Jinping to resign.The letter, which first appeared on anoverseas Chinese-language human rightssite and was then republished on theChina-based Wujie News site – accuses Xiof centralising power in himself, personallydirecting economic and foreign policy, and

bypassing other Communist Party bigwigs.Zhang Ping, a Chinese human rightsactivist living in Germany, said his twobrothers had been arrested in China, andthat police had ordered his distant relativesto tell him to stop criticising the party.


12/44

People12 NEWS


Baron Cohen’s cringeworthy comedy

Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the most divisive people in comedy, says JohnHiscock in The Daily Telegraph. “A lot of people hate me,” admits the Britishstar, whose cringeworthy, over-the-top characters – including Ali G and themankini-wearing Kazakhstani journalist Borat – have offended and entertainedpeople in equal measure. Baron Cohen knows he is walking a fine line with hisjokes at the expense of unwitting members of the public and famous people, andriffs on sensitive subjects like AIDS and racism. “With any joke which could beperceived as mean, you always want to make sure the target is a deserving one.There is a discussion of ‘is it moral to do and is it ethical to do; is it too far?’Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.” An intellectual of sorts, BaronCohen almost became an academic at the University of Cambridge, where hestudied history – before deciding that “rather than sit alone in a library, I’d try to

make people laugh”. He shot to fame in the US as Ali G, a character whoasked embarrassing questions of politicians like Pat Buchanan. In 2006

came Borat , a movie officially opposed by the Kazakhstan government.Baron Cohen thinks studios would be too cowardly to make Borat today. “They’re all owned by multinationals now and have to showprofits. I would have to change Kazakhstan to a mythical country.”

Clarkson vs. Cohen

There is no love lost between Jeremy Clarkson and the manwho sacked him, says CharlotteEdwardes in The Sunday Times.Even before Clarkson disgracedhimself by punching a producerin the face, he was regarded

with suspicion by Danny Cohen– the politically-correct executivewho was then the BBC’s directorof television. Once, Cohensummoned Clarkson to hisoffice to ask if it was true thathe’d named his West Highlandterrier Didier Dogba, after theformer Chelsea striker DidierDrogba (Clarkson is a Bluesfan). “I confirmed it was true.He said, ‘What colour is it?’And I said, ‘It’s black.’ And hesaid, ‘You can’t call yourblack dog after a black

footballer.’ So I said, ‘Whynot? Would you rather I calledit John Terrier?’”

Dressing for the Oscars

When costume designer JennyBeavan accepted an Oscar inFebruary, wearing a fake leatherjacket from M&S, black jeansand a pair of comfy boots, shewasn’t intending to make anyparticular statement. “I lookridiculous in frocks,” she toldEva Wiseman in The Observer.“I can’t wear heels – my back

goes out and my feet get terribly

sore. And besides, I have nointerest in clothes – other thanwhat they tell me about aperson. I’m a storyteller – I’mnot interested in fashion. It isjust so much Cinderella stuff.Fashion like that is just tellingone story. Catwalk models:

not only do they all walk thesame way, they all lookidentical. Whereas when I’mresearching something, I goand sit in a café and justwatch people, which iscompletely fascinating.”

Raising a severely

autistic son

Jem Lester, a teacher andformer journalist in the UK,is father to a severely autisticson. As a result of his son’scondition, the child moved

out of the family home aged11 and into a specialist carefacility. “Letting your son goaged 11, knowing that he willnever live with you again, isvery difficult,” says Lester inThe Guardian. It is somethingthat has informed his newnovel, Shtum, which followsthe struggle of a familyplacing their severely autisticmute child in a residentialhome. Lester insists however,that writing the novel was nottherapeutic. “It wasn’t

cathartic at all. Because mystory continues. My son willbe 16 soon, and I’m already

thinking about where he’sgoing to be when he’s 19.We’re going to have togo through the sameprocess again to find himsomewhere. So whilethe book’s finished, mystory goes on. It’s stillreal life for me.”

Stefani’s tumultuous year

Gwen Stefani is still recovering from the biggest shock of herlife, said Caryn Ganz in The New York Times. A year ago, theNo Doubt singer discovered a secret that would shatter her13-year marriage with rock singer Gavin Rossdale. “My lifewas literally blown up into my face,” says Stefani, 46. Shewon’t spell out the details of what she learnt, though celebritytabloids claim that for years Rossdale had been carrying on anaffair with the nanny the couple hired to take care of their three

sons. “If I could, I would just tell you everything, and youwould just be in shock,” Stefani says. “It’s a really good, juicystory.” Today, Stefani is building a new life with Blake Shelton,her fellow judge on The Voice in the US, who happened to begoing through his own tumultuous marriage breakup. “It wasa super unexpected gift to find somebody who happened to beliterally mirroring my experience. It saved me.” Still, Stefani isfrustrated that the divorce means she only sees her children50% of the time – a result of what she calls “the most unjust,unbelievable system” – and her anger has yet to subside. “I’mnot going to say I’m not still picking up the pieces,” she says.“I’m still in shock.”


