11 Warning Signs Your Career Has Stalled By Charles Purdy, Monster Senior Editor Your career can lose power for many reasons: a lack of opportunities, industry changes and plain old boredom are just a few of them. Are you wondering whether your career has stalled? Here are some of the top warning signs, according to experts: 1. Your role and responsibilities haven't changed in a few years or more. 2. You've bounced from employer to employer without much change in job title or salary. 3. You can't remember the last time you learned something new about your industry or field. 4. People hired after you have been promoted faster than you. 5. You're not invited to important discussions or meetings of the kind you used to attend. 6. You have fewer job duties than you used to. 7. Your performance reviews contain terms like "consistently meets expectations" or "adequate performance." 8. No one at work asks for your help -- or no one in your professional network asks for advice. 9. You dread going to work in the morning. 10. Your manager and coworkers stop communicating with you -- in general, your phone rings less and you get fewer emails. 11. You spend a lot of time complaining about work, or and when you tell stories about work, you are the story's "victim," not its hero. Sound familiar? Never fear -- there are plenty of ways to get your career back in the fast lane. Here are some ideas: Talk to Your Boss A first step is to address problems head-on. For instance, if you've been stalled in the same position at the same employer, request a copy of the title hierarchy and job descriptions in your organization, says Debra Yergen, author of the Creating Job Security Resource Guide. “Work with human resources and your boss to find out what steps you need to take to move from where you are to the next step up,” she says. Alternatively, tell your boss you're ready for new challenges and new assignments. If you've been quietly doing your job and keeping your head down, he may not realize that you're feeling unfulfilled. Ask for What You Need Alan G. Bauer, president of recruiter Bauer Consulting Group, says you can ask your manager for tips on what you need to improve. Also, he says you can ask your HR department what's going on with an overdue raise. "If your merit increases are lower than your coworkers', there may be an issue,” he says. “The company budgeted a certain amount for salary increases -- if you aren't getting your share, you need to find out why." Brad Karsh, founder and president of the career-services firm JobBound, says to look for ways to be more effective, efficient and strategic. “Ask your manager about the possibility of a rotational program to see the inner workings of the company and gain fresh perspective and new ideas," he says. Take Initiative Karsh also suggests figuring out what keeps your boss up at night. “Find a way to solve that problem,” he says. “You need to be a key player." You can also take some classes or work toward a degree, suggests Mary Greenwood, author of How to Interview Like a Pro. Or consider on-the-job training. "If you value continuous learning, you can volunteer for a project that will require new skills,” says executive coach Elene Cafasso. “Perhaps you can transfer to another area of the business or learn what's needed to back up a coworker." Rick Dacri, author of Uncomplicating Management, suggests getting actively involved in a professional association. “Get a leadership role, speak before the group or write an article for the newsletter, for instance," he says. Adjust Your Attitude Negativity is one of the worst career killers. "If you are spending a great deal of your energy moaning and whining about your circumstances, it's time to try and make a new start before you become so emotionally expensive that the organization feels the need to cut you," says Cy Wakeman, author of Reality-Based Leadership. Identifying your dissatisfaction and taking steps to resolve it is the first step. The next step may be to update your resume and start looking for a new job. "It may be that hanging on to an unhealthy or unproductive employment relationship is what's holding you back,” Yergen says. “I've witnessed a handful of people this year who have identified their dissatisfaction and set a date to quit -- even without a job waiting -- and found something just before or just after the date of their resignation. Sometimes you just have to take that step." If your career is stalled, perhaps a new career is the right answer. Start exploring options by reaching out to your professional network, job shadowing or talking to your HR department about an internal transfer. Related Articles: Pushing Past a Career Slump Six Signs of Career Derailment Five Ways to Keep Your Career Moving Forward Kick Your Career into Gear Are You Engaged?

What does the Arab world do when its water runs out?

Water usage in north Africa and the Middle East is unsustainable and shortages are likely to lead to further instability – unless governments take action to solve the impending crisis

• Failure to act on crop shortages fuelling political instability

• • John Vidal  The Observer, Sunday 20 February 2011

A camel takes a drink in Jordan. The Middle East faces conflict if its water shortage is not tackled. Photograph: Neal Clark/Robert Harding Collection

Poverty, repression, decades of injustice and mass unemployment have all been cited as causes of the political convulsions in the Middle East and north Africa these last weeks. But a less recognised reason for the turmoil in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and now Iran has been rising food prices, directly linked to a growing regional water crisis.

The diverse states that make up the Arab world, stretching from the Atlantic coast to Iraq, have some of the world's greatest oil reserves, but this disguises the fact that they mostly occupy hyper-arid places. Rivers are few, water demand is increasing as populations grow, underground reserves are shrinking and nearly all depend on imported staple foods that are now trading at record prices.

For a region that expects populations to double to more than 600 million within 40 years, and climate change to raise temperatures, these structural problems are political dynamite and already destabilising countries, say the World Bank, the UN and many independent studies.

In recent reports they separately warn that the riots and demonstrations after the three major food-price rises of the last five years in north Africa and the Middle East might be just a taste of greater troubles to come unless countries start to share their natural resources, and reduce their profligate energy and water use.

The Blue Peace report examined long-term prospects for seven countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel. Five already suffer major structural shortages, it said, and the amount of water being taken from dwindling sources across the region cannot continue much longer.

"Unless there is a technological breakthrough or a miraculous discovery, the Middle East will not escape a serious [water] shortage," said Sundeep Waslekar, a researcher from the Strategic Foresight Group who wrote the report.

"The problem will only get worse. Arab countries depend on other countries for their food security – they're as sensitive to floods in Australia and big freezes in Canada as on the yield in Algeria or Egypt itself," says political analyst and Middle East author Vicken Cheterian.

"If you look at the recent Small Arms Survey [in Yemen], they try to document the increase in what they call social violence due to this pressure on water and land. This social violence is increasing, and related deaths and casualties are pretty high. The death tolls in the northern conflict and the southern conflict are a result of these pressures," said Cirri.

A few Arab leaders recognise that water and energy profligacy must be curbed if ecological disaster is to be avoided. In Abu Dhabi, which is building Masdar, the $20bn futuristic city to be run on renewable energy, the environment agency is spearheading a massive drive to reduce water use. Concrete is replacing water-hungry grass verges and new laws demand water-saving devices in all buildings.

IN NUMBERS: Middle East water facts

Dominic Lawson: A Libyan stain on Britain's reputation

It was entirely predictable that Gaddafi would order annihilating force to be brought against internal opponents  Tuesday, 22 February 2011

He did bizarre as well as bloodcurdling, offering the demonstrators the concessions of "a new flag, a new national anthem"; and he accused other rioters of being "on hallucinogens or drugs" – although his own rambling delivery gave every impression that Muammar Gadaffi's son was under the influence.

Yet this was the man promoted as the entirely acceptable face of a 40-year-long dictatorship, not least in this country. He was feted by the last government, especially by Peter Mandelson, with whom he would socialise in the grand style. He was also fawned on by academia. Nine months ago, he was accorded the accolade of giving the Ralph Miliband lecture at the London School of Economics (presumably the late professor's sons, David and Ed, were invited along).

Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's very own foundation had written out a cheque for £1.5m to the LSE. Or perhaps not; anyway Professor David Held of the politics faculty at the LSE gave an excruciatingly smarmy introduction, telling the audience that "the Gaddafi Foundation devotes itself to humanitarian work ... especially in the field of human rights" and that "deep liberal values are at the core of his inspiration".

Tell that to the unarmed demonstrators under machine-gun assault from the Gaddafi family's mercenary shock troops. Yesterday, the LSE rushed out a statement saying that "the school has had a number of links with Libya in recent years. In view of the highly distressing news from Libya over the weekend, the school has reconsidered those links as a matter of urgency". Too late!

The same "reconsidering" is presumably taking place within government, although the developments in Libya are infinitely less embarrassing for the Coalition than they would have been for the previous administration. It was Tony Blair who made it part of his foreign policy mission to chummy up to Muammar Gaddafi and it was Gordon Brown who ordered the SAS to train the Libyan dictator's special forces.

Two weeks ago, official papers were released which demonstrated that Labour, despite its furious denials, had, in the words of the Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, "developed [a policy] that Her Majesty's Government should do all it could ... to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's release". The freeing on "compassionate grounds" of the only man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing – the biggest mass murder ever to take place in this country – was just part of the wider effort to "normalise" relations between Britain and Libya.

