Who needs the social sciences?
By STEVE FULLER
WHY are the social sciences so much more at risk of having their budgets cut than the other two great bodies of academic knowledge, the humanities and the natural sciences?
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher notoriously proposed that the field simply does not exist: There is no such thing as society, she claimed.
Others point to the restructuring of university social science departments. But the expansion of business schools arguably testifies to the continued vitality of the social sciences. Nor is it true that the social sciences belabour the obvious, as is sometimes said. On the contrary, today's commonplaces were yesterday's innovations.
Still, where are the social sciences in the vast conversation over 'human nature' that has been prompted by recent advances in cognitive neuroscience, behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology?
Check out the website (www.edge.org) devoted to the 'third culture' that bridges the humanities and the natural sciences. Social scientists are conspicuous by their absence. But what difference would their presence make?
It is often assumed that everyone recoils at the prospect that there are genetic limits to our capacity for change. Actually, only those imbued with the optimistic spirit of social science recoil. Everyone else is relieved.
In the 'third culture' bestseller, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature, Steven Pinker says we may need to admit a natural scientific basis for what humanists have for centuries called 'fate'. In other words, the configuration of our brains and genes may ultimately be out of our control, however deeply we come to understand them.
His message will appeal to those eager to avoid political reforms that would compel a greater sense of collective responsibility. After all, the social sciences historically offered empirical support and spiritual hope for just such reforms, which are increasingly dismissed as 'utopian'.
By contrast, the humanities and the natural sciences share a sense of reality that transcends time and place; hence their common interest in a fixed 'human nature'. This is tied to a way of thinking and a sense of knowing that is largely contemplative and sometimes even disempowering, as reality comes to seem to be whatever resists our concerted efforts at change. These two great academic cultures also prefer to study humanity without having to mingle with flesh-and-blood human beings.
Thus, evolutionary psychologists infer what makes us who we are from the remains of our Stone Age ancestors (including their DNA), whereas humanists focus on artefacts of a more recent and literate age.
In contrast, the social sciences adhere to the maxim that the best way to study humans is to interact with them, typically by getting them to do and say things that they might otherwise not. This profoundly simple idea, common to experiments and ethnographies, inspired the triumphs and disasters that punctuate modern politics.
It requires an increasingly controversial assumption: All human beings - whatever their competences, status or health - are equally significant members of society, whose strength lies in what they can do together.
The social sciences' egalitarianism runs counter to both the humanist fixation on elite 'classic' texts and the natural scientific tendency to generalise across species. Thus, social scientists made the everyday lives of ordinary people respectable, while refusing to privilege certain animals over certain - typically disabled or unwanted - humans. 'Welfare' occupies a pride of place in the social sciences that humanists and natural scientists replace with 'survival' and maybe even 'fortune'.
To be sure, the chequered history of welfare in the 20th century put the future of the social sciences in doubt. But a way forward can be found in T.H. Huxley, Charles Darwin's public defender. A late convert to evolution, he was a lifelong sceptic about the theory's political implications.
For Huxley, civilised society rose above nature by its systematic resistance to natural selection. In his words, the human condition is not about 'survival of the fittest' but 'the fitting of as many as can survive'.
Huxley identified humanity's achievements with legal conventions and medical technologies, artifices that extend human dominion by enabling people to be and do more than they could individually.
The future of the social sciences may lie in rekindling this coalition of law and medicine and upgrading the artificial in a world that may have come to overvalue nature.
The writer is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick and the author of Re-Imagining Sociology.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
This is a series of interesting articles on various issues such as politics, economics and society in general.
Friday, March 05, 2004
The rise of Shi'ite 'Petrolistan'
By MAI YAMANI
THE hideous bombings of the Shi'ite shrines in Karbala will neither change nor obscure a powerful new fact of life in the Middle East. Now that the dust of the Iraq war has settled, it is clear the Shi'ites have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, as the unexpected winners.
Governments that have oppressed the Shi'ites for decades may still be in denial about this, but the terrorists who planted those bombs are not. They recognise, as the Shi'ites now do, that across the Gulf, Shi'ite Muslims are gaining massively in political power, and have awakened to their ability both to organise themselves and to the gift that lies under their feet: oil.
After years of repression at the hands of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Shi'ites are tasting freedom - and spurring their religious counterparts throughout the Gulf to become more assertive.
They've also woken up to the accident of geography that has placed the world's major oil supplies in areas where they form the majority: Iran, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and southern Iraq. Welcome to the new commonwealth of 'Petrolistan'.
The newfound power of Shi'ite Muslims in this volatile region represents a major challenge both to the old Sunni ruling establishments - outside Iran - and to the United States. The years of Shi'ite subservience are over.
So what are the Shi'ites planning? What is their inspiration? Will bearded men in turbans and veiled women rule them, or will we see suits and high heels? If they want democracy, will anyone recognise it as such?
It wasn't until 1979 that the Shi'ites first appeared on Western radar screens, emerging in Iran at the head of a violent revolution that murdered thousands and dispatched the Shah into history. In Western eyes, the Shi'ites became the hostile and militant face of Islam, intent on exporting violence. Their Sunni counterparts, even the most fundamentalist Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, appeared tame in comparison. But the terrorist attacks on America of Sept 11, 2001, rewrote that idea for good.
The hijackers were all Sunni. Their hosts and backers, the Taleban, were also Sunni, as are all the prisoners at the US military base-turned-prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Sunni Muslims dominated Saddam's Baathist regime - and the so-called Sunni Triangle in central Iraq is the site of the fiercest hostility to the US-led occupation and its local supporters. In the space of but a few months, Sunni Muslims have replaced the Shi'ites as the biggest threat to the West and to international security.
For their part, Shi'ite minorities claim to welcome democracy. But then minorities - especially with a history of subjugation - always do (at least for a time), because it allows them to claim religious freedom and express their cultural identity.
In Saudi Arabia, the Shi'ites are at the forefront of those welcoming democratic change and participation. Although they constitute only 20 per cent of the total Saudi population, they form 75 per cent of the population in the oil-rich eastern region.
Saudi Arabia's Shi'ites have suffered discrimination in the professions: in the military, in high government positions, the diplomatic corps, and most significantly, in the oil industry, where they have been excluded since the 1980s. This systematic exclusion of the Shi'ites is supported by the Wahhabi religious establishment and legitimised by numerous fatwa denouncing them as heretics.
In Bahrain, the Shi'ites form 75 per cent of the population and have been keen on the reforms initiated by King Hamad. They have opted for political rule by the Sunni minority rather than associating with Iran's form of government. But the new generation of Bahraini Shi'ites are more militant, and their views are increasingly echoed by their counterparts in Saudi Arabia.
It was the threat of Shi'ite militancy, exported from Iran, which led the region's rulers to set up the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981 and attempt to pool their strengths. That move was too little too late. There was a coup attempt in Bahrain that same year, which came hard on the heels of a Shi'ite uprising in Saudi Arabia the year before.
Today, Iran no longer exports revolution. Its experiment with an Islamic form of democracy is now primarily an internal affair. In any case, none of the Iraqi ayatollahs who were once exiled in Iran seems to have any inclination to adopt the Iranian model.
So far the Shi'ites in Iraq have been relatively quiet, watching the de-Baathification process and biding their time. But since the capture of Saddam, they have become increasingly assertive. It is at the insistence of the Shi'ites that the US has had to continually rewrite its blueprint for Iraq.
After being the region's losers for decades, the Shi'ites now have the chance to redress the balance, settle old scores - and control the wealth of 'Petrolistan'. But they won't succeed without a struggle - as the odious bombings in Karbala demonstrate.
The writer is an author and research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
By MAI YAMANI
THE hideous bombings of the Shi'ite shrines in Karbala will neither change nor obscure a powerful new fact of life in the Middle East. Now that the dust of the Iraq war has settled, it is clear the Shi'ites have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, as the unexpected winners.
Governments that have oppressed the Shi'ites for decades may still be in denial about this, but the terrorists who planted those bombs are not. They recognise, as the Shi'ites now do, that across the Gulf, Shi'ite Muslims are gaining massively in political power, and have awakened to their ability both to organise themselves and to the gift that lies under their feet: oil.
After years of repression at the hands of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Shi'ites are tasting freedom - and spurring their religious counterparts throughout the Gulf to become more assertive.
They've also woken up to the accident of geography that has placed the world's major oil supplies in areas where they form the majority: Iran, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and southern Iraq. Welcome to the new commonwealth of 'Petrolistan'.
The newfound power of Shi'ite Muslims in this volatile region represents a major challenge both to the old Sunni ruling establishments - outside Iran - and to the United States. The years of Shi'ite subservience are over.
So what are the Shi'ites planning? What is their inspiration? Will bearded men in turbans and veiled women rule them, or will we see suits and high heels? If they want democracy, will anyone recognise it as such?
It wasn't until 1979 that the Shi'ites first appeared on Western radar screens, emerging in Iran at the head of a violent revolution that murdered thousands and dispatched the Shah into history. In Western eyes, the Shi'ites became the hostile and militant face of Islam, intent on exporting violence. Their Sunni counterparts, even the most fundamentalist Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, appeared tame in comparison. But the terrorist attacks on America of Sept 11, 2001, rewrote that idea for good.
The hijackers were all Sunni. Their hosts and backers, the Taleban, were also Sunni, as are all the prisoners at the US military base-turned-prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Sunni Muslims dominated Saddam's Baathist regime - and the so-called Sunni Triangle in central Iraq is the site of the fiercest hostility to the US-led occupation and its local supporters. In the space of but a few months, Sunni Muslims have replaced the Shi'ites as the biggest threat to the West and to international security.
For their part, Shi'ite minorities claim to welcome democracy. But then minorities - especially with a history of subjugation - always do (at least for a time), because it allows them to claim religious freedom and express their cultural identity.
In Saudi Arabia, the Shi'ites are at the forefront of those welcoming democratic change and participation. Although they constitute only 20 per cent of the total Saudi population, they form 75 per cent of the population in the oil-rich eastern region.
Saudi Arabia's Shi'ites have suffered discrimination in the professions: in the military, in high government positions, the diplomatic corps, and most significantly, in the oil industry, where they have been excluded since the 1980s. This systematic exclusion of the Shi'ites is supported by the Wahhabi religious establishment and legitimised by numerous fatwa denouncing them as heretics.
In Bahrain, the Shi'ites form 75 per cent of the population and have been keen on the reforms initiated by King Hamad. They have opted for political rule by the Sunni minority rather than associating with Iran's form of government. But the new generation of Bahraini Shi'ites are more militant, and their views are increasingly echoed by their counterparts in Saudi Arabia.
It was the threat of Shi'ite militancy, exported from Iran, which led the region's rulers to set up the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981 and attempt to pool their strengths. That move was too little too late. There was a coup attempt in Bahrain that same year, which came hard on the heels of a Shi'ite uprising in Saudi Arabia the year before.
Today, Iran no longer exports revolution. Its experiment with an Islamic form of democracy is now primarily an internal affair. In any case, none of the Iraqi ayatollahs who were once exiled in Iran seems to have any inclination to adopt the Iranian model.
So far the Shi'ites in Iraq have been relatively quiet, watching the de-Baathification process and biding their time. But since the capture of Saddam, they have become increasingly assertive. It is at the insistence of the Shi'ites that the US has had to continually rewrite its blueprint for Iraq.
After being the region's losers for decades, the Shi'ites now have the chance to redress the balance, settle old scores - and control the wealth of 'Petrolistan'. But they won't succeed without a struggle - as the odious bombings in Karbala demonstrate.
The writer is an author and research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Thursday, March 04, 2004
FOCUS ON JAPAN'S ECONOMY
Is the sun really rising?
It would be foolish to take Japan's recent promising economic growth indicators at face value, but some things really do seem different this time round, despite what cynics say
DAVID PILLING
FINANCIAL TIMES
ANYONE would think Japan had become the world's latest tiger economy. According to official figures, gross domestic product rose 7 per cent in real, deflation-adjusted terms in the fourth quarter - a rate of growth not seen since the intoxicating 1980s. The January trade surplus, swollen by shipments to China, rose almost fivefold from last year as exporters brushed aside the effects of a strengthening yen.
Moreover, the benefits of an export-led recovery are beginning to filter into the job market. Unemployment has fallen from a post-war peak of 5.5 per cent in January last year to 4.9 per cent in December. Corporate profits have surged, while wages have stabilised after years of decline. Figures published recently showed that overtime pay rose 4.5 per cent in January, the 18th consecutive month of improvement.
The Nikkei stock average, which has clawed its way back to 11,300, is 50 per cent above last April's post-bubble lows - easing the pressure on institutions such as life assurers and banks, which hold large amounts of equity.