13/44


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15/44

NEWS 15Briefing


What is meant by “gene editing”?

It’s a kind of microsurgery appliedto the genes of a living cell for the

purpose of correcting harmfulmutations. Scientists hope it could beused to combat sickle-cell anaemia,for example, a debilitating, oftendeadly disease, caused by a mutationin just one of a patient’s three billionDNA base pairs. They also hope toedit patients’ immune cells in sucha way as to make them attackcancers. Yet despite huge advances inthe analysis of the human genome,they have hitherto lacked sufficientlyprecise gene editing tools to make much headway. Until now.

What has changed?

In the past three years a new generation of genetic engineeringtechniques have been developed that are so quick, so cheap andso easy to use they’re transforming the way gene editing is done.The newest, simplest and least expensive of these is one calledClustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, orCRISPR. Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in2012, it essentially enables scientists to snip out and splice a pieceof any organism’s DNA much as a film editor would cut andsplice an old film reel.

How does CRISPR work?

CRISPR is actually a naturally-occurring, defence mechanismused by certain types of bacteria to protect themselves frominfection by viruses. One part of this mechanism involves thebacterium identifying the DNA of an invading virus and creatingmatching sequences of that DNA within its own genome. Thisenables it to target the virus the next time it attacks. The otherpart of the mechanism is an enzyme called Cas9 which, acting likea pair of molecular scissors, slices up the virus thus identified.Scientists now realise that CRISPR – or CRISPR/Cas9 to give it itsfull title – can be engineered to slice not just viral DNA but totarget any gene within a living cell. And once the gene has beencut out, it can be replaced with another gene (if needed) beforethe ends of the DNA are stitched neatly back together. Theentire process takes just days and costs as little as $30. “In thepast, it was a student’s entire Ph.D. thesis to change one gene,”says geneticist Bruce Conklin. “CRISPR just knocked thatout of the park.”

And the implications of all this?

They’re huge. CRISPR is alreadybeing used to make certain cropsinvulnerable to killer fungi, and tocreate a strain of mosquitoes withmalaria-blocking genes that theinsects passed on to 99.5% of theiroffspring. Progress tackling diseases inhumans will take longer, but there hasbeen some preliminary success withexperiments involving sickle-cellanaemia, HIV, and cystic fibrosis.But the technique’s most promisingapplication is as a potential curefor hereditary diseases. And this is

where the technique starts to becomehighly controversial.

Why is this so controversial?

In theory, scientists could use CRISPRto cure single-gene defects like

Huntington’s by editing out thedisease-carrying gene from the DNAof a foetus in the womb. And unlike

the edits done on genes found insomatic cells – the ones making upmost the human body – edits doneon genes found in egg and sperm cellsare passed down through generations,permanently altering the human genepool and raising the spectre of designerbabies, mutants, and scientists“playing God”(see box). In December,an international group of scientistscalled for an immediate moratorium

on human germline editing untilCRISPR’s risks have been assessed. “Everything I’ve learnt says we’renot ready to be doing this yet,” said Nobel Prize–winning biologistDavid Baltimore.

But have scientists gone ahead?

Yes. In China, a team at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou hasattempted to modify the germline in dozens of human embryos,hoping thereby to snip out a defective gene that causes a deadlyblood disorder. The study has caused shock waves across thescientific community – and has also highlighted the practicaldifficulties of DNA editing in higher organisms. Of the 86 embryosused (all of which were nonviable) a mere four manifested the newgene designed to replace the defective one. Worse still, there wereinexplicable mutations in genes that were not targeted by theresearchers. “The number of unintended effects is precisely whythis technique is not appropriate for use in clinical applications,”bioethics professor R. Alta Charo told Wired magazine.

What are scientists’ biggest fears?The first is whether CRISPR can be used safely and withoutcausing unintended genetic changes. Even the best geneticistsadmit they have only scratched the surface in their understandingof human DNA and the effects that CRISPR might have on aperson’s 20,000 to 25,000 genes, which interact in still-mysteriousways. The larger question, of course, is whether scientists shouldbe tinkering with the human gene pool at all. At some point,researchers could switch their attention from curing hereditarydiseases to editing supposedly desirable traits into a person’sDNA, such as high intelligence, tall stature, or blue eyes. “Greatthings can be done with the power of technology – and there arethings you would not want done,” said Jennifer Doudna, a Berkeleybiologist who co-invented CRISPR. “Most of the public does not

appreciate what is coming.”