At the time, I wrote in this column that it was ludicrous to become steamed up about the release of Megrahi while continuing to treat Gaddafi himself as a cuddly old darling: "On the assumption – shared by both the Scottish and British governments – that Megrahi was rightfully convicted, then what of Colonel Gaddafi himself? Is it seriously suggested that Megrahi, a long-serving officer in the Libyan intelligence service, had acted without orders from above? If anyone can be accused of being the malevolent power behind the slaughter of so many innocents heading home for Christmas with their families, that man is Muammar Abu Minyar al- Gaddafi. Yet this is also the man whose celebrations of 40 years of dictatorship are to be attended by prime ministers and presidents from across the globe."

Well, that is the way of the world. Once Gaddafi had foresworn his previous policy of financing acts of terror internationally (including by the IRA) then all is forgiven – especially if the man in question is sitting on top of billions of barrels of easily extractable crude oil. The Americans have been critical of Britain's open praise of the "new" Gaddafi, and were understandably furious about the release of Megrahi, but their own policy since 2004 has been equally friendly, at least as far as military business is concerned: two years ago, for example, the US firm General Dynamics signed a $165m contract to supply sophisticated communications systems to the Libyan Armed Forces' elite 32 Brigade.

The unsurprising truth is that while Gaddafi's confrontational attitude towards the West may have changed – he was deeply impressed by President Bush's removal of Saddam Hussein and did not want to be next on the hit-list – his character and methods remained the same as far as his own people were concerned. It was entirely predictable that he would order annihilating force to be brought to bear against any internal opponents, even unarmed student demonstrators. Any shock expressed by the British Foreign Office is itself shocking. They know – have always known – that this is the nature of Gaddafi's regime. After all, it was not so long ago that an uprising of political prisoners in Tripoli's Abu Salim jail was quelled by the massacre of more than 1,200 inmates.

Doubtless the British wooing of Saif Gaddafi was based partly on the notion that he would be a moderating influence on his father. While the old man was, to put it at its very mildest, eccentric, of all his sons Saif seemed the most westernised and the most – well, like us. He had a doctorate from the LSE; he mastered the language of international conferences; he could be invited to a country-house shoot and be relied upon to use a Purdey rather than a sub-machine gun; he was always to be seen wearing impeccable Savile Row suits – indeed he was thus attired when delivering his bloodthirsty address to the Libyan people on Sunday night.

It is a perennial weakness of British officials that they assume if a man has had a good education and wears the right sort of clothes it makes him somehow more trustworthy. They thought that about Robert Mugabe, finding it hard to imagine that a man educated by British missionaries and who insisted that his entire Cabinet abandon tribal costumes and wear British suits, could at the same time be capable of mass murder. But, of course, he could (and was awarded an honorary knighthood even after his troops had slaughtered up to 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland).

The behaviour of rulers such as Mugabe and Gaddafi can be explained, though not excused, by their fear of what might happen if they were to lose power. Completely ruthless themselves, they assume all their opponents (even, or especially, those professing to be democrats) would treat them as savagely if they ever got the chance; and, of course, the more people they have murdered, the more their suspicions are justified.

This would apply as much to the apparently civilised Saif Gaddafi as it does to his demented father. He is encouraging the regime's mercenary troops and remaining supporters in acts of extreme violence because he knows that should they fail to suppress the opposition he, along with his father, is likely to be slaughtered – assuming they don't escape to a foreign bolthole first.

According to one of last weekend's property supplements, Saif Gaddafi is offering his London home (complete with cinema and suede-lined walls) for rent at £9,500 a week. Say goodbye to it, Saif.

Mary Ann Sieghart: The dawning of Arab democracy

Most Jordanians don't want a revolution of the French kind; they just want a king who reigns rather than rules  Monday, 21 February 2011

I have just come back from a week in Jordan, and the population there is gulping down the air of the new Arab Spring. Egypt and Tunisia pepper every conversation but when the subject turns to their own King Abdullah II, voices lower to a whisper. It's illegal to criticise the King there, and most people still see the monarchy as a source of stability in a country which could otherwise be grievously divided. But, as in the rest of the Middle East, people of all backgrounds want greater democracy, lower prices, less corruption and more jobs.

These economic and political reforms are in the gift of the King. Yes, Jordan has a Parliament, but elections are widely seen to be rigged, and the King has the power to sack Governments and dissolve Parliaments at will. Yesterday, he gave his first speech since the protests began, promising that he would bring in a new electoral law to give Parliament more power and that he would encourage his Government to tackle corruption. But he didn't say whether he was prepared to give up his power to appoint the Prime Minister.

King Abdullah of Jordan is at least responsive to public opinion, even if he seems to be reacting to demands rather than pre-empting them. As soon as the President of Tunisia was ousted and before Egypt followed suit, the King sacked his Government and brought in a new Prime Minister and Cabinet. In the past, this might have been enough to placate the citizenry. But with all that was happening in the rest of the Middle East, it soon looked like too little.

Every Friday in Jordan for seven weeks there have been protests in the streets. Last Friday, there was violence too; opposition groups claimed the Government had sent in its own armed thugs and that the police refused to intervene. The opposition is an extraordinarily diverse bunch: a newly formed youth movement has lined up with the Muslim Brotherhood, westernized middle-class professionals, Bedouin tribesmen and former army generals to call for reform.

So far Jordan hasn't cracked down on its protesters the way Bahrain did or Libya is still doing. The King has been under pressure from his ally, America, to bring in more reforms and to do so peacefully. Last week, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a personal visit to King Abdullah. Jordan matters greatly to the West: it shares a long border with Israel, a shorter one with Iraq, and it is a beacon of relative moderation in the region.

It is also the home to nearly three million Palestinians, roughly half the total population. Most of them have Jordanian citizenship. Supporters of the King claim that only the overarching institution of the monarchy can bridge the divide between citizens of Jordanian and Palestinian origin, and that the overthrow of the King would lead to civil war.

For this reason, it is unlikely that King Abdullah will soon be packing his bags and heading for sanctuary in Jeddah or London. But many of his people are still fed up with him and his wife, Queen Rania, and are now, finally, prepared to say so, whatever the consequences.

The King has always been buttressed by the powerful Bedouin tribes (known as East Bankers) and the Army, both are which are ethnically Jordanian, not Palestinian. So a taboo was shattered last May when a group of former generals sent him an open letter complaining about corruption, favours for Palestinians, the rigging of elections, the unaccountability of government, and political interference by the Queen.

Then, two weeks ago, another letter was sent to the King, this time by 36 tribesmen, also complaining about the Queen, the enrichment of her family, and her interference in politics. Queen Rania is of Palestinian origin, which of course doesn't endear her to the East Bankers. But they outspokenly accused her and her family of "looting the country and the people", of "building centres of power for her own interest" and of "wasting public money to improve her personal image abroad at our expense".

Few Jordanians believe that any of this would have happened under Abdullah's father, King Hussein. Hussein was charismatic and wily in equal measure. Abdullah has little charisma and not enough cunning to placate the supporters he needs to keep on side. Hussein was widely seen as the father of the nation; his posters are still all over Jordan, 12 years after his death. Abdullah, by contrast, is turning into a Wizard of Oz figure: a patriarchal symbol the country wants to believe in, but who is underwhelming in the flesh.

It was in the home of Fares Fayez, a member of the Bani Sakher tribe, that this controversial letter was drafted. A grizzled, kindly-looking man, he received me in resplendent Bedouin dress, on kilim cushions, but took care to tell me that he also had a PhD in Political Science. "We want to go back to the 1952 constitution – it's our Magna Carta," he explained. That constitution gave the King many fewer powers than he has now.

"The absence of democracy has led to big problems of corruption," claims Fayez. "There are two classes in Jordan: 5 per cent of the people control 90 per cent of the riches of the country, and 95 per cent of the public control only 10 per cent. This has made poverty a big problem. Now, because of rising food prices, there is a lot of hunger and not just poverty."

And these are the words of a candid friend. "We're not his enemies; we're his advisers. We advise him better than the hypocrites who clap next to him." Is he worried he will be punished? He shakes with laughter. "For my country, for my land, we should sacrifice! I am like Oliver Cromwell."

This is why King Abdullah should be worried. I wasn't surprised to hear open criticism of him or his regime from youth leaders or from the Muslim Brotherhood. But when his traditional supporters are turning on him, that bodes ill.

So the next few weeks will be critical for a regime that is strategically important for the West. Most Jordanians now want a King who reigns but does not rule. They want a new election law that ensures the party with the most parliamentary seats will form a Government. They want corruption rooted out and they want to earn enough money to feed and clothe their families properly.