Last year's talk of spiralling deflation, or an imminent collapse of the financial system under the weight of non-performing loans, now seems like absurd scaremongering.
Mr Horst Kohler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was waxing lyrical when he visited Tokyo last week. Normally a sharp critic of Japan's half-hearted policy response to a decade of slowdown, Mr Kohler admitted that the latest growth figures had taken him and his organisation by surprise.
'Japan's economic prospects have clearly brightened,' he said. The IMF now expected real GDP this year to grow by 3 per cent or more, higher than its original forecast of 2.2 per cent. 'I am confident that continued efforts to carry out structural reforms will lead to sustained growth over the coming years.'
WEAKNESSES STILL THERE
CYNICS, in contrast, say much of the current strong cyclical upsurge has been possible because potentially debilitating economic restructuring has been left on the back burner.
Witness last year's US$17 billion (S$29 billion) bailout of the bank Resona - a blow to the purists who would have liked to see it collapse - or the government's relative lack of progress on much-trumpeted reforms such as privatisation of the road corporations and post office.
Further evidence of a reluctance to allow a private-sector resolution of Japan's post-bubble debt overhang came last month when the Industrial Revitalisation Corp of Japan, a government-funded restructuring agency, swooped in to rescue the struggling Kanebo conglomerate. That thwarted the plans of Kao, a home products company, to buy its rival's cosmetics business.
If serious government reform has been postponed and Japan is merely riding on the back of the juggernaut that is China, is this recovery doomed to evaporate like other post-bubble mirages?
Mr Paul Sheard, chief economist at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo, thinks there is a danger of that.
'There's a lot of deja vu here. This is the third recovery since the bubble,' he said. 'When the last recovery petered out, a policy consensus emerged that just trying to row out of problems on the tide of a cyclical recovery doesn't work.'
Mr Sheard argues that Japan may be doomed to slip back into economic coma unless it solves its structural problems. He favours starting by fixing the banking sector's weaknesses, which he considers the biggest single impediment to credit creation, effective monetary policy and growth.
Other economists support stimulating domestic demand through deregulation, or painful corporate restructuring by elimination of the so-called 'zombie' companies that are blamed for sapping Japan's economic lifeblood.
Whatever the precise mix of structural reform, says Mr Sheard, 'whether this (cyclical upswing) translates into a sustainable recovery depends on policy follow-through necessary to address Japan's macro and microeconomic problems'.
SOME DIFFERENCES THIS TIME
INDEED, with many reasons for caution, it would be foolish to take recent headline growth figures at face value. But some things really do seem different this time round.
For a start, unlike the recoveries of the 1990s, this one has not been started by lavish government spending. Although the annual budget deficit is still running at a worrying 8 per cent of GDP, the government has been paring discretionary spending and raising taxes to pay for non-discretionary items such as social security.
In the absence of government-led stimulation, companies have been taking matters into their own hands. Mr Masamoto Yashiro, chairman of Shinsei, a rescued bank whose successful initial public offering in Tokyo last month has become symbolic of corporate revitalisation, says many Japanese companies have spent several years quietly getting back into shape.
According to Mr Yashiro, years after the bubble burst, most businesses were still postponing tough decisions, convinced asset prices would recover and their problems would float away.
Since the late 1990s, he says, prodded by the need to compete with China and by the realisation that Japan's years of easy growth were over, they had been disposing of non-core businesses, shifting production abroad and paying down borrowings. Merrill Lynch estimates that, at this rate, corporate debt will be back to pre-bubble levels within two years.
Ms Naoko Tanaka, an adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, says firms have funded recent increases in capital spending without recourse to the banks - either through cash flow or by tapping the capital markets. In short, Japanese companies are financially fitter and far better positioned to take advantage of external demand.
Banks, too, have been gradually repairing their balance sheets, albeit at the cost of a sharp contraction of their loan books. 'The banks can no longer afford to keep bailing out weak companies,' says Mr Yashiro. 'If they do, they know they will be nationalised and the managers will lose their jobs,' he adds, referring to the fate of Ashikaga, a recently nationalised regional bank, and Resona.
The final cause for optimism is a more promising macro-policy stance. Previous nascent recoveries have been snuffed out by government blunders, such as the confidence-sapping increase in sales tax in 1997 and the premature tightening of monetary policy in 2001. This time round, politicians and bureaucrats are more sensitive to the dangers. Fiscal policy is mildly - but only very mildly - contractionary. Meanwhile, the central bank has pledged to keep zero-interest rates in place until inflation is well entrenched, the nearest thing Japan has had to an inflation target since the rot of deflation set in nearly a decade ago.
REASONS FOR CAUTION
NONE of this means Japan's problems are solved yet. For one thing, the headline GDP numbers that are causing so much excitement are highly misleading. Economists have become used to thinking of growth in real terms because this takes into account the distorting effects of inflation. But in a deflationary economy, it makes more sense to think in nominal terms.
Thus, even though Japan has grown sporadically in deflation-adjusted terms, the nominal size of the economy has been shrinking almost constantly since 1997. In these conditions, working out 'real' growth has become almost entirely a function of accurately calculating a measure of deflation, something Japan has had great difficulty in doing. The latest figures showing 'real' growth of 7 per cent were flattered by supposed (almost certainly exaggerated) price falls of 4.4 per cent, putting nominal growth at a more humble 2.6 per cent.
Even the nominal number is not all it seems because of Japan's practice of taking the quarter-on-quarter GDP number and annualising it. Comparing one quarter's growth with that of the previous year, Japan is in fact growing in nominal terms at 0.9 per cent, says Mr Peter Tasker, who runs Arcus Investment, a hedge fund in Tokyo.
The second reason for caution is that Japan's recovery, like those before it, leans heavily on exports. It is true about two-thirds of recent growth has been accounted for by private investment. But most economists say this is almost overwhelmingly due to capital investment by export-oriented companies.
ING calculates that as much as 80 per cent of the export improvement is thanks to China, which has surpassed the United States as Japan's biggest trading partner. Some of those shipments may be supplying Japanese factories in China and therefore ultimately destined for the US. In any case, Japan remains extremely vulnerable to an external shock, whether it be a slowdown in the US or in China itself.
Japan's need to keep exports booming has been reflected in unprecedented levels of foreign currency intervention aimed at preventing the yen from appreciating too rapidly against a sliding US dollar. Last year, Japan spent an astonishing US$180 billion on propping up the dollar, three times the previous record. This year, it has already pitched in an estimated US$90 billion.
Yet, signs of the export performance feeding through to the domestic economy are patchy. In spite of falling unemployment, consumer spending, which accounts for more than 55 per cent of GDP, has remained almost flat.
Throughout recent downturns, Japanese households have tried to maintain their living standards by dipping into their savings. That has led to concern that even during a sustained upturn, households will not increase spending but, rather, take the opportunity to replenish their savings.
Mr Takuya Goto, president of Kao, says there is still little sign of recovery in consumer sentiment. 'It's not that there's no money around,' he says. 'But people are anxious about the future, about pensions and so on.'
Mr Motoya Okada, president of Aeon, Japan's second biggest retailer, is equally cautious. 'It is the export-led industries that are pulling Japan up,' he says. The best-performing of Aeon's 300 stores are in areas where big exporters, particularly car-makers such as Toyota and Honda, are located.
'Japan must evolve from this dependence on exports,' says Mr Okada, who argues that more must be done to release domestic demand. 'But right now, we need this (export-led) push. It is a necessary evil.'
GOOD CHANCE FOR RECOVERY
THESE structural weaknesses aside, if external conditions remain favourable for long enough, Japan has a unique opportunity to turn the corner. That is because deflation - notwithstanding the freak -4.4 number in recent GDP data - is easing substantially by most measures. Last October, the consumer price index nudged into positive territory for the first time in five years, although it has since slipped fractionally below the surface again.
If Japan could finally move into inflation, says Mr Sheard, it might be able to manage, say, 3 per cent real growth and 5 per cent nominal growth a year. For most observers, this benign scenario would be the best way for Japan to float gently free of its bubble-related debt overhang.
'The recovery is still fragile. But at last we are beginning to restore economic confidence,' says Mr Okada. 'If this goes on long enough, everything should gradually come right. It has taken us 10 years to get here.'
Pessimists say that letting time take care of the bubble aftermath will do little to solve Japan's most intractable problems - such as that Japan still saves more than it can usefully invest; that its public debt has ballooned to an eye-popping 140 per cent of GDP; and that its population is among the fastest-ageing in the developed world.
But if Japan can get over the hill to the inflationary high ground, at least it will be able to put its bubble-related difficulties behind it - and start tackling the problems of its present and future.
Is the sun really rising?
It would be foolish to take Japan's recent promising economic growth indicators at face value, but some things really do seem different this time round, despite what cynics say
DAVID PILLING
FINANCIAL TIMES
ANYONE would think Japan had become the world's latest tiger economy. According to official figures, gross domestic product rose 7 per cent in real, deflation-adjusted terms in the fourth quarter - a rate of growth not seen since the intoxicating 1980s. The January trade surplus, swollen by shipments to China, rose almost fivefold from last year as exporters brushed aside the effects of a strengthening yen.
Moreover, the benefits of an export-led recovery are beginning to filter into the job market. Unemployment has fallen from a post-war peak of 5.5 per cent in January last year to 4.9 per cent in December. Corporate profits have surged, while wages have stabilised after years of decline. Figures published recently showed that overtime pay rose 4.5 per cent in January, the 18th consecutive month of improvement.
The Nikkei stock average, which has clawed its way back to 11,300, is 50 per cent above last April's post-bubble lows - easing the pressure on institutions such as life assurers and banks, which hold large amounts of equity.
Last year's talk of spiralling deflation, or an imminent collapse of the financial system under the weight of non-performing loans, now seems like absurd scaremongering.
Mr Horst Kohler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was waxing lyrical when he visited Tokyo last week. Normally a sharp critic of Japan's half-hearted policy response to a decade of slowdown, Mr Kohler admitted that the latest growth figures had taken him and his organisation by surprise.
'Japan's economic prospects have clearly brightened,' he said. The IMF now expected real GDP this year to grow by 3 per cent or more, higher than its original forecast of 2.2 per cent. 'I am confident that continued efforts to carry out structural reforms will lead to sustained growth over the coming years.'
WEAKNESSES STILL THERE
CYNICS, in contrast, say much of the current strong cyclical upsurge has been possible because potentially debilitating economic restructuring has been left on the back burner.
Witness last year's US$17 billion (S$29 billion) bailout of the bank Resona - a blow to the purists who would have liked to see it collapse - or the government's relative lack of progress on much-trumpeted reforms such as privatisation of the road corporations and post office.
Further evidence of a reluctance to allow a private-sector resolution of Japan's post-bubble debt overhang came last month when the Industrial Revitalisation Corp of Japan, a government-funded restructuring agency, swooped in to rescue the struggling Kanebo conglomerate. That thwarted the plans of Kao, a home products company, to buy its rival's cosmetics business.
If serious government reform has been postponed and Japan is merely riding on the back of the juggernaut that is China, is this recovery doomed to evaporate like other post-bubble mirages?
Mr Paul Sheard, chief economist at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo, thinks there is a danger of that.
'There's a lot of deja vu here. This is the third recovery since the bubble,' he said. 'When the last recovery petered out, a policy consensus emerged that just trying to row out of problems on the tide of a cyclical recovery doesn't work.'
Mr Sheard argues that Japan may be doomed to slip back into economic coma unless it solves its structural problems. He favours starting by fixing the banking sector's weaknesses, which he considers the biggest single impediment to credit creation, effective monetary policy and growth.
Other economists support stimulating domestic demand through deregulation, or painful corporate restructuring by elimination of the so-called 'zombie' companies that are blamed for sapping Japan's economic lifeblood.
Whatever the precise mix of structural reform, says Mr Sheard, 'whether this (cyclical upswing) translates into a sustainable recovery depends on policy follow-through necessary to address Japan's macro and microeconomic problems'.
SOME DIFFERENCES THIS TIME
INDEED, with many reasons for caution, it would be foolish to take recent headline growth figures at face value. But some things really do seem different this time round.
For a start, unlike the recoveries of the 1990s, this one has not been started by lavish government spending. Although the annual budget deficit is still running at a worrying 8 per cent of GDP, the government has been paring discretionary spending and raising taxes to pay for non-discretionary items such as social security.
In the absence of government-led stimulation, companies have been taking matters into their own hands. Mr Masamoto Yashiro, chairman of Shinsei, a rescued bank whose successful initial public offering in Tokyo last month has become symbolic of corporate revitalisation, says many Japanese companies have spent several years quietly getting back into shape.
According to Mr Yashiro, years after the bubble burst, most businesses were still postponing tough decisions, convinced asset prices would recover and their problems would float away.