Will there be a moratorium?

That’s unclear. The internationalconference of scientists who calledfor the freeze in December includedauthoritative figures from across theworld. But they have no regulatorypowers and can do nothing to stopresearchers in countries like Chinafrom vigorously pursuing CRISPRexperiments. Doudna says she dreadsthe idea of the technique being usedon human embryos, but given itspotential for preventing children

from inheriting debilitating diseases,believes that step is inevitable. As oneof Doudna’s colleagues observed at arecent meeting of geneticists: “Theremay come a time when, ethically,we can’t not do this.”

Editing the human raceA new form gene editing technique called CRISPR may enable scientists permanently to alter the human gene pool

Scientists to make “frankenbabies”?

Return of the woolly mammoth?CRISPR has prompted fears that rogue scientists willcreate “Frankenbabies,” but researchers have been

using the technique to resurrect a completelydifferent kind of beast. In March, a team led by

Harvard geneticist George Church announced theyhad successfully copied the genes from the frozen

tissue of a woolly mammoth, a species extinct for thepast 4,000 years, and pasted them into the genomeof an Asian elephant. The next step will be to insert

those genomes into an elephant egg cell forimplantation. The team hopes to create a furrier

elephant-mammoth hybrid that can survive in coldtemperatures, so that elephants can live comfortablyoutside of Asia and Africa, where their own existenceis threatened by conflict and poverty. What was once

purely the realm of science fiction is quicklybecoming reality, says Church. “First there was

Jurassic Park. Now we have the exact DNA for theseancient species, and, in some cases, we have the

appropriate hosts that are pretty close.”


16/44

16 NEWS Best of the Arabic language articles


US presidential candidate Donald Trump believes more in using force to achieve his objectivesthan in upholding what is right, says Sami Al Nesf, a Kuwaiti columnist. Trump, who triggered

worldwide controversy when he called for the banning of Muslims from entering the UnitedStates, is trying to enforce old “imperialist” principles, said Al Nesf in an article published inKuwait’s daily Alanba.“What Donald Trump is marketing is not new, it’s old imperialistprinciples, that believe force and influence are above the law. These principles had been practicedby the British, French, Russian and the Ottoman empires as well as the Nazis and the Fascists inGermany and Italy,” he says. “These principles were destroyed by the United States, the leaderof the free world, after World War I. It then formed human rights committees and helped endcolonialism and imperialism after World War II.” The writer believes that Trump may destroyall those achievements if he become US President, recalling his statements that he would imposeheavy taxes on imports from China, West Europe and other countries, force Mexico to pay forthe construction of a wall between them and demand funds from some countries in return forprotection. “Trump could wreck all US achievements. He may even ally with Russian PresidentVladimir Putin to use their formidable military arsenal to tackle their economic woes.”

Trump believesmore in forcethan rightSami Al Nesf

Alanba

The West’slessons onspending

Maha Al Shahri

Okaz

Arabs in the oil-rich Gulf “should learn from Westerners how to manage personal spendingby favouring product quality instead of high prices”, says Maha Al Shahri, a Saudi femalecolumnist. Al Shahri believes that most consumers in the Gulf opt for expensive products insteadof focusing on quality, just so they can boast about how much they have spent on them. In anarticle published by the Saudi daily Okaz, she says that Western consumers are “not as easilyfooled by products”. This is because “there is no room for showing off in the Western mind”.In the Arab world, mainly in the Gulf, shops “often try to sell products to consumers, mostlywomen, at prices which are double the price of the product in the producing country”. The

problem in the Gulf is that “most Arab consumers shun cheap products, although they could beof good quality just because they like to show off. Arabs link the product quality to its price notto its real quality. It has become like a disease and a disgusting practice. We should learn fromWestern consumers about how to manage our funds and focus on satisfying and pleasingourselves not the others.”

The Cairo-based Arab League shouldwork to boost its role in the regionfollowing speculations that it couldcollapse, says Khalid bin Nayef AlHabas, an Arab League adviser. Inthe Saudi daily Al-Hayat, Al Habasargues that two key factors influencethe performance of the Arab League.The first of which is whether its

institutions are staffed withexperienced and skillful officials. Thesecond factor is the League’s role at aregional and international level, andwhether the League is able to fulfill the “aspirations” of the Arab people. In his opinion, the newArab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who assumes duty in July, must work withother League officials to identify why the establishment has weakened over the past few years.“Through my work at the Arab League, I can say that the Secretary General can perform partof the task but not all of it. He should not be blamed for the weakening of the Arab Leaguebecause it is a collective responsibility,” the writer says. “Finally, the Arab League must not giveup or sit idle. It must be more active so it will contribute more effectively to Arab security andachieve Arab interests.”