For the King to survive, he needs to enact all these reforms now, to get ahead of the curve of public opinion rather than being dragged reluctantly behind it. Most Jordanians don't want a revolution of the French kind; they just want a peaceful transition to democracy.

And if Abdullah's promises of greater democracy don't deliver? Then things could turn ugly. As the political analyst Labib Kamhawi told me: "The King has to initiate reforms or we force these reforms on him. It's simple." The Middle East always used to be complex. But now it's getting simpler by the day.

Africa will not put up with a colonialist China

By Daily Mail Reporter   01.11.2010

An unemployed teenager is so desperate for work she has taken to the streets with a sandwich board begging: 'Please give me a job'.

Claire Fear, 18, was forced to ditch her dreams of becoming a dietician because of concern over building up huge debts at university and is now trying for any type of job.

The former health sciences student has applied for more than 80 jobs since finishing her college course in June.

Desperate measures: Claire Fear, 18, from Bridgwater, Somerset, has resorted to walking the streets of her home town begging for work

Claire's efforts have echoes of efforts made by the unemployed during the Depression

She has now resorted to walking the streets of her home town of Bridgwater, Somerset, holding a sign pleading with employers to give her a chance.

Claire said: 'There are no jobs and no prospects in this town so I'm having to take matters in my own hands.

'I registered with an employment agency when I finished college, but I have only had a tiny bit of work since then. None of it is full-time.

'I have applied for so many jobs. I did want to be a dietician, but I did not want to go to university - lots of people have told me it is not worth it because of the debts.  'I am desperate for work and I will do pretty much anything.'

Claire left Bridgwater College with a Level 3 BTEC in health sciences this summer and has been searching for work ever since.  In one day alone she visited 50 shops in the town centre asking for a job - but none had any work.

Claire is baffled as to why she is repeatedly rejected but believes she is stuck in a 'catch 22' situation where she does not have sufficient experience for most jobs.  She now spends up to three hours a day walking the streets with her sandwich board.

The idea of using the board came from her mother.  Claire said: 'My mum mentioned doing this as a joke a few weeks ago - I don't think she thought I would take her seriously.  'I have had mostly positive responses from people - one person even pulled over and said he hoped things work out for me. But there have been no job offers.'

Spending review: how did the banks get off so lightly?

As the taxpayer endures yet more pain, Jill Treanor asks: will the City's day of reckoning ever come?

•   Jill Treanor  guardian.co.uk,  21.10.2010
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Two years ago this month, a pale and visibly shocked Gordon Brown promised that "irresponsible behaviour" by Britain's bankers would be "punished". The prime minister was angry at the level of public money needed to support banks, which eventually ran into hundreds of billions, after the credit-fuelled system expanded out of control in the run-up to the banking crisis of October 2008.

Two years on, as the taxpayer endures more pain while the government that replaced Brown's axes £81bn from public spending, the banks have returned to practices they enjoyed in the good years, seemingly bearing few scars of the punishment promised. After the coalition unveiled its £2.5bn-a-year bank levy yesterday, unions were quick to seize upon the apparent unfairness in the treatment of banks while the poorest and most vulnerable in society were being hardest hit by George Osborne's austerity Britain.

"Those who caused the recession will be cracking open the champagne today, while the full extent of the attacks on the living standards of poor and middle income Britain are starting to sink in," said Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC. Referring to MPs who endorsed the cutting of benefits in the chancellor's spending review, Barber said: "With government MPs cheering cuts in support for some of the most vulnerable in society, it looks like we have gone back to the 1980s 'greed is good' culture."

As Osborne wielded his axe and warned of the loss of almost 500,000 public sector jobs, banks had given a taste of the bonuses staff may enjoy this year. Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street bank with a large British operation, was attempting to show restraint but managed to set aside $370,000 (£236,000) per employee in "compensation" for the first nine months of the year.

It is less than the $527,000 seen at this stage a year ago, but still demonstrates the potential payouts being lined up in the City for February, when they are traditionally handed out.

Britain's major banks give their updates on trading next month, and are expected to once again show healthy profits – and big payouts being stored up in bonus pots. The Centre for Economics and Business Research has predicted £7bn is likely to be paid out this year, while acknowledging that some jobs have been lost in the City too.

Gavin Hayes, general secretary of centre left pressure group Compass, blames politicians: "Our political leaders haven't stood up to the banks. They haven't taken the action necessary."

While Labour missed opportunities, the new government was too slow to initiate change. "David Cameron said there would a day of reckoning for the banks. He simply hasn't delivered it," said Hayes.

Why? One reason is that the City and the banking industry has an army of highly paid lobbyists. The British Bankers' Association was quick to point out that the banks paid £26bn in taxes to the Treasury last year while the Corporation of London points out that the City in its broadest sense provided £66bn of tax revenues in 2009, employed a million people, and accounted for 10% of GDP.

"UK is still over-reliant on financial services for tax and growth. Whilst that's the case the politicians are not going to stand up to them," said Hayes.

Tony Greenham, at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, points out that the current government is also less inclined to blame banks for ideological reasons. "Blaming the banks is a bit inconvenient for a government that wants to blame the overspend in the public sector," said Greenham.

The banks argue they can hardly be blamed for causing the crisis. Angela Knight, chief executive of the BBA, said today that lax monetary policy and regulation could also take the blame, as could government borrowing. "It's extraordinary to think that £2.5bn is 'nothing'. It's just wrong," Knight said.

Greenham also argues that it may be too soon to judge the government. "They do promise that they are looking at a financial activities tax, and looking at actions on bonuses. You might have to reserve judgment for now," he said.

The government has certainly made other pledges to target banks. Osborne insisted this week that the government was still looking at a financial activities tax, or FAT, on profits and pay in the broader international context. The coalition has also set up an independent commission to look at whether big banks should be broken up to encourage competition and reduce the risk of another taxpayer bailout – a move that has infuriated big banks such as Barclays and HSBC, which have issued veiled threats about moving overseas.

The City minister, Mark Hoban, defended the government's recordtonight, and hit out against the previous government, which had imposed a bonus tax last December that brought in £2.3bn for the exchequer. "Whilst the previous Labour government opposed our plans to introduce a permanent levy, we have gone ahead and done so. This will yield more every year than the bank payroll tax delivered in one year.

"The levy also actively encourages banks to move away from riskier funding that threatens financial stability, and the money raised will go towards reducing the record budget deficit we inherited. We think this balances fairness with the competitiveness of the UK banking sector," Hoban said.

The coalition also promises to stop "unacceptable bonuses". The business secretary, Vince Cable, warned in September of the "train crash" facing banking if big bonuses were paid out this year without outlining specific policies.

The Financial Services Authority has changed the structure of bonuses – if not the level – ensuring that bonuses paid totally in cash are no longer feasible. Instead they must be deferred over three to five years and, under European proposals from the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, must be no more than 20% in cash with the rest in shares.

Knight said: "Most of the bonuses are being decided outside the UK [by foreign banks] and other countries don't see bonuses in the same way [as the UK]. The overwhelming majority of bonuses are for £3,000 or £4,000; for larger bonuses, the targets have to be approved by the FSA and be paid in shares and held back for several years."

Bonuses are the potential melting pot for public anger, says Hayes: "I do think there will be huge public anger when the banks report their bonuses."

Cable's business department got a taste this week when it was stormed by protesters angry at public sector cuts. Such a scene may yet be commonplace, and make the government honour pledges to punish the "irresponsible behaviour" some blame for the economic crisis.

Silence of the dissenters: How south-east Asia keeps web users in line

Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines are all moving towards Chinese-style internet censorship
• Interactive guide: censorship in Asia

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• Ben Doherty in Bangkok
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 October 2010 16.56 BST
• Article history

Governments across south-east Asia are following China's authoritarian censorship of the digital world to keep political dissent in check, the Guardian can reveal.

Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines have all moved or are moving towards monitoring internet use, blocking international sites regarded as critical and ruthlessly silencing web dissidents.

• In Vietnam, the Communist party wants to be your "friend" on the state-run version of Facebook, provided you are willing to share all personal details.

• In Burma, political unrest can be silenced by cutting off the country from the internet.

• In Thailand, website moderators can face decades in jail for a posted comment they did not even write, if the government deems it injurious tothe monarchy.

While much is made of China's authoritarian attitudetowards internet access, a majority of south-east Asian governments have similar controls and , rather than relaxing restrictions on internet use, many are moving towards tighter regulation.

The Guardian has spoken to five leading bloggers across the region about the present restrictions they face and future fears.

Interactive: Meet five key bloggers who fear a crackdown on freedom of expression.