Since the late 1990s, he says, prodded by the need to compete with China and by the realisation that Japan's years of easy growth were over, they had been disposing of non-core businesses, shifting production abroad and paying down borrowings. Merrill Lynch estimates that, at this rate, corporate debt will be back to pre-bubble levels within two years.
Ms Naoko Tanaka, an adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, says firms have funded recent increases in capital spending without recourse to the banks - either through cash flow or by tapping the capital markets. In short, Japanese companies are financially fitter and far better positioned to take advantage of external demand.
Banks, too, have been gradually repairing their balance sheets, albeit at the cost of a sharp contraction of their loan books. 'The banks can no longer afford to keep bailing out weak companies,' says Mr Yashiro. 'If they do, they know they will be nationalised and the managers will lose their jobs,' he adds, referring to the fate of Ashikaga, a recently nationalised regional bank, and Resona.
The final cause for optimism is a more promising macro-policy stance. Previous nascent recoveries have been snuffed out by government blunders, such as the confidence-sapping increase in sales tax in 1997 and the premature tightening of monetary policy in 2001. This time round, politicians and bureaucrats are more sensitive to the dangers. Fiscal policy is mildly - but only very mildly - contractionary. Meanwhile, the central bank has pledged to keep zero-interest rates in place until inflation is well entrenched, the nearest thing Japan has had to an inflation target since the rot of deflation set in nearly a decade ago.
REASONS FOR CAUTION
NONE of this means Japan's problems are solved yet. For one thing, the headline GDP numbers that are causing so much excitement are highly misleading. Economists have become used to thinking of growth in real terms because this takes into account the distorting effects of inflation. But in a deflationary economy, it makes more sense to think in nominal terms.
Thus, even though Japan has grown sporadically in deflation-adjusted terms, the nominal size of the economy has been shrinking almost constantly since 1997. In these conditions, working out 'real' growth has become almost entirely a function of accurately calculating a measure of deflation, something Japan has had great difficulty in doing. The latest figures showing 'real' growth of 7 per cent were flattered by supposed (almost certainly exaggerated) price falls of 4.4 per cent, putting nominal growth at a more humble 2.6 per cent.
Even the nominal number is not all it seems because of Japan's practice of taking the quarter-on-quarter GDP number and annualising it. Comparing one quarter's growth with that of the previous year, Japan is in fact growing in nominal terms at 0.9 per cent, says Mr Peter Tasker, who runs Arcus Investment, a hedge fund in Tokyo.
The second reason for caution is that Japan's recovery, like those before it, leans heavily on exports. It is true about two-thirds of recent growth has been accounted for by private investment. But most economists say this is almost overwhelmingly due to capital investment by export-oriented companies.
ING calculates that as much as 80 per cent of the export improvement is thanks to China, which has surpassed the United States as Japan's biggest trading partner. Some of those shipments may be supplying Japanese factories in China and therefore ultimately destined for the US. In any case, Japan remains extremely vulnerable to an external shock, whether it be a slowdown in the US or in China itself.
Japan's need to keep exports booming has been reflected in unprecedented levels of foreign currency intervention aimed at preventing the yen from appreciating too rapidly against a sliding US dollar. Last year, Japan spent an astonishing US$180 billion on propping up the dollar, three times the previous record. This year, it has already pitched in an estimated US$90 billion.
Yet, signs of the export performance feeding through to the domestic economy are patchy. In spite of falling unemployment, consumer spending, which accounts for more than 55 per cent of GDP, has remained almost flat.
Throughout recent downturns, Japanese households have tried to maintain their living standards by dipping into their savings. That has led to concern that even during a sustained upturn, households will not increase spending but, rather, take the opportunity to replenish their savings.
Mr Takuya Goto, president of Kao, says there is still little sign of recovery in consumer sentiment. 'It's not that there's no money around,' he says. 'But people are anxious about the future, about pensions and so on.'
Mr Motoya Okada, president of Aeon, Japan's second biggest retailer, is equally cautious. 'It is the export-led industries that are pulling Japan up,' he says. The best-performing of Aeon's 300 stores are in areas where big exporters, particularly car-makers such as Toyota and Honda, are located.
'Japan must evolve from this dependence on exports,' says Mr Okada, who argues that more must be done to release domestic demand. 'But right now, we need this (export-led) push. It is a necessary evil.'
GOOD CHANCE FOR RECOVERY
THESE structural weaknesses aside, if external conditions remain favourable for long enough, Japan has a unique opportunity to turn the corner. That is because deflation - notwithstanding the freak -4.4 number in recent GDP data - is easing substantially by most measures. Last October, the consumer price index nudged into positive territory for the first time in five years, although it has since slipped fractionally below the surface again.
If Japan could finally move into inflation, says Mr Sheard, it might be able to manage, say, 3 per cent real growth and 5 per cent nominal growth a year. For most observers, this benign scenario would be the best way for Japan to float gently free of its bubble-related debt overhang.
'The recovery is still fragile. But at last we are beginning to restore economic confidence,' says Mr Okada. 'If this goes on long enough, everything should gradually come right. It has taken us 10 years to get here.'
Pessimists say that letting time take care of the bubble aftermath will do little to solve Japan's most intractable problems - such as that Japan still saves more than it can usefully invest; that its public debt has ballooned to an eye-popping 140 per cent of GDP; and that its population is among the fastest-ageing in the developed world.
But if Japan can get over the hill to the inflationary high ground, at least it will be able to put its bubble-related difficulties behind it - and start tackling the problems of its present and future.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Battling sexual addiction
Millions of Americans suffer from disorder, experts say
Dateline NBC
Dr. Patrick Carnes, director of sexual disorders services at Arizona's Meadows Treatment Center, describes what makes a person a sex addict as opposed to someone who just likes sex.
By Keith Morrison
“Daily, I sit down with people who look back at the wreckage in their life and say, knowing all along, ‘Why would I do this stuff?’" says Dr. Patrick Carnes, director of sexual disorders services at Arizona's Meadows Treatment Center, which first coined the term "sexual addiction."
Carnes says the same way that people can become addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling, they can become addicted to sex, anything from Internet sex to obsessive masturbation to affairs.
What makes a sex addict?
How do experts tell what makes a person a sex addict as opposed to someone who just likes sex?
“You look for the obvious things, like bad things happening, knowing that you are doing something that is going to hurt you so you make efforts to stop that don't work,” says Carnes. “Obviously, you’ve got a problem.”
“There was that selfish needy, lonely, angry part of myself that didn't want to stop and saw that sex was my solution to other things,” says Mark Laaser, who had an insatiable need for secret sex. To anyone who knew him, it would have seemed incomprehensible. Laaser, a minister and counselor, was married with children and an icon of respect. But that wasn't enough.
Mark says that early on he felt an emptiness, a loneliness that sex seemed to fill. “It was just an excitement, a raw excitement -- kind of like what a drug addict would describe,” he says. “It was just a high.”
It was a high Laaser started experiencing at a young age. When he was 11, he says he discovered pictures -- what he'd call soft porn now.
“And some of that is not abnormal for a person seeing that for the first time,” he says. “Of course when it becomes abnormal is how preoccupied you get with it.”
Laaser was so fixated by what he saw, he started stealing Playboy magazines from the local drugstore.
“And then also for me, I started crossing moral boundaries almost right away … Stealing magazines -- and I’m a preacher's kid, a minister's son,” says Laaser. “So I knew that stealing was bad. But I was willing to go ahead with it because the high was so fantastic of what I was experiencing.”
'I wanted to act it out'
In high school, Laaser hoped his behavior might stop when he met Debbie, the girl he thought could change him.
“There was a part of myself that she just didn't know because I wasn't revealing it to her or anybody for that matter,” says Laaser. He wasn't revealing that he was now doing more than looking at magazines. He was watching porn videos and masturbating daily. Debbie, unaware of Mark's double life, trusted him and they got married. Mark hoped that married life would bring an end to a life preoccupied by sex.
“All this crazy stuff in the past, that will be over now. I’m getting married. I'll have a regular sexual partner and so forth,” says Laaser. “But I was amazed early on, even in the first year of marriage, that my temptation to masturbate and look at pornography returned rather quickly.”
A lot of people think human beings are preoccupied by sex a lot of time, so what could be so unusual about his feelings?
“The part that was unusual was where my mind tended to go with it,” says Laaser. “I wanted to experience it. I wanted to act it out. Eventually I had a lot of preoccupation with planning or doing or thinking what it would be like.”
Laaser soon was no longer planning, but doing, paying monthly visits to massage parlors, having sex with so-called "masseuses,” all the while hiding it from his wife Debbie, whom Laaser says he still loved deeply.
“I was always completely attracted to her,” says Laaser. “There was just something so much deeper in me that cannot be satisfied by sex.”
He says something deeply emotional was missing, and he wondered why he couldn't just stop.
'Wracked with shame'
“I was wracked with shame and tried time and time again to stop,” says Marnie Ferree, who like Laaser, knows what it's like to be out of control of her sexual feelings. For Ferree, it wasn't so much about sex itself, but about the relationships she thought she could have by engaging in sex with acquaintances and friends.
“The sexual part was pleasurable and it was a nice byproduct for me, but that wasn't the most important thing,” says Ferree. “I was trying to get non-sexual needs met sexually and that was the only way I knew how to meet those needs.”
Ferree says that as a child, she was sexually abused by a family friend, a common precursor to later addiction. Ferree’s promiscuity lasted from her teen years through two marriages, with numerous affairs in between. She felt an emotional void that she says sex filled -- at least initially.
“At the time there is an incredible adrenaline rush,” says Ferree. “It’s a connection that I found I couldn't replicate anywhere else. But immediately after that experience is over, I mean driving back home, there is this incredible let down and you're just in a wash of shame.”
That shame that worsened after Ferree was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The cause, she was told, was HPV, a sexually transmitted disease.
“That was the lowest point,” says Ferree. “I experienced three surgeries in a year as treatment of that cervical cancer. Had a major hemorrhaging after one of those surgeries. I mean my life was literally in danger and I found still that I could not stop.”
Thoughts of suicide
Ferree was sick, married and a mother, yet none of those things could make her change, even though she was horrified by what she was doing.
“It's about feeling rotten,” says Ferree. “I want to feel better. What way am I going through a ritual to feel better? I’m connecting with someone, I’m going to act out sexually. I feel horrible after that and the whole cycle starts over again.”
Ferree was desperate. Sex with her husband was not enough, and she believed the only way to stop having sex outside her marriage was to end her life.
“I had really strong suicidal thoughts,” says Ferree. “But I knew I couldn't keep on living but I was too afraid to die.”
Another woman, who calls herself “Karen,” was also overtaken by sexual addiction and by her own shame, so raw that she asked Dateline NBC to hide her face and use a different name.
“It’s just this 24-hour distraction,” she says. “Like the shame that it causes, I feel like it just stole my soul.”
Karen is in her '30s, single, and for almost as long as she can remember she's been preoccupied with finding love. For years, she says, this meant having sex several times a week with strangers she would pick up in bars, frequently putting herself in dangerous situations.
“I ended up going home with a group of guys like 10 years younger than me,” says Karen, “and I figured I would have sex with one of them and maybe have a relationship. But I ended up having sex or doing sexual things with several of them. And that was a new low … Absolutely humiliated. What horrified me the most about it is that these guys were graffiti writers and they wrote on my body and that's what made me feel like, oh my God, I was just completely used as an object.”
Karen even found herself contemplating prostitution. “That actually seemed like a logical thing to do since I found myself having sex with people I didn't know anyway,” she says. “And I kind of became obsessed with some ads in the back of a free newspaper for escort services and I went on a couple of interviews.”
'I was frightened, incredibly frightened'
Laaser was also building toward behavior he would never have thought was possible for him.
He had degrees in religion and divinity, had attended seminary school, was a deeply committed Christian and had been ordained as a minister. “There was that good side. There was that moral side. There was that caring side,” says Laaser.
And yet, he'd escape, feeling furtive and guilty, to feed his sexual addiction. At the same time, he was working on getting his Ph.D. in, of all things, psychology.
“Now I’m the Rev. Dr. Laaser,” he says, “and there are people that are going to be attracted to that and I actually wound up becoming sexual with some of my clients at that time. … It happened multiple times over a 10-year period. … [I was] frightened, incredibly frightened … I think for years I felt totally worthless. I can’t describe to you the times I would sit in church, even preaching on a Sunday morning, thinking God's grace was for everybody else but certainly not for me.”
Laaser was preaching redemption, but for him, redemption might be more difficult. He betrayed parishioners, colleagues and clients. It was a trust that was about to be shattered.
“One of the people I was involved in with had reported (our affair). Yes, the very thing I was afraid of actually happened. Eight very angry people called me in, canceled my appointments for that day,” says Laaser.