The declaration of a federal regionby the Kurds in North Syria will hitefforts to fight terrorism and couldtrigger a foreign attack, says aneditorial in the Omani Arabiclanguage daily Al Watan. Thenewspaper says that theannouncement constitutes a “seriousblow” to efforts by the Syriangovernment and army to maintainthe Arab country’s unity after morethan five years of civil strife. In a frontpage article, the paper argues thatthe Kurds along with any other Syrian party does not have the right to make such a move,without the people’s consensus. “The declaration of a federal system in North Syria by the

Kurds could also give the country’s enemies an excuse to launch an attack against Syriaunder the subterfuge of preventing the establishment of a federal entity,” it says. “We allknow that the Turkish regime is not only targeting the Kurds but also has aggressive designs onSyrian territory. Furthermore, the Kurds’ declaration will also strengthen the terror groups in thatcountry and this will weaken campaigns launched by the government and the army to fight thosegroups and put an end to their terrorist activities and conspiracies against Syria.”

Arab Leagueshould bemore active

Khalid bin Nayef Al Habas

Al-Hayat

Syria: Kurds’ federalmove may triggerforeign attackAl Watan

Oman


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19/44

NEWS 19Best of the American columnists


Rediscoveringolder familytraditionsWalter Russell Mead

The American Interest

Preparing forthe Republicannomination

Jonah Goldberg

Los Angeles Times

The way we live in America is changing, says Walter Russell Mead. We’re moving away from thenuclear family model of the post-war era and rediscovering the old custom of several generationsliving under one roof. In the decades of prosperity that followed the Second World War, the single-family suburban home came to epitomise the American dream. “Each nuclear family was supposedto be an island unto itself.” In many municipalities, zoning laws actually made multi-family livingillegal. Similar laws also banned the use of a home for business. “The family was limited to the roleof consumption; production was supposed to happen in factories and offices far, far away fromdomestic bliss.” Many of these outdated laws still exist but it’s high time we scrapped them to reflectour changing habits. In an age of stagnant wages, high housing costs and increased single parenthood, itmakes sense for extended families to share houses – and to use them for commercial purposes,whether that be teleworking or using the premises as a base for a start-up or renting out a room onAirbnb. Allowing homes to meet flexible modern needs is “one piece of the policy mix that can jumpstart the middle class renaissance that America so badly needs”.

It’s all over for the Republican Party as we know it, says Jonah Goldberg. If, as seems likely, DonaldTrump falls just short of securing enough delegates to win the nomination outright, there will bea brokered convention in July in which Republican leaders will have to decide either to denyTrump the nomination, causing his supporters to riot and desert the party en masse, or crownhim, causing lots of other party members to jump ship in disgust. Many Republicans have yet toface up to this fact and still hope there might be some happier resolution to the situation. Forgetit. Only three things can stop a calamitous bust-up in July: Ted Cruz winning the nominationoutright; Trump revealing “a hidden reservoir of magnanimity, and rallying his faithful to the

consensus nominee”; or delegates picking a consensus candidate so attractive to Trump’sfollowers – “a reanimated Ronald Reagan? Batman?” – that these people swing behind thecandidate despite Trump’s objections. All of these scenarios are highly unlikely. So let’s stopkidding ourselves and start thinking intelligently about our options. “To wit: This ends in tearsno matter what. Get over it and pick a side.”

America’s white working class is impoverishedand wretched – and it only has itself to blame.Such, at least, is the view of conservativecommentator Kevin Williamson. Forget all“your cheap Bruce Springsteen rubbish” andyour sentimentality about Rust Belt factorytowns, he wrote in a recent article forNational Review: China or Washingtondidn’t force such communities into welfare

dependency, substance abuse and familybreakdown; these people “failedthemselves”. This moralistic attitude iswidely shared on the Right, says PaulKrugman, but it doesn’t hold water. “Tens ofmillions of people don’t suffer a collapse in values for no reason.” The social ills of America’s blackcommunity have been clearly connected to a lack of economic opportunity, and a similar thing isnow happening with rural whites. You can’t blame welfare handouts: every other advanced nationhas a more generous safety net than the US, yet only America is witnessing an unprecedented rise inmortality among middle-aged whites. The Republican elite just can’t admit that trickle-downeconomics isn’t the answer to everything, so they’re now lashing out at voters that refuse to buyinto that story line and “lecturing them on their moral failings”. And they wonder why DonaldTrump is beating them.