Raymond Palatino, a Filipino MP and editor with Global Voices, says governments, in addition to crudely blocking websites, are starting to use arguments of morality and decency to censor access to information and quash criticism.

"There is direct censorship to block political dissent. You have repressive laws in Myanmar [Burma], in Vietnam, in Singapore. In fact I think Vietnam is catching up with China in terms of building strong firewalls to prevent dissidents from accessing critical content on the internet.

"But we also see governments using the excuse of protecting the public morality in order to censor internet content. Governments use the excuse of censoring pornography as a safe argument to make censorship acceptable to the public."

More than a decade ago, George W Bush asked people to "imagine if the internet took hold in China. Imagine how freedom would spread". But rather than emerging as a catalyst for democracy, the internet has become another way to to stifle dissent.

Palatino sees governments using the internet for their own selfish advantage. "They are learning how to prevent people for using the internet to criticise government. Instead of being a potent tool for empowering the people, the internet will be in the hands of an authoritative, repressive government."

With a population of more than 600 million, south-east Asia has about 123 million internet users. But penetration ratesvary from 0.2% in Burma and Timor-Leste to more than 80% in Brunei Darussalam and 77% in Singapore. But south-east Asian use is still dwarfed by China's384 million users.

In the Philippines, cybercrime legislation before the parliament would outlaw anything deemed obscene or indecent. Palatino says: "The laws are deliberately broad and vague so they can be used to shut down anything subversive."

Cambodia's government is seeking to monitor all internet use inside the country, by appointing the state-owned telephone company to operate the sole internet exchange.

Websites will be monitored to filter out pornography, officials say, but opponents say sites critical of the government are also likely to be blocked.

In Thailand, century-old lese-majesty legislation is combined with new computer-related crime laws, to mute criticism on the web.

Lese-majesty laws – defaming the monarchy - are imposed inconsistently in Thailand, but wielded often enough, and against defendants of sufficient profile, to stifle almost any discussion of the monarchy's role in a country riven by political factionalism. Chiranuch Premchiaporn, the editor of Thailand's English-language news website Prachatai.com, faces up to 70 years in jail for allowing the monarch to be insulted online.

The charges relate to five of 200 comments posted about an interview with a Thai man who was charged for refusing to stand for the anthem in a theatre.

Premchiaporn, known as Jiew, did not write the comments, and pulled them from the website but, according to police, allowed them to stay up ''longer than the appropriate period'', a period never defined by authorities before or since the charge.

Now on bail, the prospect of jail weighs heavily on her. "And it isn't just about 'Oh, how long I will have to spend in the cell', my whole life is uncertain. I cannot plan my life because of this legal charge, it makes everything hard."

Thailand's strict laws, and harsh punishments, have had a chilling effect on political discussion on webboards and blogs.

"I think the biggest problem in Thai media is self-censorship … but we started Prachatai for the ideals of believing in the rights of people to access information … from many sources and not be dominated by just one source," Jiew says.

Prachatai is blocked in Thailand, under order of the emergency decree after the red-shirt uprising of May. It is one of more than 100,000 websites blocked in the country. "We want to promote the rights of the people to speak up about their issues, not just only people who have a big name, or who are important in government."

In Vietnam, web-users can become "friends" with their communist government, joining the country's own version of Facebook. A trial version of go.vn was launched in May. A full version is expected online by the end of the year.

The functions are familiar to those versed in social networking. Users can update their status, post photos and links, and send messages back and forth.

There are news links, historical articles on founding father Ho Chi Minh and other revolutionary heroes, and members can also play state-approved network games (in one particularly violent example, players join a band of militants sworn to fight the spread of global capitalism).

The site is closely monitored by the government's security services, and while, for many, the attraction of the internet lies in its anonymity, to join go.vn users must submit their full names and state-issued identity numbers to the government.

The Vietnamese government says it expects to have 40 million members, half the country, in five years. Perhaps because web dissidents are dealt with so ruthlessly by the communist regime – four bloggers were recently jailed for 16 years for anti-government posts – five months on, take-up of go.vn is a bare few thousand.

Burma has one of the poorest records on internet freedom in the region.

All .mm sites and email addresses are closely monitored by the ruling military junta, and international sites banned, but the tiny internet cafes that dot the former capital, Yangon, are adept at bypassing the government's firewalls, using proxy servers to evade the censors and access banned sites.

Outfoxed on technology, the junta responds during times of stress by simply unplugging the internet, especially to stop unwelcome news getting out of the country.

At the height of the monk-led Saffron Revolution in 2007, the junta's generals shut down access completely, later claiming a break in an underwater cable had cut the country off.

With Burma heading towards its first elections in a generation early next month, and the anticipated release of political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi a week later, there is an expectation the web blackout may be repeated.

Fidel Castro says his economic system is failing

Former Cuban president says state-run model 'doesn't even work for us' in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

• Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, 09.09.2010
  

Fidel Castro, pictured earlier this month, criticised Cuba's state-dominated system. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more."

Fidel Castro's nine-word confession, dropped into conversation with a visiting US journalist and policy analyst, undercuts half a century of thundering revolutionary certitude about Cuban socialism.

That the island's economy is a disaster is hardly news but that the micro-managing "maximum leader" would so breezily acknowledge it has astonished observers.

Towards the end of a long, relaxed lunch in Havana, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting. The reply left him dumbfounded. "Did the leader of the revolution just say, in essence, 'Never mind'?" Goldberg wrote on his blog.

The 84-year-old retired president did not elaborate but the implication, according to Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert from the Council on Foreign Relations who also attended the lunch, was that the state had too big a role in the economy.

Raúl Castro has been saying the same thing in public and private since succeeding his older brother two years ago. With infrastructure crumbling, food shortages acute and an average monthly salary of just $25 (£16), it has become apparent that near-total state control of the economy does not work.

But for Fidel to acknowledge the fact could be compared to Napoleon musing that the march on Moscow was not, on reflection, a great success.

"Frankly, I have been somewhat amazed by Fidel's new frankness," said Stephen Wilkinson, a Cuba expert at the London Metropolitan University. "This is the latest of a series of recent utterances that strike me as being indicative of a change in the old man's character."

The remark should not, however, be interpreted as a condemnation of socialism, added Wilkinson. "That is clearly not what he means, but it is an acknowledgement that the way in which the Cuban system is organised has to change. It is an implicit indication also that he has abdicated governing entirely to Raúl, who has argued this position for some time. We can now expect a lot more changes and perhaps more rapid changes as a consequence."

Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement could bolster the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change, said Sweig.

Agriculture has been a big disappointment. The lush Caribbean island of 11 million people could be a major food exporter but central planning and state-run co-operatives have produced chronic shortages, prompting an old, bitter joke that the revolution's three biggest failures are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Raúl's reforms are not going well: food production fell 7.5% in the first half of the year.

Once propped up by the Soviet Union, Cuba's lifeline is now cheap oil from Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez considers Fidel a mentor.

Chávez swiftly followed another surprise statement of Castro's – accusing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism – with an announcement that he would meet Venezuelan Jewish leaders. The move was "a direct result of Fidel's statement", according to Goldberg.

• This article was amended on 10 September. Headings on the original characterised Fidel Castro as saying that communism does not work. This has been corrected.

Marxist reforms?

The remarks about Cuban economic policy are not the only surprise statements made recently by the former Cuban leader. Others include:

• He feels responsible for the "great injustice" of the persecution of Cuban homosexuals in the 1970s.

• He laments Jewish suffering over the centuries, defends Israel's right to exist and accuses Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism.

• He appears to regret urging the Soviet Union to nuke the US during the 1962 missile crisis. "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all."

Narco-censorship - how drug traffickers silence the Mexican media

Los Angeles Times reporter Tracy Wilkinson introduces us to a new journalistic expression: narco-censorship.

 

It's the description specific to the media's coverage of the drug war in Mexico where reporters and editors, out of fear or caution, are being forced to write either what the drug lords demand, or to remain silent by not writing anything at all.

 

In a country where journalists have been intimidated, kidnapped and killed, Wilkinson writes: "One of the devastating by-products of the carnage is the drug traffickers' chilling ability to co-opt underpaid and under-protected journalists — who are haunted by the knowledge that they are failing in their journalistic mission of informing society.

 

She quotes an editor in Reynosa, in the border state of Tamaulipas, who tells her: "You love journalism, you love the pursuit of truth, you love to perform a civic service and inform your community. But you love your life more... We don't like the silence. But it's survival."

 

An estimated 30 reporters have been killed or have disappeared since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against the drug cartels in December 2006, making Mexico one of the deadliest countries for journalists in the world.