He says he didn’t even realize what they knew “until the first one opened his mouth and started talking. Then it all came crashing in on me.”
Laaser’s colleagues at the center where he was a counselor angrily confronted and fired him. They would help him get treatment for his sexual misbehavior, but first, they said, he had to tell his wife Debbie everything.
“I was totally blindsided,” says Debbie. “I had no idea that this man I had been living with for 15 years -- married to for 15 years -- could possible have been doing all these things. And I'll never forget the look on Mark's face. Actually he was sitting in a chair across from me and I guess today what I know is brokenness in a person … I think there were times truthfully when I questioned whether I would stay. There were times I know when I felt so extremely sad, that I wasn't sure we would ever be able to have happiness in our life again.”
And then, in the midst of all that pain, her husband felt something else.
“This pent up secret that is now over 30 years old is now all of a sudden out of the bag,” says Laaser. “I don’t have to protect the secret anymore. So I think mixed up with fear, sadness and confusion there was a sense of relief.”
Is sex addiction really about the sex?
So is sex addiction really about the sex?
“No,” says Carnes, “but that's the mistake people often make. It's really about pain … or escaping or anxiety reduction. It's a solution.”
Ferree thought sex was her solution to painful feelings, but it was a solution that was not working. After years of failing to will herself to stop having sex with acquaintances, she was ready to take her own life. And then, at last, she confided in someone.
“I picked up the phone and called a dear friend and poured out this awful saga of my life and said I need help,” says Ferree.
She did get help help. A therapist helped her learn to deal with the childhood sexual abuse that contributed to her many affairs. Her second marriage survived and is, she says, better.
Ferree was surprised to find she wasn't alone. About a third of sex addicts are female, which is why, Ferree says, she decided she wanted to do something to help other women. She went back to school to get a degree in counseling.
“I didn't choose sex addiction,” says Ferree. “Sex addiction chose me and this field chose me.”
She now runs a counseling program for sexually addicted women, called Bethesda Workshops.
“Women are afraid to talk about it,” says Ferree. “We're afraid of being labeled as whores. It's kind of guys will be guys, men will be men. But for a woman to be out of control in her sexual behavior, there is just a whole other level of shame.”
Recovery programs
Karen, awash in that same shame, one day found herself surfing the Internet to see if she was the only woman in the world who suffered in this way, when she ran across Web sites for sexual addiction. She entered a 12-step program and has been dealing with sex appropriately for a year.
“The real problem for most sex addicts, they would say to you, I wouldn't know healthy sexuality if it hit me over the head. So how do I know when I am in my craziness and when what I'm doing is a normal healthy reaction to have. And that's part of what recovery teaches,” says Carnes.
Laaser has been in recovery for over a decade. He say's it's a continuing process. After his sexual misbehavior was exposed, Laser entered a sex addiction treatment center for a month where he received psychotherapy. He now runs a program called Faithful and True Ministries. He still occasionally goes for counseling and relies on the support of those around him, such as his wife Debbie who stayed by his side through it all.
“I never had these real feelings of just running and leaving,” says Debbie. “I wasn't aware that running would solve anything necessarily.”
Their relationship eventually strengthened. They dealt with some of the loneliness Laaser felt and both found comfort in their religious faith.
“Now that Debbie and I are more spiritually intimate, sex in our relationship is totally satisfying,” says Laaser.
His work has also helped him. He is again counseling others -- including men with problems like his.
Why can't people just stop?
So why can’t people just stop these behaviors? If there's no drug or chemical involved, how is sex addiction like drug addiction or smoking?
“When you have a compulsive gambler,” says Carnes, “you’re not taking a chemical. ... In other words, we produce chemicals in our brain whether we use an outside chemical or not.”
New studies, like one at Vanderbilt University, are being conducted to determine if brains of sex addicts are somehow different, and if sex addiction is a true, measurable disorder. Yet despite growing interest in such research, there are still some who do not believe it is a true addiction. The American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual, for example, does not list sex addiction as a disorder.
“That book is always changing,” says Carnes, “and a consensus is starting to build. People who work in the addiction realm are starting to get a common agreement about how to start describing this.”
But, however the scientific debate works itself out, people like Ferree, Karen and Laaser want to help other people suffering from the same compulsions. They want people to know how to recognize the problem and discover that there is hope.
© 2004 MSNBC Interactive
Millions of Americans suffer from disorder, experts say
Dateline NBC
Dr. Patrick Carnes, director of sexual disorders services at Arizona's Meadows Treatment Center, describes what makes a person a sex addict as opposed to someone who just likes sex.
By Keith Morrison
“Daily, I sit down with people who look back at the wreckage in their life and say, knowing all along, ‘Why would I do this stuff?’" says Dr. Patrick Carnes, director of sexual disorders services at Arizona's Meadows Treatment Center, which first coined the term "sexual addiction."
Carnes says the same way that people can become addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling, they can become addicted to sex, anything from Internet sex to obsessive masturbation to affairs.
What makes a sex addict?
How do experts tell what makes a person a sex addict as opposed to someone who just likes sex?
“You look for the obvious things, like bad things happening, knowing that you are doing something that is going to hurt you so you make efforts to stop that don't work,” says Carnes. “Obviously, you’ve got a problem.”
“There was that selfish needy, lonely, angry part of myself that didn't want to stop and saw that sex was my solution to other things,” says Mark Laaser, who had an insatiable need for secret sex. To anyone who knew him, it would have seemed incomprehensible. Laaser, a minister and counselor, was married with children and an icon of respect. But that wasn't enough.
Mark says that early on he felt an emptiness, a loneliness that sex seemed to fill. “It was just an excitement, a raw excitement -- kind of like what a drug addict would describe,” he says. “It was just a high.”
It was a high Laaser started experiencing at a young age. When he was 11, he says he discovered pictures -- what he'd call soft porn now.
“And some of that is not abnormal for a person seeing that for the first time,” he says. “Of course when it becomes abnormal is how preoccupied you get with it.”
Laaser was so fixated by what he saw, he started stealing Playboy magazines from the local drugstore.
“And then also for me, I started crossing moral boundaries almost right away … Stealing magazines -- and I’m a preacher's kid, a minister's son,” says Laaser. “So I knew that stealing was bad. But I was willing to go ahead with it because the high was so fantastic of what I was experiencing.”
'I wanted to act it out'
In high school, Laaser hoped his behavior might stop when he met Debbie, the girl he thought could change him.
“There was a part of myself that she just didn't know because I wasn't revealing it to her or anybody for that matter,” says Laaser. He wasn't revealing that he was now doing more than looking at magazines. He was watching porn videos and masturbating daily. Debbie, unaware of Mark's double life, trusted him and they got married. Mark hoped that married life would bring an end to a life preoccupied by sex.
“All this crazy stuff in the past, that will be over now. I’m getting married. I'll have a regular sexual partner and so forth,” says Laaser. “But I was amazed early on, even in the first year of marriage, that my temptation to masturbate and look at pornography returned rather quickly.”
A lot of people think human beings are preoccupied by sex a lot of time, so what could be so unusual about his feelings?
“The part that was unusual was where my mind tended to go with it,” says Laaser. “I wanted to experience it. I wanted to act it out. Eventually I had a lot of preoccupation with planning or doing or thinking what it would be like.”
Laaser soon was no longer planning, but doing, paying monthly visits to massage parlors, having sex with so-called "masseuses,” all the while hiding it from his wife Debbie, whom Laaser says he still loved deeply.
“I was always completely attracted to her,” says Laaser. “There was just something so much deeper in me that cannot be satisfied by sex.”
He says something deeply emotional was missing, and he wondered why he couldn't just stop.
'Wracked with shame'
“I was wracked with shame and tried time and time again to stop,” says Marnie Ferree, who like Laaser, knows what it's like to be out of control of her sexual feelings. For Ferree, it wasn't so much about sex itself, but about the relationships she thought she could have by engaging in sex with acquaintances and friends.
“The sexual part was pleasurable and it was a nice byproduct for me, but that wasn't the most important thing,” says Ferree. “I was trying to get non-sexual needs met sexually and that was the only way I knew how to meet those needs.”
Ferree says that as a child, she was sexually abused by a family friend, a common precursor to later addiction. Ferree’s promiscuity lasted from her teen years through two marriages, with numerous affairs in between. She felt an emotional void that she says sex filled -- at least initially.
“At the time there is an incredible adrenaline rush,” says Ferree. “It’s a connection that I found I couldn't replicate anywhere else. But immediately after that experience is over, I mean driving back home, there is this incredible let down and you're just in a wash of shame.”
That shame that worsened after Ferree was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The cause, she was told, was HPV, a sexually transmitted disease.
“That was the lowest point,” says Ferree. “I experienced three surgeries in a year as treatment of that cervical cancer. Had a major hemorrhaging after one of those surgeries. I mean my life was literally in danger and I found still that I could not stop.”
Thoughts of suicide
Ferree was sick, married and a mother, yet none of those things could make her change, even though she was horrified by what she was doing.
“It's about feeling rotten,” says Ferree. “I want to feel better. What way am I going through a ritual to feel better? I’m connecting with someone, I’m going to act out sexually. I feel horrible after that and the whole cycle starts over again.”
Ferree was desperate. Sex with her husband was not enough, and she believed the only way to stop having sex outside her marriage was to end her life.
“I had really strong suicidal thoughts,” says Ferree. “But I knew I couldn't keep on living but I was too afraid to die.”
Another woman, who calls herself “Karen,” was also overtaken by sexual addiction and by her own shame, so raw that she asked Dateline NBC to hide her face and use a different name.
“It’s just this 24-hour distraction,” she says. “Like the shame that it causes, I feel like it just stole my soul.”
Karen is in her '30s, single, and for almost as long as she can remember she's been preoccupied with finding love. For years, she says, this meant having sex several times a week with strangers she would pick up in bars, frequently putting herself in dangerous situations.
“I ended up going home with a group of guys like 10 years younger than me,” says Karen, “and I figured I would have sex with one of them and maybe have a relationship. But I ended up having sex or doing sexual things with several of them. And that was a new low … Absolutely humiliated. What horrified me the most about it is that these guys were graffiti writers and they wrote on my body and that's what made me feel like, oh my God, I was just completely used as an object.”
Karen even found herself contemplating prostitution. “That actually seemed like a logical thing to do since I found myself having sex with people I didn't know anyway,” she says. “And I kind of became obsessed with some ads in the back of a free newspaper for escort services and I went on a couple of interviews.”
'I was frightened, incredibly frightened'
Laaser was also building toward behavior he would never have thought was possible for him.
He had degrees in religion and divinity, had attended seminary school, was a deeply committed Christian and had been ordained as a minister. “There was that good side. There was that moral side. There was that caring side,” says Laaser.
And yet, he'd escape, feeling furtive and guilty, to feed his sexual addiction. At the same time, he was working on getting his Ph.D. in, of all things, psychology.
“Now I’m the Rev. Dr. Laaser,” he says, “and there are people that are going to be attracted to that and I actually wound up becoming sexual with some of my clients at that time. … It happened multiple times over a 10-year period. … [I was] frightened, incredibly frightened … I think for years I felt totally worthless. I can’t describe to you the times I would sit in church, even preaching on a Sunday morning, thinking God's grace was for everybody else but certainly not for me.”
Laaser was preaching redemption, but for him, redemption might be more difficult. He betrayed parishioners, colleagues and clients. It was a trust that was about to be shattered.
“One of the people I was involved in with had reported (our affair). Yes, the very thing I was afraid of actually happened. Eight very angry people called me in, canceled my appointments for that day,” says Laaser.
He says he didn’t even realize what they knew “until the first one opened his mouth and started talking. Then it all came crashing in on me.”
Laaser’s colleagues at the center where he was a counselor angrily confronted and fired him. They would help him get treatment for his sexual misbehavior, but first, they said, he had to tell his wife Debbie everything.
“I was totally blindsided,” says Debbie. “I had no idea that this man I had been living with for 15 years -- married to for 15 years -- could possible have been doing all these things. And I'll never forget the look on Mark's face. Actually he was sitting in a chair across from me and I guess today what I know is brokenness in a person … I think there were times truthfully when I questioned whether I would stay. There were times I know when I felt so extremely sad, that I wasn't sure we would ever be able to have happiness in our life again.”
And then, in the midst of all that pain, her husband felt something else.
“This pent up secret that is now over 30 years old is now all of a sudden out of the bag,” says Laaser. “I don’t have to protect the secret anymore. So I think mixed up with fear, sadness and confusion there was a sense of relief.”
Is sex addiction really about the sex?
So is sex addiction really about the sex?
“No,” says Carnes, “but that's the mistake people often make. It's really about pain … or escaping or anxiety reduction. It's a solution.”