Before the November election, DonaldTrump will very likely testify in court onallegations that he defrauded thousands ofpeople, said law professors Morgan Cloudand George Shepherd. Former customersof Trump University have filed threeseparate lawsuits charging that Trumpprovided nothing of value for how-to-get-rich-quick courses that cost up to $35,000.One of those suits “seems almost certain togo to trial this summer or autumn, at theheight of the 2016 campaign”. And sincethat federal class-action lawsuit, Makaeffv. Trump University, is a civil case, theplaintiffs can force Trump to attend the trial, and his own lawyers have indicated he will testify.In court, he will face embarrassing evidence, such as promotional materials in which Trump

promises that all his instructors “are handpicked by me” and are “terrific people” with “terrificbrains”. He’s subsequently admitted in depositions that he didn’t choose the instructors. IfTrump’s ultimate defensce is that he knew nothing about the inner workings of his so-calleduniversity, he will only bolster the allegation that “he fraudulently promised to be directlyinvolved with the students’ educations”. For Trump, the trial is a no-win situation, and thetiming couldn’t be worse.

America’simpoverishedwhitesPaul Krugman

The New York Times

Trump’sill-timedtrialMorgan Cloud

and George Shepherd

The Wall Street Journal


20/44THE WEEK 3 APRIL 2016

20 NEWS Best articles: Europe


European leaders shouldn’t yet celebratetheir refugee deal with Turkey, said TheMalta Independent. Under the agreementclinched recently, Turkey will take back allmigrants who cross over to Greece from itscoast, in exchange for financial aid, closerties with the European Union, and anacceleration of talks about Turkey joiningthe bloc. The EU thinks the prospect of beingsent back to Turkey will prevent migrantsfrom attempting to reach Greece, and they’reprobably right. But the migrants won’t stoptrying to reach Europe. Instead, the new policywill “spark a fresh wave of departures fromLibya” to Italy. Before the Syrian civil war saw refugees flood into Turkey and then into Europe,

migrants typically boarded rickety boats from the Libyan coast to try to cross the Mediterranean.That route is now heating back up. Already this year, some 10,000 migrants have landed in Italy, andjust last weekend, EU boats picked up and turned back another 3,000, “all in small, flimsy rubberdinghies in international waters near Libya.” This time around, though, there’s a dire new element.ISIL is now active in Libya and in need of new sources of income. It is likely to turn to the “hugelyprofitable business” of human trafficking.

How Cameron’shappiness planbackfiredDaily Mail

Call me an “embittered old curmudgeon”, says Tom Utley, but I do love it when a gimmickintroduced by a politician explodes in his face. Judged by conventional measures, British PrimeMinister David Cameron has done “strikingly well”. According to a new survey by the BritishOffice of National Statistics (ONS) disposable income per head had, by 2014, shot up by nearly$1,400 since the Labour party’s last year in office. Crime is down. Healthy life expectancy (beforeillness sets in) has risen for both men and women. Employment is at its highest ever. How Cameronmust be wishing, that back in 2010 (when the economic outlook appeared far less rosy) hehadn’t announced that conventional measures of economic health obscured the truth, and thathenceforth the ONS would be measuring people’s “feelings” of well-being as well. And, for allthe objective improvements, are the British happy? Not really. More of us, so the ONS tells us,are unhappy about our take home pay; women feel less safe walking home at night; fewer of usare satisfied with the state of our health. I feel sorry for Cameron, he thought his survey would“offer him a shield against the Left”, so that when the British economy faltered he could say“ok it may not be doing so well, but just look at these figures! They show everyone’s gettinghappier, and that’s the main thing.” Instead, the Left now have a “weapon” to use against him.

Migrantswill findanother wayThe Malta Independent

UNITED KINGDOM

MALTA

The sinisterside ofmourningThe Guardian

It began with the Paris attacks, says Nasrine Malik. That’s when mourners started being beratedfor their eurocentrism. “What about Beirut?” went the cry. Why didn’t you show the same anguishfor other bomb victims? Last week the “whatabouters” were at it again: “You there, mourner ofBrussels, have you heard of the attacks by al Qaeda in Mogadishu?” Solidarity-sneering – the ideathat undue seniority is being given to white deaths – is now an ingrained part of the reaction toterrorist atrocity. And it’s true – in Europe there is a huge disparity in the attention paid to deathsinside Europe and outside it. But what the sneerers ignore is the basic truth that people feel closer tothose with whom they’re geographically, culturally and politically connected. It’s not as if Europeans

are denying other nations or continents the chance to mourn their own. There’s nothing to stopAfrican leaders, say, from leading collective expressions of grief for African victims of al Qaeda. Butthere is something decidedly “sinister” about deriding the human impulse to share shock and griefwith members of your society in the wake of a disaster.