 

Ten days ago the UN belatedly sent its first such mission to Mexico to examine the resulting dangers to freedom of expression.

 

Few killings are ever investigated, and the climate of impunity leads to more bloodshed, says an upcoming report from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.   "It is not a lack of valour on the part of the journalists. It is a lack of backing," says broadcaster Jaime Aguirre. "If they kill me, nothing happens."

 

When a large drug gang attacked an army garrison in Reynosa in April, trapping soldiers inside, it was front- page news in the Los Angeles Times. It went unreported in Reynosa.

 

Reporters and editors say they routinely receive telephoned warnings when they publish something the traffickers don't like. More often, knowing their publications are being watched and their newsrooms infiltrated, they avoid publishing anything considered risky.

 

Social media networks, such as Twitter, have filled some of the breach, with residents frantically sending danger alerts.   And a secretive "narco blog" has started posting numerous videos of henchmen and their victims. But traffickers also use social media to spread rumours and stoke panic.

 

In Durango, where more newsmen were killed in 2009 than in any other state, broadcast reporter Ruben Cardenas says journalists can no longer do their job.

Blood diamonds and Charles Taylor: the inside story

The 'blood diamonds' trade, which is at the heart of the war-crimes trial of Charles Taylor, ex-president of Liberia - in which Naomi Campbell has become embroiled - was partly run by his brother-in-law, Cindor Reeves. In this exclusive interview he tells Colin Freeman about his role 

By Colin Freeman   15.08.2010

The now infamous dinner with Naomi Campbell, Charles Taylor and Mia Farrow Photo: REX

Naomi Campbell giving evdience to the war crimes trial of Charles Taylor Photo: AP

 

Should Naomi Campbell ever wish for some more dodgy diamonds to grace her supermodel limbs, Cindor Reeves knows the right people to call. It is a long way from his new home in Canada to the war-ravaged gem fields of his native West Africa, and a long time since the trade in "blood diamonds" was officially banned, but as long as Ms Campbell sticks to her habit of not asking where they came from, he says a deal could probably be done.

 

"I tell you, I could get on the phone to people out there tomorrow, and they will fly them to wherever you want," he says, shaking his head. "They are supposed to have brought this trade under control, but it still goes on, and as long as it does, we will have wars in Africa."

 

Related Articles

• Naomi Campbell and blood diamond: the whole picture

• Profile: Charles Taylor, warlord and ex-president of Liberia on trial for war crimes

• Charles Taylor displays icy charm at war crime hearing

On the subject of illegal gemstones, it is fair to say that Mr Reeves is uniquely well connected, even if many of his best contacts are now either dead, on the run, or in jail.

 

The tall, quietly spoken 38-year-old is the brother-in-law, no less, of Charles Taylor, the Liberian dictator who gave Ms Campbell a gift of uncut diamonds in 1997, according to her recent testimony at his war crimes trial in the Hague.  For four turbulent years, he was at the centre of the blood diamonds trade, acting as Taylor's personal envoy in his infamous arms-for-gems deals with the rebels in next door Sierra Leone, whose drug-crazed recruits raped, maimed and slaughtered their way through a war that claimed some 150,000 lives.

 

As such, he also knows about the appalling price in human misery that was paid so that "the chief", as his brother-in-law was known, could flatter pretty girls at parties. The gifts Taylor used to hand out to the likes of Ms Campbell were the proceeds of dozens of clandestine trips that Mr Reeves made into the Sierra Leone bush, where he would swap truckloads of weapons for tiny but highly valuable packages of stones, many from rebel-held mines being run as virtual slave camps.

 

Today, though, Mr Reeves' diamond smuggling days are over. Appalled by the slaughter that the trade was fuelling, in 2001 he turned against his own family and secretly approached the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, providing inside information that helped build much of the prosecution case against the former president and his cronies. He claims Taylor tried to have a hit squad kill him before he left Africa, and after an attempted kidnapping in Paris in 2004, allegedly conducted by a notorious Ukrainian arms dealer, he fled to Canada.

 

Today, rather like the Mafioso-turned-informant Henry Hill, whose life was depicted in the film Goodfellas, he lives in suburban anonymity, although even here his mobile phone still rings with death threats.

 

"Taylor still has a lot of supporters," he told me, looking out over a street lined with station wagons, neatly kept lawns and garages with basketball hoops. "Nobody has done anything yet, but they tell me they know where my kids go to school."

 

Last week, though, on condition that his location was not disclosed, Mr Reeves agreed to an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, shedding first-hand light on the violent, sordid world that Ms Campbell became the chance beneficiary of during her meeting with Taylor at a party at Nelson Mandela's house in 1997.

 

While the supermodel professed almost complete ignorance of the blood gems trade, describing Taylor's gift only as "dirty pebbles", Mr Reeves saw its every facet: the psychotic rebel commanders who ran the mines, the traumatised civilians forced to work in them, and the networks of shady middlemen who connected the trade with the outside world, including arms dealers and alleged agents of both al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

 

His story begins at a more innocent time, however, back in the early 1980s, when Taylor, then a senior figure in Liberia's military government, married Mr Reeves's elder sister Agnes. Then, as now, Mr Reeves recalls his brother-in-law as someone who was generous with gifts but ruthless if crossed: the uniformed figure who would buy him ice cream and sweets once beat up one of Agnes's other suitors in front of him.

 

After being sacked for embezzlement and banished to the US, where he served time in jail, Taylor returned to Liberia to fight his way to power with a guerrilla army. During the 1990s he also backed the Revolutionary United Front rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone, whose troops were notorious for recruiting child soldiers into their ranks and mutilating civilians.

 

One reason for his support for such a brutal movement was that Taylor was a pal of the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, who had trained with him in Libya as part of Colonel Gaddafi's now defunct programme for grooming foreign revolutionaries.

 

Another, though, was that the RUF had seized control of some of the richest diamond fields in the world, Sierra Leone being one of the rare spots on the planet where they practically spring up out of the ground.   "A rough diamond looks a bit like a sugar lump, it's only when you wash it and the sunlight hits it that you see the gemstone beneath," said Mr Reeves, his eyes gleaming a little. "The diamonds from Sierra Leone are like no others. They are much less rough than those from Angola, South Africa or Australia – all they need is a little cutting."

 

While diamonds in other countries are mostly accessible only by mining firms, in Sierra Leone they can be dug by anyone with a spade and panning set. The result, in such a poor, weakly-governed country, has for decades been an anarchic free-for-all, from which criminal gangs and armed groups have grown powerful.

 

Ironically, it was to inject a little honesty and transparency into the business that Taylor first recruited his brother-in-law. The Liberian leader was already thought to be earning millions from the trade, funding a lifestyle that included designer suits, Mercedes cars, his own personal throne and at least 30 children by different women.

 

However, he grew exasperated at the way his diamond packages were often pilfered in transit, and turned to his relative as one of the few people he felt he could trust. From 1998 onwards, Mr Reeves would accompany a heavily armed convoy that would drive along the sunbaked tracks into Sierra Leone's RUF strongholds, trade weapons and ammunition for diamonds, and then ensure that every stone came home accounted for.

 

None of the parties involved in these deals were the kind of people whom it was wise to double-cross. On Mr Reeves's side was Taylor's diamond-buyer, a Senegalese-born jihadist who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and trained with Hezbollah, plus members of the president's feared "special security service". On the RUF side was commander Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie, a former disco-dancer and hairdresser known for his fondness for hacking off the limbs, ears and lips of his victims. His footsoldiers, meanwhile, had a fondness for drink and marijuana.

 

"Commanders would come in with parcels of diamonds wrapped in paper and tied with Scotch tape," said Mr Reeves. "We would meet in Bockarie's house and then stick a chair in the middle of the room for the diamonds to be counted on, with a white sheet draped underneath so that if any got dropped we could see them. Then I would declare how many we had received, and Bockarie would tell the commanders, 'Look, President Taylor's brother-in-law is here in person, so nothing is going to go missing'."

 

As Taylor's own emissary, Mr Reeves had little fear of being robbed en route: in his possession was a special ID card identifying him as a member of the First Family, which guaranteed him passage through any militia checkpoint, and warned that he should not be "molested" in any way.

 

Even so, he would never let the diamonds out of his sight. "At night, I would put them in my front pocket and sleep face down so that nobody could get at them, although any robber would have been crazy to try. The guards would have shot them if they saw so much as a movement in the bushes."

 

Back in the crumbling Liberian capital, Monrovia, Mr Reeves would deliver the packages to Taylor: in similar fashion to the delivery to Naomi Campbell, the president preferred the hand-over to be done in the small hours. The stones duly checked by an expert, Taylor would then call the international dealers he retained, who included members of the Lebanese diaspora that has long operated all over Africa, and Europeans connected to the diamond market in Antwerp.