Ferree thought sex was her solution to painful feelings, but it was a solution that was not working. After years of failing to will herself to stop having sex with acquaintances, she was ready to take her own life. And then, at last, she confided in someone.
“I picked up the phone and called a dear friend and poured out this awful saga of my life and said I need help,” says Ferree.
She did get help help. A therapist helped her learn to deal with the childhood sexual abuse that contributed to her many affairs. Her second marriage survived and is, she says, better.
Ferree was surprised to find she wasn't alone. About a third of sex addicts are female, which is why, Ferree says, she decided she wanted to do something to help other women. She went back to school to get a degree in counseling.
“I didn't choose sex addiction,” says Ferree. “Sex addiction chose me and this field chose me.”
She now runs a counseling program for sexually addicted women, called Bethesda Workshops.
“Women are afraid to talk about it,” says Ferree. “We're afraid of being labeled as whores. It's kind of guys will be guys, men will be men. But for a woman to be out of control in her sexual behavior, there is just a whole other level of shame.”
Recovery programs
Karen, awash in that same shame, one day found herself surfing the Internet to see if she was the only woman in the world who suffered in this way, when she ran across Web sites for sexual addiction. She entered a 12-step program and has been dealing with sex appropriately for a year.
“The real problem for most sex addicts, they would say to you, I wouldn't know healthy sexuality if it hit me over the head. So how do I know when I am in my craziness and when what I'm doing is a normal healthy reaction to have. And that's part of what recovery teaches,” says Carnes.
Laaser has been in recovery for over a decade. He say's it's a continuing process. After his sexual misbehavior was exposed, Laser entered a sex addiction treatment center for a month where he received psychotherapy. He now runs a program called Faithful and True Ministries. He still occasionally goes for counseling and relies on the support of those around him, such as his wife Debbie who stayed by his side through it all.
“I never had these real feelings of just running and leaving,” says Debbie. “I wasn't aware that running would solve anything necessarily.”
Their relationship eventually strengthened. They dealt with some of the loneliness Laaser felt and both found comfort in their religious faith.
“Now that Debbie and I are more spiritually intimate, sex in our relationship is totally satisfying,” says Laaser.
His work has also helped him. He is again counseling others -- including men with problems like his.
Why can't people just stop?
So why can’t people just stop these behaviors? If there's no drug or chemical involved, how is sex addiction like drug addiction or smoking?
“When you have a compulsive gambler,” says Carnes, “you’re not taking a chemical. ... In other words, we produce chemicals in our brain whether we use an outside chemical or not.”
New studies, like one at Vanderbilt University, are being conducted to determine if brains of sex addicts are somehow different, and if sex addiction is a true, measurable disorder. Yet despite growing interest in such research, there are still some who do not believe it is a true addiction. The American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual, for example, does not list sex addiction as a disorder.
“That book is always changing,” says Carnes, “and a consensus is starting to build. People who work in the addiction realm are starting to get a common agreement about how to start describing this.”
But, however the scientific debate works itself out, people like Ferree, Karen and Laaser want to help other people suffering from the same compulsions. They want people to know how to recognize the problem and discover that there is hope.
© 2004 MSNBC Interactive
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Mr Ngiam Tong Dow speaks again
It was another blast from the past at the JTC Alumni dialogue last night as the retired permanent secretary spoke of the unintended consequences of land pricing policy and the intellectual paucity behind gleaming buildings.
MOST civil servants hide behind the instruction manuals (IMs) as an excuse for not having to think. If you do not decide or exercise your discretion, then you are not thinking. You have to think even when you say 'No'. Otherwise, you are just flying on auto-pilot.
A 'No' decision should stand up to public scrutiny as much as a 'Yes' answer. The Auditor-General should check for acts of omission as much as he scrutinises acts of commission.
Let me illustrate this with an example from my estate officer days at the Economic Development Board (EDB). We had built some shops at the Light Industries section near the flats to provide shopping and other amenities. In accordance with the IMs, we put out the shops for public tender. As to be expected, the banks made the highest bids for space.
There was one shop left when an old barber approached us to say that he couldn't compete with the banks, as cutting hair was not a high-margin business. He offered us $400 a month. In the late 60s, it was not a sum to be sniffed at.
So I took the case to EDB chairman Hon Sui Sen and suggested that we allocate the shop to the barber as hair-cutting was an essential trade.
He agreed, but stipulated that the lease was to be for only three years. The barber should not expect to be subsidised forever. In any case, his business would grow with Jurong and the lease could be renewed, at higher rentals.
SHARING FORTUNES
MR HON was permanent secretary (PS) and commissioner of land before he was appointed PS (Economic Development) and chairman of EDB. He introduced the Torrens system of land registration to Singapore. In charging for land at Jurong, he practised what I would later learn from the Japanese as a policy of 'sharing prosperity, sharing misery'.
Under this policy, EDB did not charge the full premium for land on 30-year leases. Instead, we charged rental at 6 per cent of annual value per sq ft. This could be revised once every five years subject to a cap of 50 per cent. The lease of 30 years would be extended for another 30 years if EDB/ JTC was satisfied that the lessee was making good economic use of the land.
In this way, manufacturers need not tie up too much capital on land. Instead, they could invest in machinery and equipment. In other words, those who wished to speculate on land were not welcome. Speculation was a zero sum game.
UNINTENDED RESULT
JTC and HDB were instructed by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in the mid-80s to return all undeveloped land to the Land Office. The financial impact on JTC and HDB was different. While both were made to pay current market rates to repurchase the land for development, HDB enjoyed a bottom-line subsidy.
In effect, whatever the Land Office charged for land, HDB received a subsidy to offset it. It was a bookkeeping exercise.
When JTC paid current market rates to repurchase its own land, it had no choice but to charge as much as the lessees could bear. Is it any wonder then that industrial and other land costs shot up?
Besides the direct impact on JTC and HDB finances, a more serious long-term structural effect on the economy is that we are subsidising consumption (housing) and penalising production (industry).
It is not a healthy road to take. Mr Hon's policy of sharing prosperity and misery is no longer feasible as JTC does not own any land stock any more.
THE ESPLANADE
MOST MOFs treat the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (Mita) as Cinderella. Like Oliver Twist, it stands last in the queue for budgetary funding. The mindset is such that schools and hospitals always have priority over concert halls and theatres. So it was with Mita and its predecessor, the Ministry of Culture.
Which was the situation until BG George Yeo was appointed the minister for Mita. BG Yeo is a Cambridge-trained engineer. But he can weave magic with words. He has effervescent energy and is truly a renaissance man, a rarity in Singapore where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So I told the minister that at long last, MOF is prepared to look at Mita's budget requests without prejudice, but on their own intrinsic merit. This change of mindset did not prepare MOF for the bombshell budget request which soon arrived on our desk. It was a request to build the Esplanade theatres and concert halls for $600 million.
We were shell-shocked. The highest ever request before then from Mita was for $50 million to reconstruct and refurbish the Victoria concert halls, which was approved because our minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, placed his considerable power of persuasion behind the proposal.
MOF soon recovered its composure. As finance scrutineers, our habit is to start with scrutinising the small print before admiring the big picture. We discovered that the operating cost of the performing theatres and concert halls would amount to $50 million a year. Mr Jaspal Singh, my deputy secretary, made a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and concluded that the Esplanade had to sell every seat every night of the year at $300 a seat just to break even on operating costs. When we put this uncomfortable fact to Mita, there was only silence, no arguments, no remonstration.
We thought that was the end of the matter. How wrong we were. Little did we know that the intrepid BG Yeo had appealed to PM, who decided that the Totalisator Board would finance the capital expenditure outside the budget below the line.
Strictly speaking, the board is only the agent for MOF and its revenue was to be credited to Finance at the end of the financial year. But as the Esplanade is to be financed out of future revenue streams, MOF has no jurisdiction over how it is to be spent, as it has not yet been received. MOF was defeated by this ingenious procedural innovation.
But personally speaking, I am glad Mita won, for without the board financing, we would not have the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, shimmering in the noon day sun, and glowing on full moon nights.
MONUMENTS
IN OUR poor, early, austere days, MOF invariably turned down the then Ministry of Community Development's (MCD) requests to build public swimming pools. Dr Goh considered it more cost-effective to give a schoolboy 50 cents as bus fare to go to the beach to swim. We had calculated it would cost $2 a swim if we had to build the pools and maintain them. This is an example of what Dr Goh considers a robust approach to budgeting.
So I very much hope the Esplanade will sell enough tickets a year to pay its operating cost. I hope the day will never come that we give every Singaporean $150 to attend concerts when visiting the great cultural cities of London, New York, Beijing.
This is not a tongue-in-cheek proposal. It is an exercise in the cold logic of Dr Goh's robust approach to budgeting. More likely, we will suspend spending on culture when times are hard.
ON BEIJING
I HAD the privilege of visiting Beijing on several occasions. The most memorable visit was the first in 1979, before the opening up of China. There were few cars. As our motorcade went through the vastness of Tiananmen, my mind flashed back to centuries of Chinese history when envoys made the same journey to the imperial palace to pay tribute to the emperor. The vastness of the square alone would have awed them of the power and reach of China.
The imperial palace was the seat of imperial power. But to me, it is not the architectural icon of Beijing. To me, the architectural essence of Beijing is the beautiful, perfectly proportioned Temple of Heaven. The temple served as the imperial examination hall. Imperial examinations were presided over by the emperor himself. Based on the results, the emperor personally selected the ruling elite for the empire. He also offered the hand of his princess in marriage to the chuang-yuan, the top imperial scholar of the year.
The Temple of Heaven is built entirely of timber, without a nail being used. It is the product of a soaring imagination and the work of countless loving, skilled hands. But it must have cost a fraction of what it cost to build the imperial palaces. So, monuments do not need to cost a bomb.
In our years of budgetary abundance, we have often mistaken form for substance. Without being specific, our institutions of higher learning, including polytechnics and research laboratories, and even community clubs, headquarters of ministries and statutory boards, have been built to heights of elegance more than what their functions require.
GLASS PALACES
AS I drive by these gleaming glass palaces, I often wonder whether the learning, teaching and research match the grandeur of the buildings. Dr Melanie Ng Chew, who wrote The Pillars Of Fullerton, described the old Fullerton building as dark and dim. Its saving grace was that there were some bright minds working in it.
It is not just the capital cost. Maintenance is higher. A robust measure MOF can immediately impose is to charge real, not notional, rentals to be paid out of operating budgets. As operating budgets include wage costs, my hunch is that there will be an immediate reduction in space required. And ministries may even volunteer to move out to cheaper quarters.
When you read Japanese economic history, you will discover that after World War II, when Japan rebuilt its economy and industry, they spent whatever precious capital they had on machinery and equipment, and purchase of technology. They spent as little as they could on buildings, which were old, but functional.
China is going through this early Japanese phase of industrialisation. Is it any wonder then that China, and soon India, can manufacture goods and provide services cheaper than anybody else in the world? As Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew has urged, Singapore has to reduce costs across the whole spectrum to compete, even the cost of education and government.
SM Lee once remarked that on his visits to various countries, he found an inverse correlation between the grandeur of the country's Parliament House and its per capita GDP.
In plain English, the grander the building, the poorer the people. I would like to add that the grander the building, the lower the quality of democracy practised. As our new Parliament House, though elegant, is of modest dimensions, Singapore is unlikely to suffer from one or both fates.
Nevertheless, the public sector should forever be vigilant of the cost of providing public services and not be seduced by monuments, concrete or intellectual.
It was another blast from the past at the JTC Alumni dialogue last night as the retired permanent secretary spoke of the unintended consequences of land pricing policy and the intellectual paucity behind gleaming buildings.
MOST civil servants hide behind the instruction manuals (IMs) as an excuse for not having to think. If you do not decide or exercise your discretion, then you are not thinking. You have to think even when you say 'No'. Otherwise, you are just flying on auto-pilot.
A 'No' decision should stand up to public scrutiny as much as a 'Yes' answer. The Auditor-General should check for acts of omission as much as he scrutinises acts of commission.
Let me illustrate this with an example from my estate officer days at the Economic Development Board (EDB). We had built some shops at the Light Industries section near the flats to provide shopping and other amenities. In accordance with the IMs, we put out the shops for public tender. As to be expected, the banks made the highest bids for space.
There was one shop left when an old barber approached us to say that he couldn't compete with the banks, as cutting hair was not a high-margin business. He offered us $400 a month. In the late 60s, it was not a sum to be sniffed at.
So I took the case to EDB chairman Hon Sui Sen and suggested that we allocate the shop to the barber as hair-cutting was an essential trade.
He agreed, but stipulated that the lease was to be for only three years. The barber should not expect to be subsidised forever. In any case, his business would grow with Jurong and the lease could be renewed, at higher rentals.