Censored bya neo-NazigovernorDenník

The fascist censorship of Slovak culture hasbegun, said Jakub Drabik. The neo-Nazigovernor of Slovakia’s Banska BystricaRegion, Marian Kotleba, recently stoppeda play during its performance. Kotleba,who was in the audience, had his lackeyrush up to the stage and order the actorsoff, apparently because he deemed someof the language off-colour. Kotleba hatesto be called a fascist, but he often acts like

one. He has been photographed struttingaround in the uniform of the Hlinka Guard– the brutal Slovak militia that allied itselfwith the Nazis during World War II andgleefully rounded up Slovak Jews – and he refers to Roma as “gypsy parasites”. Now, he is notonly a regional governor but also the leader of the ultra-nationalist Our Slovakia party, whichshocked the nation a few weeks ago by winning 8% of the vote to take 14 seats in Parliament.He’s already following the fascist playbook. “Fascist parties always carry out a ‘cultural cleansing’operation once they are installed in power.” In Nazi Germany, “theatres and actors were the firstvictims” of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels. After that came book burnings and confiscationof so-called decadent artworks. Now is the time to stop Kotleba, before he does more harm.We must expose his true beliefs before “the fascist meat grinder” is set in motion.

UNITED KINGDOM

SLOVAKIA


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NEWS 21Best articles: International

3 APRIL 2016 THE WEEK3 APRIL 2016 THE WEEK

The big winner at AIPAC this year was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said AsherSchechter. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is the largest Jewish lobbying group inthe US, and its annual conference always draws fawning politicians. But this year “the word‘pandering’ doesn’t even begin to describe it”. Presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz,and Hillary Clinton gave nearly identical speeches. They denounced Iran, any UN-imposed peacedeal with Palestine and praised the unbreakable, non-negotiable bond between the US and Israel.Trump talked about his daughter’s “beautiful Jewish baby”, while Clinton cast herself as Estherin the Purim story and Cruz concluded his speech by hollering “Am Yisrael chai!” – “The people

of Israel live!” – “as if his life depended on it”. Every word out of their mouths could have beenscripted by Netanyahu. Not one of them mentioned the occupation of the West Bank, “or theunremitting humanitarian crisis that is Gaza”. Bernie Sanders, who didn’t attend AIPAC, didgive a speech elsewhere criticising the occupation, but he got practically no US media coverage.So congratulations, Netanyahu. You have thoroughly defined “the limits of American discourseon Israel”.

Lessons inhow to absorbrefugees

The Daily Star

Lebanon can teach Europe a thing or two about how to treat refugees, said Nasser Yassin.Denmark, home to some five million people, has taken in just 27,000 asylum seekers, and it isalready panicking. Authorities there have actually started seizing cash amounts and individualvaluables worth more than $1,450 from refugees to contribute to their housing and processingcosts. Now look at Lebanon: We have a population similar to Denmark’s, “but with an economynot nearly as advanced and a government that is non-functioning”, with no president and agridlocked parliament. Yet we have absorbed 1.5 million Syrians over the past four years, thehighest rate of refugees per capita in the world, with no public outcry or anti-migrant violence.The reason may be because we don’t expect the government to deal with the new arrivals.Western countries have an “over-reliance on formal channels for crisis response, such asgovernment agencies”, and that costs money and political capital. Here, since government ishapless, civic groups and individuals step up. Refugees find housing in the cities, renting outgarages or rooms. Arab and Islamic charities donate “shadow aid”. It’s chaotic, but it works.Europeans should try “society-led initiatives”. Trust your people to be generous.

Panderingto the Israeliright wingHa’aretz

LEBANON

ISRAEL

Brazil just experienced“something of a political coup,”said Roberto Macedo in Estadão.The multibillion-dollar

corruption scandal surroundingthe state oil giant Petrobras –whose executives allegedlyconspired with constructioncompanies to inflate the valueof contracts, with much of theextra money being funnelled topolitical parties – has alreadyimplicated dozens of toppoliticians and business leaders.Now it has reached one of thenation’s most beloved figures,Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whooversaw an unparalleled periodof economic growth while

president from 2003 to 2011.Prosecutors indicted him for money laundering this month; hedenies any wrongdoing. Rather than let justice take its course,our leftist President Dilma Rousseff gave Lula what amountsto immunity last week by naming him to her cabinet as chiefof staff. Following this crass political move, we should stopcalling Rousseff “president”. She obviously no longer wieldsthe power of the office, if she ever really did. Her mentor andpredecessor, Lula, has manoeuvred himself back into thepalace, kicking aside his puppet. No wonder hundreds ofthousands of furious Brazilians demonstrated last week,calling for Rousseff’s impeachment.