 

All had a remarkable ability to summon millions of dollars in cash at short notice, although if they ran short, Taylor was always happy to help. On one occasion, when a buyer turned up with $240,000 in travellers' cheques, his security men forced a bank in Monrovia to cash the lot on the spot. "They didn't normally take travellers' cheques, but were told that this particular 'tourist' was special," Mr Reeves recalled.

 

On one occasion in 1999, Mr Reeves even accompanied a dealer to Antwerp, where a dozen local diamantaires were invited to submit sealed bids for a pile of stones laid out in the middle of a hotel room. The dealer pocketed $2.35 million that afternoon, with no questions asked. "It was long before anybody knew about blood diamonds," said Mr Reeve. "As far as they were concerned, there was nothing wrong at all."

 

He knew otherwise, having visited the RUF-controlled mines, where men, women and children were being conscripted to work in appalling conditions. "It was horrific – at one point I saw three or four guards beating a guy with their rifle butts just because he had stopped for a drink of water. They thought he was trying to steal a diamond, and at one point they were going to force-feed him laxative so that it would come out. When I saw that with my own eyes, I began to realise just how bad it all was."

 

Despite the danger it put him in, Mr Reeves quietly turned supergrass, working with prosecutors from the special court, and, allegedly, with Britain's M16. He handed them records of every transaction he had done, and during field trips began to gather evidence of the atrocities carried out by militia commanders. While he is not expected to give direct evidence to the Hague court, owing partly to a falling-out over the way court officials handled his witness protection provision, he is one of the key sources of information for a trial in which very few people have been brave enough to tell the truth. Among those who have been afraid to do so, he reckons, is Ms Campbell, who denied in court knowing that the stones she got were actually from Mr Taylor. "You could see the fear in her eyes, because she knows who Taylor is now," he said.

 

Mr Reeves was surprised to hear testimony that he told bodyguards to give her the diamonds in the middle of the night. "For one thing, she is a supermodel – strangers wouldn't be allowed to come knocking on her bedroom door just like that. And Taylor is a flamboyant character – he would want to give her the diamonds in person, because he liked impressing people.

 

If fact, if she hadn't been there, he would have probably given them to Nelson Mandela."

Zimbabwe's street-children challenge the illusion of change

Child scavengers in Harare bear tragic witness to how little has changed in a society brutalised by Robert Mugabe's cynical rule

• Tracy McVeigh in Harare  The Observer,  27.06.2010
• 
  

Kudzai Mupereki, 19, a homeless woman in Harare, is eight-months pregnant. Photograph: Tracy McVeigh

Rotting food scraps picked out of the dirt and the bins of the backstreets of Harare are piled together in a slimy heap on the ground with torn cardboard as a serving plate.

Elias, 15, squats and pushes both hands into the pile, scooping out a chunk of something pink. He gnaws on it, then shouts: "Dinner! Come and eat."

The other boys shush him. "The police will come," says Lloyd, "and we will have to run." There are more than 20 of them, gathered on a small piece of waste ground around a thin fire. The youngest is 8, the eldest 18. Lloyd used to have a blanket, but the police took it last time he was rounded up. He is among the older children who have been living on the streets since President Robert Mugabe's infamous Operation Murambatsvina, the slum clearances that began in 2005 and left hundreds homeless. But now they are seeing new, younger kids drifting in day after day from the countryside, looking for protection and a share of whatever has been scavenged or stolen or begged.

"Zimbabwean society is splintering, breaking, the family is not working the way it used to," said an official at the ministry of health. "The gap is increasing between the rich and the poor, the middle classes are moving out into the high-density suburbs where the poor used to live, and the poor are ending up on the streets."

At the Makumbi children's home, half an hour's drive from the city, Sister Alois is upset to report she has had to turn away three abandoned babies brought in by social workers in the last week.

"More and more children abandoned, it's not the African way. There are so many now. They are being left in the bush, some are eaten by the ants," said the nun, who has always been strict on taking in a manageable number of orphans to give each child the best possible chance: 10 children to each of her "house mothers". She says "poverty, and poverty leading to girls being abused", is the cause.

But after years of financial mismanagement at the hands of an ageing dictator and his corrupt cronies that saw this country decline into chaos amid food and energy shortages, sky-high inflation and political violence, Zimbabwe is entering a new era. In the two years since the election that nearly tore the country apart before resulting in a national unity government between Mugabe and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, there have been dramatic changes.

There is food on the shelves now, and the trillion-dollar banknotes are gone. Since 2009 citizens have been free to use the South African rand or the US dollar, and all do. A human rights commission has been sworn in. A media commission has licensed newspapers independent of government control and one, Newsday, began publishing this month. There are more cars on the road, some traffic lights work and the big four-wheeled drives no longer mainly have white faces behind the wheel. Vast diamond fields discovered at Marange have the potential to bring prosperity, and work on a new constitution is under way.

But what has really changed? Zimbabweans still top the world list of asylum-seekers. On Monday, Mugabe was ranked the world's second-worst dictator behind Kim Jong-il of North Korea, and Zimbabwe rated in the top 10 failed states.

The report by the US-based Fund for Peace stated: "Mugabe has arrested and tortured the opposition, squeezed his economy into astounding negative growth and billion-percent inflation, and funnelled off a juicy cut for himself using currency manipulation and offshore accounts."

On Thursday, the international watchdog, the Kimberley Process, failed to reach agreement on Zimbabwe's diamonds, concerned at human rights abuses and corruption. So the ban on the country exporting diamonds remains in place. And Mugabe's government remains disdainful of international opinion.

 The mines minister, Obert Mpofu, responded by saying Zimbabwe would sell them anyway. "Those of you who dream of regime change," he told his critics, "there will never be regime change in Zimbabwe. We fought for our liberation and we are ready to fight again."

Tsvangirai has been accused of ineffectual leadership, of doing the "Mugabe shuffle" – making small changes that mean nothing for the people. As one businessman told the Observer: "There is a saying in Shona, 'It's best to take an enemy inside your hut and there kill him'. That is what Mugabe has done to Tsvangirai. We are betrayed."

The government is in another paralysis of disagreement, with reports that Tsvangirai and Mugabe are not speaking. The state newspaper last week ran a front-page picture of the recently widowed Tsvangirai sitting near a woman it alleged was his new girlfriend. Rumours abound of MDC officials accepting farms from Mugabe just as he rewards the loyalty of his own Zanu-PF officials. The suggestion is denied vehemently, but worn-out Zimbabweans believe it.

The controversies and rumours are helping to raise the profile of a new player on the field. Zapu, the party of the late liberation hero Joshua Nkomo, has officially extricated itself from Zanu-PF and is showing signs of winning support outside its Matabeleland stronghold.

"Their pockets and their necks are getting fatter, there is no difference between the MDC and Zanu any more," Dr Dumiso Dabengwa, interim chairman of Zapu, said, insisting that cross-tribal support was already coming their way.

And while the political leaders are failing to fix a broken Zimbabwe, those who try to help on the streets are overwhelmed by the scale of the country's problems. A charity operating to help the growing bands of homeless children, Streets Ahead, is a drop-in day centre where kids can come and wash, attend art and drama classes, have a meal. Staff used to do night outreach work to find kids newly arrived on the city streets before the pimps and the abusers got to them, but donations are drying up. "So many kids we could take back home now, but we don't have the money or the truck to take them," said outreach worker Pauline Manigo, close to tears.

Duduzile Moyo, executive director of the centre, said: "We are soldiering on. The donations are scaling back big time, economic pressures everywhere. But it is the same pressures that are causing the problems that mean we cannot fix them." A census in August found 705 children living in Harare's city centre. "Poverty is the underlying cause and the economic downturn is making everything worse. We are seeing new kids arriving all the time now. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting very wide now."

A 34-year-old woman, in a retail management job, told of her despair that she was about to give up her small flat to move to the sprawling townships around the city where electricity and running water are seen as a luxury, not a necessity.

"I have always worked hard, always. But now I just don't know how I can manage any more, so I am going to have to move out. My wages have been cut and cut and now my rent is $300 a month and my income is $320.

"I am middle-class, my parents had a nice house, but if I want my kids to go to school then they're not going to have a nice house."