SHARING FORTUNES
MR HON was permanent secretary (PS) and commissioner of land before he was appointed PS (Economic Development) and chairman of EDB. He introduced the Torrens system of land registration to Singapore. In charging for land at Jurong, he practised what I would later learn from the Japanese as a policy of 'sharing prosperity, sharing misery'.
Under this policy, EDB did not charge the full premium for land on 30-year leases. Instead, we charged rental at 6 per cent of annual value per sq ft. This could be revised once every five years subject to a cap of 50 per cent. The lease of 30 years would be extended for another 30 years if EDB/ JTC was satisfied that the lessee was making good economic use of the land.
In this way, manufacturers need not tie up too much capital on land. Instead, they could invest in machinery and equipment. In other words, those who wished to speculate on land were not welcome. Speculation was a zero sum game.
UNINTENDED RESULT
JTC and HDB were instructed by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in the mid-80s to return all undeveloped land to the Land Office. The financial impact on JTC and HDB was different. While both were made to pay current market rates to repurchase the land for development, HDB enjoyed a bottom-line subsidy.
In effect, whatever the Land Office charged for land, HDB received a subsidy to offset it. It was a bookkeeping exercise.
When JTC paid current market rates to repurchase its own land, it had no choice but to charge as much as the lessees could bear. Is it any wonder then that industrial and other land costs shot up?
Besides the direct impact on JTC and HDB finances, a more serious long-term structural effect on the economy is that we are subsidising consumption (housing) and penalising production (industry).
It is not a healthy road to take. Mr Hon's policy of sharing prosperity and misery is no longer feasible as JTC does not own any land stock any more.
THE ESPLANADE
MOST MOFs treat the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (Mita) as Cinderella. Like Oliver Twist, it stands last in the queue for budgetary funding. The mindset is such that schools and hospitals always have priority over concert halls and theatres. So it was with Mita and its predecessor, the Ministry of Culture.
Which was the situation until BG George Yeo was appointed the minister for Mita. BG Yeo is a Cambridge-trained engineer. But he can weave magic with words. He has effervescent energy and is truly a renaissance man, a rarity in Singapore where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So I told the minister that at long last, MOF is prepared to look at Mita's budget requests without prejudice, but on their own intrinsic merit. This change of mindset did not prepare MOF for the bombshell budget request which soon arrived on our desk. It was a request to build the Esplanade theatres and concert halls for $600 million.
We were shell-shocked. The highest ever request before then from Mita was for $50 million to reconstruct and refurbish the Victoria concert halls, which was approved because our minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, placed his considerable power of persuasion behind the proposal.
MOF soon recovered its composure. As finance scrutineers, our habit is to start with scrutinising the small print before admiring the big picture. We discovered that the operating cost of the performing theatres and concert halls would amount to $50 million a year. Mr Jaspal Singh, my deputy secretary, made a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and concluded that the Esplanade had to sell every seat every night of the year at $300 a seat just to break even on operating costs. When we put this uncomfortable fact to Mita, there was only silence, no arguments, no remonstration.
We thought that was the end of the matter. How wrong we were. Little did we know that the intrepid BG Yeo had appealed to PM, who decided that the Totalisator Board would finance the capital expenditure outside the budget below the line.
Strictly speaking, the board is only the agent for MOF and its revenue was to be credited to Finance at the end of the financial year. But as the Esplanade is to be financed out of future revenue streams, MOF has no jurisdiction over how it is to be spent, as it has not yet been received. MOF was defeated by this ingenious procedural innovation.
But personally speaking, I am glad Mita won, for without the board financing, we would not have the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, shimmering in the noon day sun, and glowing on full moon nights.
MONUMENTS
IN OUR poor, early, austere days, MOF invariably turned down the then Ministry of Community Development's (MCD) requests to build public swimming pools. Dr Goh considered it more cost-effective to give a schoolboy 50 cents as bus fare to go to the beach to swim. We had calculated it would cost $2 a swim if we had to build the pools and maintain them. This is an example of what Dr Goh considers a robust approach to budgeting.
So I very much hope the Esplanade will sell enough tickets a year to pay its operating cost. I hope the day will never come that we give every Singaporean $150 to attend concerts when visiting the great cultural cities of London, New York, Beijing.
This is not a tongue-in-cheek proposal. It is an exercise in the cold logic of Dr Goh's robust approach to budgeting. More likely, we will suspend spending on culture when times are hard.
ON BEIJING
I HAD the privilege of visiting Beijing on several occasions. The most memorable visit was the first in 1979, before the opening up of China. There were few cars. As our motorcade went through the vastness of Tiananmen, my mind flashed back to centuries of Chinese history when envoys made the same journey to the imperial palace to pay tribute to the emperor. The vastness of the square alone would have awed them of the power and reach of China.
The imperial palace was the seat of imperial power. But to me, it is not the architectural icon of Beijing. To me, the architectural essence of Beijing is the beautiful, perfectly proportioned Temple of Heaven. The temple served as the imperial examination hall. Imperial examinations were presided over by the emperor himself. Based on the results, the emperor personally selected the ruling elite for the empire. He also offered the hand of his princess in marriage to the chuang-yuan, the top imperial scholar of the year.
The Temple of Heaven is built entirely of timber, without a nail being used. It is the product of a soaring imagination and the work of countless loving, skilled hands. But it must have cost a fraction of what it cost to build the imperial palaces. So, monuments do not need to cost a bomb.
In our years of budgetary abundance, we have often mistaken form for substance. Without being specific, our institutions of higher learning, including polytechnics and research laboratories, and even community clubs, headquarters of ministries and statutory boards, have been built to heights of elegance more than what their functions require.
GLASS PALACES
AS I drive by these gleaming glass palaces, I often wonder whether the learning, teaching and research match the grandeur of the buildings. Dr Melanie Ng Chew, who wrote The Pillars Of Fullerton, described the old Fullerton building as dark and dim. Its saving grace was that there were some bright minds working in it.
It is not just the capital cost. Maintenance is higher. A robust measure MOF can immediately impose is to charge real, not notional, rentals to be paid out of operating budgets. As operating budgets include wage costs, my hunch is that there will be an immediate reduction in space required. And ministries may even volunteer to move out to cheaper quarters.
When you read Japanese economic history, you will discover that after World War II, when Japan rebuilt its economy and industry, they spent whatever precious capital they had on machinery and equipment, and purchase of technology. They spent as little as they could on buildings, which were old, but functional.
China is going through this early Japanese phase of industrialisation. Is it any wonder then that China, and soon India, can manufacture goods and provide services cheaper than anybody else in the world? As Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew has urged, Singapore has to reduce costs across the whole spectrum to compete, even the cost of education and government.
SM Lee once remarked that on his visits to various countries, he found an inverse correlation between the grandeur of the country's Parliament House and its per capita GDP.
In plain English, the grander the building, the poorer the people. I would like to add that the grander the building, the lower the quality of democracy practised. As our new Parliament House, though elegant, is of modest dimensions, Singapore is unlikely to suffer from one or both fates.
Nevertheless, the public sector should forever be vigilant of the cost of providing public services and not be seduced by monuments, concrete or intellectual.
Size counts: US economy will still be tops in 2050
By Janadas Devan
WHERE should one put one's money - in the euro or United States dollar?
In the short term, the answer is fairly obvious - not the US dollar, especially if its politicians insist on borrowing and spending like drunken sailors in the next few years.
But in the long term, the answer is not obvious. Indeed, a convincing case can be made that 50 years hence, the US economy will remain as powerful as now, while West Europe's and Japan's may well become second rank. Europe and Japan are literally shrinking - as in, there will be fewer of their citizens soon; while America is continuing to expand - as in, there will be plenty more of them.
In 1950, Western Europe's population was 305 million, compared to America's 152 million. Today, Europe's is about 400 million, compared to America's 292 million. But in 2050, Europe's would have declined to 360 million, while America's would have burgeoned to between 400 million and, more likely, 550 million.
India's population would have increased by a third, from 1.069 billion now to 1.628 billion. And China's would have increased marginally, from 1.289 billion to 1.394 billion.
In other words, the three most populous countries today - China, India and the US - will remain the top three in 2050. But the US' population would have almost doubled in that period, while that of India and China would have grown more slowly.
There will be roughly one American for every two-and-a-half Chinese in 2050, compared to one to four now; and roughly one American for every three Indians in 2050, about the same ratio as now.
These, of course, are all straight-line projections, which hardly ever pan out. Demography may be destiny, but that destiny can only be spied through a glass darkly.
Assuming the glass isn't a distorting mirror, what will be the geopolitical consequences of these demographic shifts? Here are a couple:
America is likely to remain a dominant power in 2050, as an Economist study predicted in August 2002.
Assuming Americans remain, like now, one-third richer per capita than Europeans, the US economy will be twice that of the European Union's in 2050, even if the EU encompassed then all of Europe. 'With 400 to 550 million rich consumers, the American market would surely be even more important to foreign companies than it is today. And if so, US business practices could become yet more dominant.'
The reason for this won't be just America's larger population, but also its age profile. According to one study, the US median age will be 36.2 in 2050, compared to Europe's 52.7. At present, the US median age is 35.5 and Europe's is 37.7. Europe's population will gallop into senility, while America's will just canter into middle age. The number of Europeans over 65 in 2050 will be equivalent to 60 per cent of its working-age population, compared with only 40 per cent in the US.
The implications of this are many and dire. The US will have problems funding its social security and Medicare programmes as its baby-boomers retire, but Europe will be burdened with even heavier social costs.
Military spending will be affected as well. The US already spends twice as much on defence as the EU. This gap will only grow, 'entrenching America's power and widening the transatlantic rift'.
China and India are likely to grow into economic giants. One reason is their demographic profiles will remain youthful for decades to come.
India, in fact, has the youngest profile among large countries - younger even than China's. More than half its population is less than 25 years old and its workforce is expected to expand for at least another 20 years.
Americans are already complaining of their jobs being outsourced to this vast pool of workers. These complaints will probably get more strident.
Meanwhile, on the periphery of Asia, the populations of Japan and many of the 'Tigers' will age relatively fast. This, combined with the sheer weight of the Chinese and Indian markets, will accelerate the shift of Asia's centre of gravity from the periphery to the mainland - with historic consequences.
For 150 years or so, since Japan's Meiji Restoration, the centre of gravity in Asia has been on its periphery. In the second half of the last century, the first nations to emerge economically were on the edge - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and later, Malaysia and Thailand. Historically, this was an anomaly. For centuries, the Asian centre of gravity had been on the mainland.
Singapore, in many respects, was the product of the mainland's decline. Our forefathers from China, India and elsewhere would have had little reason to emigrate here otherwise.
The 21st century will witness a reversal to the historical norm: The mainland will again dominate; the periphery will again become what it had always been, apart from this brief interregnum in the 20th century - the periphery.
Small can still be beautiful, of course, especially if it can remain reasonably youthful, and link up with other similarly situated countries in the region. But size will probably be king - and definitely so, if small becomes peripheral and old.
By Janadas Devan
WHERE should one put one's money - in the euro or United States dollar?
In the short term, the answer is fairly obvious - not the US dollar, especially if its politicians insist on borrowing and spending like drunken sailors in the next few years.
But in the long term, the answer is not obvious. Indeed, a convincing case can be made that 50 years hence, the US economy will remain as powerful as now, while West Europe's and Japan's may well become second rank. Europe and Japan are literally shrinking - as in, there will be fewer of their citizens soon; while America is continuing to expand - as in, there will be plenty more of them.
In 1950, Western Europe's population was 305 million, compared to America's 152 million. Today, Europe's is about 400 million, compared to America's 292 million. But in 2050, Europe's would have declined to 360 million, while America's would have burgeoned to between 400 million and, more likely, 550 million.
India's population would have increased by a third, from 1.069 billion now to 1.628 billion. And China's would have increased marginally, from 1.289 billion to 1.394 billion.
In other words, the three most populous countries today - China, India and the US - will remain the top three in 2050. But the US' population would have almost doubled in that period, while that of India and China would have grown more slowly.
There will be roughly one American for every two-and-a-half Chinese in 2050, compared to one to four now; and roughly one American for every three Indians in 2050, about the same ratio as now.
These, of course, are all straight-line projections, which hardly ever pan out. Demography may be destiny, but that destiny can only be spied through a glass darkly.
Assuming the glass isn't a distorting mirror, what will be the geopolitical consequences of these demographic shifts? Here are a couple:
America is likely to remain a dominant power in 2050, as an Economist study predicted in August 2002.
Assuming Americans remain, like now, one-third richer per capita than Europeans, the US economy will be twice that of the European Union's in 2050, even if the EU encompassed then all of Europe. 'With 400 to 550 million rich consumers, the American market would surely be even more important to foreign companies than it is today. And if so, US business practices could become yet more dominant.'