Rousseff really “shot herself in the foot”, said Folha de SãoPaulo in an editorial. Appointing Lula was “probably thegrossest error committed yet by a government lavish with itsdeplorable decisions – politically, economically, and morally”.Polls show three-quarters of Brazilians disapprove of the“repulsive manoeuvre”. Yet it’s unclear whether Lula will

actually be able to take thatcabinet position, said O Globo.Rousseff claims that sheappointed him because she

needed his expert politicalguidance, not to shield him fromthe law. But a secretly recordedphone call between the twopoliticians – leaked by federaljudge Sérgio Moro, the leadprosecutor in the Petrobrasinvestigation, a few hours afterLula’s appointment – stronglyimplies the latter. Now the courtshave issued an injunction againstLula assuming the post until ahearing can be called in earlyApril; the former presidentmight well be in jail by then.

Meanwhile, Rousseff is still underinvestigation for improperly moving money around in thebudget to hide shortfalls. Her impeachment should proceed.“Let the legislative and judicial institutions work so that wecan overcome this crisis without betraying the constitution.”

Brazil’s corporate, right-leaning media may be united againstRousseff, said The Observer, but ordinary Brazilians are notso sure. Yes, rich white Brazilians have taken to the streets toprotest corruption, but the poor who first ushered Lula intopower in 2003 are “convinced that the scandal is all a plot”.They suspect the country’s old elite wants to reverse the left-wing policies first introduced by Lula, which helped liftmillions from poverty. The danger is that escalating anti-and pro-government protests could degenerate into violence,

“risking intervention by the army”. Brazil cast off militaryrule only in 1985, and the shadow lingers. “Rousseff’s duty isplain: If she cannot restore calm, she must call new elections –or step aside.”

Brazil: Rocked by political corruption

Rousseff (r) and Lula: A deal to avoid justice?


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22 NEWS Health & Science


The flash of a dying star explodinghas been captured in visible light forthe first time. For three years, a teamof scientists analysed light capturedby Nasa’s Kepler space telescope asit scanned 50 trillion stars in 500distant galaxies, hoping to detectsigns of massive stellar deathexplosions known as supernovae.In 2011, two stars known as redsupergiants exploded in Keplar’sview. One was nearly 300 times thesize of our sun and 700 million lightyears from Earth. The second was

roughly 500 times the size of our sun and 1.2 billion light years away. A type IIsupernova occurs when a massive star’s internal nuclear fuel burns out; unable towithstand the pressure of gravity, its core starts to collapse, then explodes outwards.The process, in which the star’s exterior swells until it reaches a brightness a billion

timers brighter than our sun, can take weeks. But the first phase – a blinding flashgiven off when photons, speeding out of the star’s collapsing core, blast through itsouter surface – takes only about 20 minutes. The stars were too far away for Keplarto take images of this “shock breakout”; but the telescope detected enough detailfrom one for artists to create an animated simulation of the event (see above).

Sexual harassment in the wildThe dowdiness of many female animalsrelative to their more flamboyant malecounterparts has long puzzled scientists.After all both sexes want to attract the

best mates – so why is it that onlypeacocks have brilliantly colouredplumage? Now researchers at ExeterUniversity have come up with a possibleexplanation: the female’s more discreetappearance may serve to discourageunwanted sexual advances. Excessivemale attention can be a problem forfemales because it can reduce theirreproductive abilities: fending off males– or hiding from them – uses up energythey could otherwise devote to “eggproduction”. Therefore, females whodon’t look very alluring might have anevolutionary advantage, says study leader

David Hosken – provided they’re not toounalluring. There are other possibleexplanations for the phenomenon: it maybe the case, for instance, that femaleswho are more camouflaged are betterable to bring up their young – and thesetheories could also be valid. “We are notsuggesting that male harassment ofattractive females is the only explanationfor lack of sexual ornamentation,” saidProfessor Hasken, but it could be a“contributing factor”.