But her two children are still luckier than some. A few streets away, at a bus stop, a row of bodies are huddled under thin sheets. Connie Tatianashe is four months pregnant. Her three-year-old son sleeps by her side. They lost their home because her husband had to take a pay cut while the rents just kept on rising. Beside her, a shivering girl called Memory Muringai looks younger than the 13 she claims to be and has been here only a few days. So far none of the older boys has claimed her as a "girlfriend".

"I asked the bus driver and he brought me here, to Harare," she says. "My father died and my stepmother poured hot water on my back, so I ran away to find my aunt, but I can't find her. The shop owners gave me something to eat, but the boys chase me away. I am cold and I am scared."

The UK-based charity Street Invest supports Streets Ahead and other similar projects worldwide.

G20 summit: A moment missed  The Guardian,  29.06.2010  

It is not yet 15 months since the G20 economic powers met in London to co-ordinate global action against the financial crisis and the recession. But it feels more like 15 years. When the London summit ended, Gordon Brown invoked a shared sense of historic crisis and spoke grandly of the world coming together to deal with it. He promised long-lasting plans, with shining new global financial architecture supported by committed alliances. 

Prosperity was indivisible, he intoned. Global problems had to be addressed by global solutions. We were witnessing a new consensus among the nations, a common approach, and even the birth of a new world order laying the foundations of a progressive era of international co-operation.

How terribly 2009 all that now seems. Reading the Toronto G20 summit declaration and, even more, listening to David Cameron's report to MPs about the summit yesterday, it was difficult to accept that the new prime minister has just attended a meeting of the same group of nations.

The G20, once so unified and mighty in Mr Brown's vision, seemed to have shrunk in Mr Cameron's into a dull working seminar in which the participants gave their reports but let one another get on with their own national business. It was still the right forum for discussing vital economic issues, the prime minister allowed. But all the weekend summitry – which included a G8 meeting and a series of leaders' get-togethers in the margins – added up not so much to a new world order as to "a good opportunity to build Britain's bilateral relationships" – marred only by watching the football in the company of Chancellor Merkel. It says a lot about the new government's approach that MPs spent more of their time after listening to Mr Cameron's report talking about Afghanistan than they did about the world economy.

Mr Brown's inability to participate in any summit without boasting that it had all jumped to his masterly tune grew extremely wearisome. But Mr Cameron's general insouciance about the G20, while refreshing in a way and authentically Tory, risks going too far in the opposite direction. It is certainly no bad thing to jettison some of the excessive claims about the G20 process.

There is also a need, as the government is hinting, to scale down the cost and disruption of summitry generally. Yet there is little doubt that if the G20 did not exist it would have to be invented. It was born out of twin necessities – first to widen the share of responsibility for international financial decision-making from the industrial powers that made up the increasingly ineffective G8 and, second, to confront the collapse of the banking system and of world trade. Neither of these problems has gone away. Nor has the importance of an institution that can deal with the world's chronic economic imbalances on something more than a crisis management basis.

Mr Cameron's attempt to claim that the main outcome of the G20 was that the other 19 gave their blessing to British and European deficit reduction programmes is misleading. The Toronto text certainly signs off in a general sense on the fiscal consolidation in last week's budget. Yet the text also insists that such measures must be growth-friendly and repeats that the G20's highest priorities are to boost demand and rebalance growth. This is certainly not the impression that Mr Cameron, with his deficit cutting preoccupation, either gave or wished to give.

It all adds to the concern that the G20 has flunked too many big issues. Philosophical and practical divides about fiscal strategy are deeper than before. Other divisions continue between countries whose banks are healthy and those whose banks are not. It is hard not to feel that the Toronto G20 missed its moment. In the past the G20 aimed too high and promised too much. In 2010 the risk is the reverse, that it has aimed too low and promised too little for a still fragile and volatile global economy.

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades

•    John Vidal, environment editor   The Observer,  30.05.2010

A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that cris-cross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.

"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."

"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different."

"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

 

"This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper," he said.

It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.

One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.

According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.

Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.

Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98% of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure. "We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation," said a spokesman.

"We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur."

These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.

 

The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the environment. "Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime," said a spokesman for Nosdra.

The sense of outrage is widespread. "There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year," said Bassey. "It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm."

A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."

Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Activist Ben Amunwa, of the London-based oil watch group Platform, said: "Deepwater Horizon may have exceed Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret."

Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: "Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond."

Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care."

There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: "What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.

"It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the international court of justice."

The dig dividing Jerusalem

The search for the City of David may offer tourists a reminder of Jerusalem's ancient past. But for the Palestinians whose homes are threatened by the excavations, archaeology is merely the latest weapon being used against them 

•    Ahdaf Soueif   guardian.co.uk,  26.05.2010

•   Excavations in Silwan in the middle of Palestinian housing. Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton

If you walk out of Jerusalem Old City through its south-eastern gate and on to the perimeter road encircling it, you will most likely see several large coaches with elderly western tourists climbing out of them. You will see them stand at the low wall at the edge of the road and peer down into the lush valley with its pretty houses that nudge and lean against each other. The tourists may notice the woman marking exercise books on her sunny terrace, they may smile to see the bright-haired four-year-old riding her tricycle round the yard. Some of them will think of a favoured grandchild back in Kansas or Ottawa.

 

Now, if this were a scene in Italy, Spain, or even Turkey, we might have left it there: the tourists come, stare, spend money and go. But here their effect is devastating – and most of them don't even know it. For the town that nestles here, in this valley on the southern flank of Jerusalem, is Silwan, home to some 55,000 Palestinians, annexed by Israel along with east Jerusalem in 1967, and currently one of the hottest spots in the contest between the rights of the Palestinian townspeople and the plans that Israel has for the area – plans put into effect through a series of administrative measures, clandestine coalitions, and progressive-sounding projects. None of which could work without the funding that floods into Israel from the west.

 

What do the tourists know of this? These gentle, grey-haired folk have come here, on their Jewish National Fund coaches, to visit the archaeological dig for Ir David, the City of David, which, it is claimed, lies below the Wadi Helweh neighbourhood in Silwan and justifies the digging, the shafts and the tunnelling going on in the belly of the hill and under the homes of the people who live here.

 

Maryam puts aside the exercise books: "This road, from Jerusalem all the way down the valley, was a main road. People did good business here, if you had an ice-cream shop, a cafe, a barber, food shops, souvenirs. Then Elad came, the City of David Organisation; they take the people into their centre and they never see us."

 

Silwan, and particularly the beautiful Wadi Helweh – the Valley of Sweet [Water] – has always welcomed strangers. Traditionally, it has been the last resting spot for travellers approaching Jerusalem from the south and a favourite recreation area for Jerusalem's residents. People would come here for picnics, and in summer the cool caves of Ein Silwan spring were a much-loved playing space for children. Even now people ask if I am visiting Silwan for a shammet hawa, a breath of air, though there is hardly air to breathe with the dust and the noise Elad is generating.

 

Elad is an acronym in Hebrew meaning "To the City of David". Dedicated to "strengthening Israel's current and historic connection to Jerusalem", it was founded in 1986 by David Be'eri, who, "inspired by the longing of the Jewish people to return to Zion", left his elite army unit to set it up. For a long time Elad refused to reveal the names of its funders; eventually they submitted the names but successfully requested they be kept under privilege. Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich have been present at Elad events.

 

Elad set up a two-pronged strategy: to strengthen Israel's "connection to Jerusalem" they started to dig – under Silwan and into the land under the al-Aqsa mosque – for the biblical City of David and to create the Ir David tourist site. They called it "salvage excavation" to avoid getting official permits. The "salvage" has lasted for more than 10 years and Wadi Helweh's houses have started to sink into the hill.

 

To help "the Jewish people to return to Zion", in 1991 Be'eri started to acquire Palestinian property (supported by Ariel Sharon, then minister of construction and housing). His target was principally two Silwan neighbourhoods: Wadi Helweh and al-Bustan (the Garden).

 

The Abbasi family's home, with its nine apartments and two warehouses, was Be'eri's first target. Be'eri's wife, Michal, has described how he acquired it: "Davida'leh took a tour guide card and put in his picture, and for a long time he would take bogus tourists on a tour . . . and slowly he befriended Abbasi . . . Of course, it was all staged." In 1987, Elad pressured the government to declare the Abbasi house "absentee property" and in October 1991, Be'eri led a settler invasion of the house with the intruders singing and dancing and waving the Israeli flag on the roof at daybreak. The Abbasi family went to court and the Jerusalem district judge found "no factual or legal basis" for the takeover; indeed, he found it characterised by "an extreme lack of good faith". Yet still the property continues to be caught up in legal proceedings and Elad people continue to live in it – and to acquire more Palestinian property: to date Elad has gained control of a quarter of Wadi Helweh.