The reason for this won't be just America's larger population, but also its age profile. According to one study, the US median age will be 36.2 in 2050, compared to Europe's 52.7. At present, the US median age is 35.5 and Europe's is 37.7. Europe's population will gallop into senility, while America's will just canter into middle age. The number of Europeans over 65 in 2050 will be equivalent to 60 per cent of its working-age population, compared with only 40 per cent in the US.
The implications of this are many and dire. The US will have problems funding its social security and Medicare programmes as its baby-boomers retire, but Europe will be burdened with even heavier social costs.
Military spending will be affected as well. The US already spends twice as much on defence as the EU. This gap will only grow, 'entrenching America's power and widening the transatlantic rift'.
China and India are likely to grow into economic giants. One reason is their demographic profiles will remain youthful for decades to come.
India, in fact, has the youngest profile among large countries - younger even than China's. More than half its population is less than 25 years old and its workforce is expected to expand for at least another 20 years.
Americans are already complaining of their jobs being outsourced to this vast pool of workers. These complaints will probably get more strident.
Meanwhile, on the periphery of Asia, the populations of Japan and many of the 'Tigers' will age relatively fast. This, combined with the sheer weight of the Chinese and Indian markets, will accelerate the shift of Asia's centre of gravity from the periphery to the mainland - with historic consequences.
For 150 years or so, since Japan's Meiji Restoration, the centre of gravity in Asia has been on its periphery. In the second half of the last century, the first nations to emerge economically were on the edge - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and later, Malaysia and Thailand. Historically, this was an anomaly. For centuries, the Asian centre of gravity had been on the mainland.
Singapore, in many respects, was the product of the mainland's decline. Our forefathers from China, India and elsewhere would have had little reason to emigrate here otherwise.
The 21st century will witness a reversal to the historical norm: The mainland will again dominate; the periphery will again become what it had always been, apart from this brief interregnum in the 20th century - the periphery.
Small can still be beautiful, of course, especially if it can remain reasonably youthful, and link up with other similarly situated countries in the region. But size will probably be king - and definitely so, if small becomes peripheral and old.
Friday, February 27, 2004
What S'pore needs to boost birth rate
By Janadas Devan
WHY are fertility rates - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - declining throughout the world? Demographers point to the following factors: the wide availability of contraceptives; reduced child mortality rate, so parents can achieve their desired number of children with fewer births; urbanisation raising the cost-benefit ratio of children, so encouraging parents to choose quality over quantity; and the education of women equipping them to enter the workforce, so increasing the opportunity cost of their bearing children.
These factors are now operative in large parts of the world. Does that mean humanity is condemned to low fertility rates permanently? Not necessarily.
Take contraceptives: They are as widespread in Turkey as in Japan. But Turkey has a birth rate of 20 per 1,000 people, more than double Japan's nine. Unless Turkish condoms are peculiarly leaky, contraceptives obviously don't automatically result in low fertility rates.
Or take jobs for women: If it leads inevitably to fewer births, the greater the participation of women in the workforce, the lower fertility rates should be. But World Bank figures for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries show that the opposite is the case: the higher the proportion of women in a country's workforce, the higher is that country's fertility rate.
Spain, Italy and Greece, for instance, have the lowest female workforce participation rates among European Union countries (35 to 38 per cent of the labour force), and yet their fertility rates are also the lowest (between 1.1 and 1.3). By contrast, Finland, Sweden and Norway have among the highest female workforce participation rates in Europe (close to 50 per cent), but their fertility rates (1.75 and above) are significantly higher than the European average of 1.4.
Similarly, the United States has a fertility rate slightly below the replacement level of 2.1, but women constitute close to 48 per cent of its labour force; whereas Japan has a fertility rate of just 1.34, but women constitute only slightly above 40 per cent of its labour force.
What explains this strange discrepancy? Can it be that American women prefer the 'super-mum' route, juggling careers and homes, whereas Japanese women dislike children, and are lazy to boot, since they don't seem to like work much either? That obviously cannot be so.
A more credible explanation suggests itself when one looks at the low-fertility-rate countries. What do they have in common? One, they are in Southern Europe or East Asia. And two, traditional attitudes towards women are still dominant in them. Is that a coincidence?
Professor Lena Sommestad, an economic historian at Sweden's Uppsala University, doesn't think so. 'Birth rates are particularly low in countries that support traditional patterns of marriage and breadwinning,' she observes. Mr Martin Wolf of the Financial Times agrees: 'What is happening in Italy, Spain and Japan,' he says, 'is the war of women against male chauvinism. Women are winning' - by, in effect, declaring a womb-strike on society. 'If the men who dominate these countries do not surrender, they will soon not have much of a society left.'
That sounds extravagant, but it makes perfect sense. Japanese and Italian women have as much access to education as their Swedish and American sisters do, but they don't enjoy as much equality. Getting hitched and having babies in these societies all too frequently means being subject to traditional male authority. When the reality at home does not match the emancipation that their education entitles them to, it makes sense for women to choose childlessness.
But the problem here is not female emancipation. The problem is the failure of family structures in particular, and of society in general, to adjust to that emancipation - an emancipation that these societies themselves nurtured. Isn't that the root reason why fertility rates are falling in Singapore too?
The close correlation between female workforce participation and fertility rates suggests also that the more fulfilled women feel, the more likely they are to have children. Women need not necessarily choose between children and careers, Prof Sommestad says, and a fertility rate of 2.1 is not impossible.
General 'social confidence' may also be a factor. US fertility rates, for instance, fell in the 1970s and 1980s, to around 1.8, below West European levels. But in the 1990s, they jumped to around 2.1, not only among immigrants but also native-born Americans, while West Europe's fell to 1.4. The booming US economy of the 1990s was a factor, US demographers believe. Japanese economist Tadashi Nakamae told this newspaper he is convinced the current dearth of babies in Japan is not unrelated to its decade-long economic slump.
But a booming economy alone is probably not enough to boost fertility rates. If the experience of Scandinavian countries - and to some extent, the US as well - is any indication, social programmes to enable couples to have babies are also needed. That means parental leave, flexi-work arrangements, child-care facilities, tax breaks - the whole expensive caboodle.
In other words, merely promoting 'family values' will not do. Practical measures to foster families are needed. The past is gone for good - it wasn't all that great, in any case, for half the human race.
What high-income, low-fertility-rate countries, including Singapore, need, are:
A social ideology that not only approves of women having careers, but also encourages equality both at work and at home;
Practical programmes to help them have babies and continue to work.
If Iceland, which has the highest fertility rate among OECD countries, can do this, there is no reason why other high-income countries can't.
By Janadas Devan
WHY are fertility rates - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - declining throughout the world? Demographers point to the following factors: the wide availability of contraceptives; reduced child mortality rate, so parents can achieve their desired number of children with fewer births; urbanisation raising the cost-benefit ratio of children, so encouraging parents to choose quality over quantity; and the education of women equipping them to enter the workforce, so increasing the opportunity cost of their bearing children.
These factors are now operative in large parts of the world. Does that mean humanity is condemned to low fertility rates permanently? Not necessarily.
Take contraceptives: They are as widespread in Turkey as in Japan. But Turkey has a birth rate of 20 per 1,000 people, more than double Japan's nine. Unless Turkish condoms are peculiarly leaky, contraceptives obviously don't automatically result in low fertility rates.
Or take jobs for women: If it leads inevitably to fewer births, the greater the participation of women in the workforce, the lower fertility rates should be. But World Bank figures for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries show that the opposite is the case: the higher the proportion of women in a country's workforce, the higher is that country's fertility rate.
Spain, Italy and Greece, for instance, have the lowest female workforce participation rates among European Union countries (35 to 38 per cent of the labour force), and yet their fertility rates are also the lowest (between 1.1 and 1.3). By contrast, Finland, Sweden and Norway have among the highest female workforce participation rates in Europe (close to 50 per cent), but their fertility rates (1.75 and above) are significantly higher than the European average of 1.4.
Similarly, the United States has a fertility rate slightly below the replacement level of 2.1, but women constitute close to 48 per cent of its labour force; whereas Japan has a fertility rate of just 1.34, but women constitute only slightly above 40 per cent of its labour force.
What explains this strange discrepancy? Can it be that American women prefer the 'super-mum' route, juggling careers and homes, whereas Japanese women dislike children, and are lazy to boot, since they don't seem to like work much either? That obviously cannot be so.
A more credible explanation suggests itself when one looks at the low-fertility-rate countries. What do they have in common? One, they are in Southern Europe or East Asia. And two, traditional attitudes towards women are still dominant in them. Is that a coincidence?
Professor Lena Sommestad, an economic historian at Sweden's Uppsala University, doesn't think so. 'Birth rates are particularly low in countries that support traditional patterns of marriage and breadwinning,' she observes. Mr Martin Wolf of the Financial Times agrees: 'What is happening in Italy, Spain and Japan,' he says, 'is the war of women against male chauvinism. Women are winning' - by, in effect, declaring a womb-strike on society. 'If the men who dominate these countries do not surrender, they will soon not have much of a society left.'
That sounds extravagant, but it makes perfect sense. Japanese and Italian women have as much access to education as their Swedish and American sisters do, but they don't enjoy as much equality. Getting hitched and having babies in these societies all too frequently means being subject to traditional male authority. When the reality at home does not match the emancipation that their education entitles them to, it makes sense for women to choose childlessness.
But the problem here is not female emancipation. The problem is the failure of family structures in particular, and of society in general, to adjust to that emancipation - an emancipation that these societies themselves nurtured. Isn't that the root reason why fertility rates are falling in Singapore too?
The close correlation between female workforce participation and fertility rates suggests also that the more fulfilled women feel, the more likely they are to have children. Women need not necessarily choose between children and careers, Prof Sommestad says, and a fertility rate of 2.1 is not impossible.
General 'social confidence' may also be a factor. US fertility rates, for instance, fell in the 1970s and 1980s, to around 1.8, below West European levels. But in the 1990s, they jumped to around 2.1, not only among immigrants but also native-born Americans, while West Europe's fell to 1.4. The booming US economy of the 1990s was a factor, US demographers believe. Japanese economist Tadashi Nakamae told this newspaper he is convinced the current dearth of babies in Japan is not unrelated to its decade-long economic slump.
But a booming economy alone is probably not enough to boost fertility rates. If the experience of Scandinavian countries - and to some extent, the US as well - is any indication, social programmes to enable couples to have babies are also needed. That means parental leave, flexi-work arrangements, child-care facilities, tax breaks - the whole expensive caboodle.
In other words, merely promoting 'family values' will not do. Practical measures to foster families are needed. The past is gone for good - it wasn't all that great, in any case, for half the human race.
What high-income, low-fertility-rate countries, including Singapore, need, are:
A social ideology that not only approves of women having careers, but also encourages equality both at work and at home;
Practical programmes to help them have babies and continue to work.
If Iceland, which has the highest fertility rate among OECD countries, can do this, there is no reason why other high-income countries can't.
Justice on trial
Feb 26th 2004 | THE HAGUE
From The Economist print edition
The long, slow trial of Slobodan Milosevic, former Yugoslav president, is raising questions about international courts
IT HAS been neither as short nor as salutary as believers in international justice had hoped. Moreover, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, ex-president of Yugoslavia, has run into many practical snags. This week, just as the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was preparing, at long last, to wind up its case, the 62-year-old defendant, whose illness had already interrupted proceedings a dozen times, fell ill yet again. And the presiding judge, Britain's Richard May, announced that he was to step down, also for health reasons.
The tribunal's American head, Theodor Meron, says that Mr May's departure should “not have an unduly disruptive effect on any proceedings”. But Mr Milosevic may now be able to demand a retrial. And that could conceivably mean abandoning two years' worth of hearings, involving nearly 300 witnesses and 30,000 pages of evidence.
Under the ICTY's rules, a replacement judge can be appointed if one of the three-judge panel dies or resigns in mid-trial. So Mr Meron could order the continuation of proceedings—but only if the defendant agrees. If Mr Milosevic, who has always refused to recognise the authority of the court anyway, will not agree, the two remaining judges could still decide to continue the trial if it would “serve the interests of justice”. They probably will. But Mr Milosevic would have a right of appeal, causing yet more cost and delay.
Charged with 66 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, Mr Milosevic is the first head of state since the second world war to have to answer for such atrocities. At the trial's opening, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, declared that it was “the most powerful demonstration that no one is above the law.” Human-rights groups predicted that it would set a “new benchmark”. Nobody wants to throw all that away, especially at a time when the very concept of international justice is under fire.