A new mission to MarsAs NASA prepares to send its InSight

spacecraft to Mars in about two years,Russia and the European Space Agencylast week launched their joint ExoMarsmission to the Red Planet from BaikonurCosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Followinga seven-month journey, the ExoMarsspacecraft, known as the Trace Gas

Orbiter, and its lander, which was dubbedSchiaparelli, after a 19th-centuryastronomer, will separate. Schiaparelliwill then descend though the Martianatmosphere and touch down on the planet’sdusty surface in less than six minutes.Over the course of four days, it will conductenvironmental experiments and test a newthermal protection material, a parachutesystem, liquid braking system, and analtimeter, which may all be used in future

deep-space missions. Meanwhile, theorbiter will circle Mars at an altitude ofroughly 250 miles, performing a detailedanalysis of the atmosphere in search ofmethane, nitrogen, water vapour, andother gases associated with life on Earth.“This is a series of missions that’s trying

to address one of the fundamentalquestions in science,” planetary scientistPeter Grindrod told CSMonitor.com. “Isthere life anywhere else besides Earth?”

To lose weight keep quietEating in silence so that you can hearthe noise of your own chewing could bea powerful aid to losing weight, a studyhas found. Students at Colorado StateUniversity were asked to keep quiet andsit in front of bowls of pretzels whilewearing headphones; one group wassubjected to powerful white noise, theothers heard quieter ambient sounds. Thestudents in the former group consumedfour pretzels, on average, while those inthe latter ate only 2.8. The findingssuggest that people on a diet shouldn’teat while watching TV or listening to the

radio, Dr Gina Mohr, the study leader,told The Times. The researchers alsofound that the mere suggestion of noisecould be a deterrent. In a secondexperiment, two sets of students weregiven the same high-baked crackers toeat, but one was shown a piece of paperreading: “Our crackers deliver the crunchyou crave.” The students in that groupate one fewer cracker on average than theothers – suggesting, among other things,that food manufacturers don’t always gettheir marketing language right.

Brain-boosting blueberries

Blueberries may help improve memoryand brain function in older adults withcognitive decline, a new study suggests.Researchers at the University ofCincinnati monitored 47 Americans ages68 and older who had shown mildcognitive impairment, a risk factor for

Peacocks: “Long puzzled scientists”

What the scientists are saying…

A supernova’s “shock breakout”Alzheimer’s disease. Once daily over a16-week period, participants were giveneither freeze-dried blueberry powder(the equivalent of a cup of berries) ora placebo. The people who had takenblueberry powder saw their memoryimprove, finding it easier to retrievewords and concepts. Those changes wereborne out in MRI scans that showedmore intense brain activity in theblueberry powder group compared withsubjects given the placebo. A secondexperiment focused on 94 people ages 62to 80 who had not been diagnosed withcognitive impairment but felt as thoughtheir memory was on the decline. Theparticipants were split into four groupsand given either blueberry powder, fish oil,a mix of fish oil and powder, or a placebo.“The results were not as robust as with thefirst study,” lead author Robert Krikoriantold ScienceDaily.com. “Cognition was

somewhat better for those with powderor fish oil separately, but there was littleimprovement with memory,” a findingthat suggests blueberries may be mostbeneficial when cognitive impairmenthas already been established.


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NEWS 23Technology


Instagram tests algorithmic feedsInstagram is tinkering withusers’ photo feeds, said MikeIsaac in The New YorkTimes. The photo-sharing

app, following in parent companyFacebook’s footsteps, will soon begintesting personalised feeds that sortalgorithmically, rather than in traditionalreverse chronological order. That means“Instagram will place the photos and videosit thinks you will most want to see from thepeople you follow toward the top of yourfeed”, regardless of when they were shared.Like Twitter, which recently started tweakingits ordinarily chronological feed, Instagramwants to increase users’ return rates byhelping them navigate the “sheer amount ofcontent” available. Instagram estimates thatits 400 million users typically miss about70% of their friends’ photos.

How video games make(more) money

“Digital add-ons have becomea cash cow for the videogame industry,” said Sarah E.Needleman in The Wall Street

Journal. While game makers’ bottomlines once relied on huge sales during theholiday season, downloadable extras arenow helping bring in money year-round.Selling add-ons like new levels, characters,and other virtual gear also helps companies

squeeze money out of hit games “long afterthe discs might have ended up on a dustyshelf”. Digital extras for console and PCgames generated more than $21 billion inrevenue worldwide in 2015, up 8% from theprevious year, according to industry trackerSuperData Research. “There are downsides,however.” Gamers might be content to keepbuying add-ons rather than a new title, orbristle at having to spend more money afterpaying for a full-priced game.

When digital helpers aren’t helpful

“It can give you streetdirections or find the nearestdeli, but how helpful is yoursmartphone’s virtual voice in

a health crisis?” asked Lindsey Tanner inthe Associated Press. Not very, accordingto

Documents

The Week Middle East - 3 April 2016