 

What is happening in Silwan is not unique; it is part and parcel of what is happening across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Only the specific tactics are different. Before I came to Silwan, I had been travelling in the West Bank for a week, noting how every Palestinian community has its appointed settlement, its stalking "other". There is hardly anywhere you can look up and not see a settlement lowering at you: bristling with barbed wire and flags and antennae and cameras and floodlights and – although you can't see them – arms.

 

Most scholars agree that, to this day, no evidence of the presence of Kings David or Solomon has been found at the site. But our group of elderly American tourists are spellbound by the stories they are hearing from Elad's guides, stories which are conjecture, projection and myth .

 

"I found a Byzantine water pit," Professor Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiquities Authority says. "They [Elad] said it was Jeremiah's pit. I told them that was nonsense." But for a long time the guides would tell the tourists that this was the hole Jeremiah was thrown into. Close to half a million visitors come here each year and are treated to the Elad version of history. Professor Binyamin Ze'ev Kedar, chair of the Israel Antiquities Authority Council, wrote in 2008: "The Israel Antiquities Authority is aware that Elad, an organisation with a declared ideological agenda, presents the history of the City of David in a biased manner."

 

None of this activity would have been possible without the support of the Israeli state. An Israeli activist tells me: "If you ask the Israeli government what is happening in Silwan, they say it's not a government matter; these are private people buying and moving in legally. But now [the east Jerusalem settlement of] Nof Zion is being built. The Zoning laws permit building there only on 37.5% of a piece of land. But Nof Zion has permission to build on 125% of the land! And inside Ras el-Amoud, above Silwan, they are building five-storey apartment blocks for settlers. But they refuse to allow Palestinian families to build a third floor on their house. A settler organisation buys a police station from the government. A bus line in Ma'ale Zeitim is diverted to serve a settlement. In Silwan, the City of David Organisation is telling the archaeologists where to dig and what to look for. So one has to ask the question with regard to the City of David Organisation and the state of Israel: which is the tail and which is the dog?"

 

A critically important study by the independent monitoring organisation, Ir Amim, reaches the same conclusion: "Elad, which is officially a private organisation, serves as a direct executive arm of the government of Israel, and enjoys comprehensive and deep backing by the Israeli administration." More chillingly, Doron Spillman, Elad's director of development, has said: ". . . We are almost a branch of the government of Israel, but without getting buried under government bureaucracy."

 

The main government project right now is for Jerusalem. And in Silwan and Jerusalem, on 12 May, Jerusalem Day, the day I visit, you can see it clearly. This morning, Silwan is blockaded by the police, and it's on alert. The settler, security, police and army vehicles racing up and down the roads are quietly monitored by the neighbourhood watch people. In the cafe at the bottom of the valley, three young men wipe tables and stock the fridge while keeping an eye on the jumpy young security guard who patrols in front of them.

"These are private security for the settlers. They don't go anywhere without them. They cost around 50m shekels a year. And they're paid for by the government. Out of taxes," says one of the young men.

 

"And the security are protected by the police, and the army's always round the corner. Just think what it's costing."

 

On the eve of Jerusalem Day celebrations, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: "Jerusalem is our city and we never compromised on that, not after the destruction of the First Holy Temple, nor after the destruction of the Second . . . There is no other nation that feels this deeply about a city."

 

Now, in the pleasant afternoon, I stand in the Solidarity Tent in al-Bustan with two men whose homes are among the 88 threatened with demolition to make way for an "archaeological garden in the spirit of the Second Temple".

 

"So they distribute bits of paper that say that since King David used to go for walks here, it's wrong that our houses should be here and it must just be a park. You notice that for them he is King David but for us he is el-Nabi Daoud: David the Prophet. So who holds him in higher esteem? Plus there's no evidence he ever walked here," says one.

 

"And what if he did? It was empty. You know, there's one thing we've held against our parents, our grandparents: that they left their land. They thought they'd be back in a couple of weeks. We don't have the excuse of ignorance. We are not leaving. And my children will not wash the dishes in their national park," says his friend.

 

In Silwan and Jerusalem, the conflation between settler rightwing ideology, government policy, big money, real estate interests and bad taste produces its unique blend of kitsch and nightmare. Under cover of excavation, massive infrastructure work is done in Wadi Helweh in preparation for the construction of a 115,000 sq m commercial centre, without a town plan scheme and without permits. The work stops only when it comes up against the foundations of Palestinian homes.

 

"The streets cave in," says one of the men. "You see that darker stretch of tarmac? We had to patch up the road. And the school: the floor of the classroom collapsed under the girls. Fourteen girls fell 2m into the tunnel they'd dug below the school. And we had to hush it up because they would have said the school was unsafe and closed it down." The Israeli military barricade continues to block Silwan's high street.

 

In Jerusalem earlier, I had seen thousands of young people who had been bused in from the settlements stream through the streets. Military police with guns and flack-jackets guard them. The Old City is closed – except to them. Women trying to take their children home are turned away from the gates of the city. Men carrying briefcases sit on raised pavements. More soldiers watch from the ramparts of the old city walls. From time to time the police come up to us: "You speak Hebrew?" No. "You speak English?" Yes. "Back! Move back!" A man standing next to us says maybe they want us to back off all the way to Spain. "Where are you from?" he asks me. Egypt. "Cairo?" Cairo. "May God forgive Cairo," he says.

 

Darkness settles. The Palestinian residents of Silwan feed their kids and hush them. They visit each other, chat, watch the news. In the cafe at the bottom of the hill the young men are courteous but not chatty. On their TV screen Alan Curbishley talks about the match that's about to start: the final of the Europa Cup. The young men keep one eye on the screen, the other, vigilant, is on their town. On the ledge above their heads, but hidden from their view, is the stage set up by Elad, with its "Lion of Zion" banners. And we can hear the amplified voices celebrating the three Israelis each being awarded the $50,000 "Lion of Zion" Moskowitz award for deeds that "deal with the challenges facing Israel in the fields of education, research, settlement, culture, security and more".

 

From the al-Aqsa mosque further above comes first the call for evening prayer, and then, for good measure, the Chapter of the Merciful: "Which then of our Lord's signs do you deny?" The lights in the Palestinian houses dot the hillside and the trees around the small cafe where I sit are also strung with fairy lights. In a layby 20m away an Israeli army personnel carrier stands poised, its blue lights flashing.

 

The Palestinians sense that Israel has moved from ihtilal to ihlal; from occupation to replacement, and that making life unlivable for Palestine's Palestinians is the prelude to transforming Palestine itself. This is what the money coming from the west will achieve. To see the future projected for Jerusalem, you need only visit the spanking new Jewish Quarter. Go into the Temple Shop and buy teatowels and doilies and puzzles featuring the Third Temple rising out of al-Haram al-Sharif in place of the Dome of the Rock. In this approaching future it will be impossible to look out at the landscape and think of continuity, or eternity.

 

In place of the old, mellow stone, of the interdependent structures, softened and polished by time, there will be the jagged and the new and the fake. In place of trodden paths along the valleys and children playing freely, there will be chairlifts and viewing points and fast food outlets and always, always the iron gates and the security checks and the ticket kiosks and the merchandising. In place of the thousands of stories laid down over the ages above, below and around each other, there will be one story – and it won't, actually, be the Jewish story, because the Jewish story in Jerusalem is indivisible from the Roman, the Byzantine, the Arab, the Muslim, the Christian. It will be a fake. Like the fake inscribed prayers or mezzuzas the settlers carve into the Arab houses when they take them over. Soon, in Jerusalem, if the world does not wake up, there will be one voice: the crash of the cash register.

 

© Ahdaf Soueif 2010. The writer is the author of Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

Michael Winner is a respected writer, film-maker and  food critic.  In his mid-70's, he is often provocative, creating an instant reaction from readers, tongue-in-cheek and self-opinionated, he makes me laugh.  His thoughts below on exercise machines for seniors in Hyde Park (London), amuse me and are shared for your enjoyment.

A playground for seniors? They must have a death wish!

   Feeling the strain: Michael Winner at the new Pensioners' Playground at Hyde Park in central London

•    Felicity Lawrence   guardian.co.uk,  26.05.2010

As biodiversity declines, China recalculates the value of its forests and other natural resources

Covering an area of 600 square kilometers in Hubei Province, Shennongjia Nature Reserve is famed for its high and elegant mountain peaks, limpid spring water and rare animals and plants. Photograph: Xinhua/Corbis

Amid all the doom and gloom during the past week about the global loss of biodiversity, there have been a couple of potentially positive steps forward by the usual villain of the piece: China.