The ICTY, set up in The Hague in 1993, was the first international court of its kind since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after the second world war. In the years since, ad hoc war-crimes tribunals have been set up for Rwanda, East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Hopes were high that they, together with a new permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, would end any notion of impunity for the chief perpetrators of atrocities—and so help to deter future ones.
But as the proceedings have lengthened and the costs have risen, disillusion has set in. The long American campaign against the ICC (not to be confused with the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague) has not helped. Last August, the UN imposed a “completion strategy” on both the Yugoslav and the Rwandan tribunals, requiring them to end all trials by 2008 and appeals by 2010. Financing (some $120m for the ICTY this year alone) will then cease.
Some criticisms of the ICTY are justified. All pioneers make mistakes, and the Yugoslav tribunal is no exception. But other shortcomings are inherent to international courts. The ICTY has had to harmonise different legal traditions, cope with multiple languages (of judges, lawyers, perpetrators and victims), and translate mountains of documents. Most of the cases before it are hugely complex, involving dozens of charges and hundreds of witnesses. Those convicted have a right of appeal against both conviction and sentence, which they always seem to exercise.
Evidence for war crimes is generally hard to come by, and suspects can be more elusive still. International tribunals do not have police powers: they cannot send in sheriffs to make arrests. They rely on the co-operation of foreign governments, which is not always forthcoming. The ICTY was lucky to have NATO and UN forces in Bosnia to help. But 20 of its chief suspects are still on the run, including Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, the general who allegedly organised the massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. Mrs del Ponte has accused Serbia of giving these suspects a “safe haven”, and of failing to hand over vital evidence.
Based in The Hague, operating only under international law, and with no judges from former Yugoslavia, the ICTY has been criticised for its distance from the scene of the crimes, for making victims feel irrelevant and for leading the Serbs, who make up the great majority of defendants, to talk of “victors' justice”. Some even blame the court for the nationalists' revival in Serbia—both Mr Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, a radical nationalist awaiting trial in The Hague, played a part in the elections in December and the political manoeuvring since.
But the ICTY deserves praise as well as criticism. After an admittedly slow and shaky start, it has streamlined its operations and scored some notable successes. Between four and six trials are now being held in shifts every day, in the tribunal's three chambers. Of the 94 accused who have so far appeared before the court, half have been convicted, including Milan Babic, the former Croatian Serb leader. Eight are still on trial, including Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of masterminding the Serbs' ethnic-cleansing campaign—the darkest chapter in a war that left some 100,000 Bosnians dead and forced a further 2m from their homes. Another 25 await trial; five have died after being charged; and five have had their charges withdrawn. Only five have so far been acquitted.
The prosecution has now agreed to rest its case forthwith, forgoing two days that had been allocated to it. The court has suspended its hearings until June 8th, so as to allow Mr Milosevic the extra time that he had requested to prepare his defence. This will also give time for a substitute judge for Mr May to get abreast of the proceedings. The court has given Mr Milosevic 150 days to complete his defence. Given a rhythm, on doctor's orders, of around three court days a week, proceedings could last well into 2006.
Will Mr Milosevic agree to a simple continuation of the trial? Officials suggest he has nothing to gain by prolonging things. But if he faces a life sentence anyway, he has nothing to lose either. More grandstanding on a public podium may be far more appealing than rotting quietly in a prison cell for the rest of his days.
Feb 26th 2004 | THE HAGUE
From The Economist print edition
The long, slow trial of Slobodan Milosevic, former Yugoslav president, is raising questions about international courts
IT HAS been neither as short nor as salutary as believers in international justice had hoped. Moreover, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, ex-president of Yugoslavia, has run into many practical snags. This week, just as the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was preparing, at long last, to wind up its case, the 62-year-old defendant, whose illness had already interrupted proceedings a dozen times, fell ill yet again. And the presiding judge, Britain's Richard May, announced that he was to step down, also for health reasons.
The tribunal's American head, Theodor Meron, says that Mr May's departure should “not have an unduly disruptive effect on any proceedings”. But Mr Milosevic may now be able to demand a retrial. And that could conceivably mean abandoning two years' worth of hearings, involving nearly 300 witnesses and 30,000 pages of evidence.
Under the ICTY's rules, a replacement judge can be appointed if one of the three-judge panel dies or resigns in mid-trial. So Mr Meron could order the continuation of proceedings—but only if the defendant agrees. If Mr Milosevic, who has always refused to recognise the authority of the court anyway, will not agree, the two remaining judges could still decide to continue the trial if it would “serve the interests of justice”. They probably will. But Mr Milosevic would have a right of appeal, causing yet more cost and delay.
Charged with 66 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, Mr Milosevic is the first head of state since the second world war to have to answer for such atrocities. At the trial's opening, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, declared that it was “the most powerful demonstration that no one is above the law.” Human-rights groups predicted that it would set a “new benchmark”. Nobody wants to throw all that away, especially at a time when the very concept of international justice is under fire.
The ICTY, set up in The Hague in 1993, was the first international court of its kind since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after the second world war. In the years since, ad hoc war-crimes tribunals have been set up for Rwanda, East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Hopes were high that they, together with a new permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, would end any notion of impunity for the chief perpetrators of atrocities—and so help to deter future ones.
But as the proceedings have lengthened and the costs have risen, disillusion has set in. The long American campaign against the ICC (not to be confused with the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague) has not helped. Last August, the UN imposed a “completion strategy” on both the Yugoslav and the Rwandan tribunals, requiring them to end all trials by 2008 and appeals by 2010. Financing (some $120m for the ICTY this year alone) will then cease.
Some criticisms of the ICTY are justified. All pioneers make mistakes, and the Yugoslav tribunal is no exception. But other shortcomings are inherent to international courts. The ICTY has had to harmonise different legal traditions, cope with multiple languages (of judges, lawyers, perpetrators and victims), and translate mountains of documents. Most of the cases before it are hugely complex, involving dozens of charges and hundreds of witnesses. Those convicted have a right of appeal against both conviction and sentence, which they always seem to exercise.
Evidence for war crimes is generally hard to come by, and suspects can be more elusive still. International tribunals do not have police powers: they cannot send in sheriffs to make arrests. They rely on the co-operation of foreign governments, which is not always forthcoming. The ICTY was lucky to have NATO and UN forces in Bosnia to help. But 20 of its chief suspects are still on the run, including Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, the general who allegedly organised the massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. Mrs del Ponte has accused Serbia of giving these suspects a “safe haven”, and of failing to hand over vital evidence.
Based in The Hague, operating only under international law, and with no judges from former Yugoslavia, the ICTY has been criticised for its distance from the scene of the crimes, for making victims feel irrelevant and for leading the Serbs, who make up the great majority of defendants, to talk of “victors' justice”. Some even blame the court for the nationalists' revival in Serbia—both Mr Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, a radical nationalist awaiting trial in The Hague, played a part in the elections in December and the political manoeuvring since.
But the ICTY deserves praise as well as criticism. After an admittedly slow and shaky start, it has streamlined its operations and scored some notable successes. Between four and six trials are now being held in shifts every day, in the tribunal's three chambers. Of the 94 accused who have so far appeared before the court, half have been convicted, including Milan Babic, the former Croatian Serb leader. Eight are still on trial, including Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of masterminding the Serbs' ethnic-cleansing campaign—the darkest chapter in a war that left some 100,000 Bosnians dead and forced a further 2m from their homes. Another 25 await trial; five have died after being charged; and five have had their charges withdrawn. Only five have so far been acquitted.
The prosecution has now agreed to rest its case forthwith, forgoing two days that had been allocated to it. The court has suspended its hearings until June 8th, so as to allow Mr Milosevic the extra time that he had requested to prepare his defence. This will also give time for a substitute judge for Mr May to get abreast of the proceedings. The court has given Mr Milosevic 150 days to complete his defence. Given a rhythm, on doctor's orders, of around three court days a week, proceedings could last well into 2006.
Will Mr Milosevic agree to a simple continuation of the trial? Officials suggest he has nothing to gain by prolonging things. But if he faces a life sentence anyway, he has nothing to lose either. More grandstanding on a public podium may be far more appealing than rotting quietly in a prison cell for the rest of his days.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Multicultural London
Changing shadows
Dec 18th 2003
The many mansions in one east London house of God
DURING Friday prayers, shoes spill down the steps of the Jame-e-masjid mosque in Spitalfields. The main doors, giving on to Fournier Street, are thrown open, and the supplications of the faithful mingle with the noise of the perpetual building work in the City, a little way to the west. When the devotions end, thousands of men reclaim their footwear and congregate in Brick Lane to natter in English, Bengali and “Benglish”. Most wear the kufi, the Muslim prayer cap.
A hundred years ago, similar assemblies formed in the same spot on Friday evenings and Saturday lunchtimes, except that instead of the kufi the men wore yarmulkes, and they and the accompanying women spoke Yiddish instead of Bengali. Between 1898 and 1976, the building on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane was the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. Before that, it was occupied by the Methodists, who had inherited it from the displaced Huguenots—Calvinists fleeing persecution in France—who had built it in 1743. On the pediment at the top of the Fournier Street façade, the Huguenots had placed a sun-dial, inscribing it with an allusion to a Horatian ode that has turned out to be a fitting motto for their temple: “Umbra sumus” (“We are shadows”).
The mosque is a bricks-and-mortar correction to those Britons who think that immigration is a new and harmful phenomenon. It is a symbol of the way history is packed as tightly into poor neighbourhoods as their residents. And its past suggests that while everything changes in this most chameleonic part of London, some things stay the same. Disparate groups of strangers have looked for a better life in this neighbourhood, have faced the same difficulties and reactions, and have found their solace under the same roof.
Models in the making
The Huguenots have long been extolled in Britain as model immigrants, in contradistinction to the feckless hordes that followed them. But most people's perceptions of them were very different when they first arrived.
The first mass migration to Britain since the Normans took place in the 50 years after 1680. French Protestants, known as Huguenots (the name may derive from eyguenot, the term in Genevan dialect for an opponent of Geneva's annexation by the Roman Catholic Duke of Savoy), had first trickled into London in the 16th century, along with some of their Swiss and Walloon co-religionists. Later, after 1681, the Huguenots became subject to a form of persecution known as the dragonnades, in which rowdy soldiers were billeted in their houses, and in 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them a semblance of security. Most stayed in France, officially abjuring their faith, but around 250,000 fled, illegally. Many slipped out by sea, hiding their children in beer barrels. Customs officers slid their swords between the planks of the decks to skewer anyone concealed below.
Some 40,000-50,000 came to England, giving the country a new word—“refugee”, from “réfugié”, one who seeks sanctuary—and a largely new industry, silk-weaving. Around half settled in Spitalfields, close to the Thames, where raw silk from Italy and China was unloaded. Lying just outside the bounds of the City, the area was free of the restrictions imposed on craftsmen by the City guilds. They built broad windows in their weaving lofts, planted mulberry trees to sustain their imported silkworms, and installed canaries to ameliorate the racket of their looms.
In 1742 the ministers, elders and deacons of the Huguenot church in Threadneedle Street petitioned King George II for a licence to erect a new church to accommodate their overflow. Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Christopher Wren, had only just completed Christ Church, at the other end of Fournier Street. It may have acted as a spur, because when work began on the Huguenot church in 1743 only the very finest materials were used. The Neuve Eglise, as it was known, was a brick building with a stone cornice and plenty of windows, its austere yet elegant classicism contrasting sharply with its neighbour's Baroque exuberance. Its founders stipulated that it was not “to be used for any other purpose but for the worship of God”, but leased its vaults to brewers and vintners, who occupied them until late in the 19th century.
The Huguenots had two main advantages over subsequent immigrants: they were white, and they were Protestants. England was in a frenzy of anti-popery, and their devotion to their faith was widely admired. The lord mayor of London organised a collection for them in 1696, and both Charles II and James II donated cash to help them resettle.
A plague of Frogs
Unfortunately, they were still foreigners, a class of people widely (and wrongly) believed to have started the Great Fire of London of 1666. Just as any spending on newcomers does today, royal and mayoral charity embittered the indigenous poor. And worse than simply being foreign, they were French, the very worst type of foreigner to be. A wretched French visitor to London in the 18th century recorded how “at the corner of every street” he suffered “a volley of abusive litanies...The constant burthen of these litanies was, French dog, French b—.” An MP described the Huguenot influx as a “plague of Frogs”. In 1702 a commentator labelled them “scum”, a term that has been popular with anti-immigrant demagogues ever since. Natives complained that English was barely spoken in Spitalfields.
Like their successors, the Huguenots were accused of doing to the city what in reality the city had done to them. London's population grew tenfold between 1500 and 1700, mainly because of migration from the English provinces, creating overcrowding and squalor. The Huguenots took the blame, and anti-French riots broke out in 1675, 1681 and 1683. The immigrants were also ridiculed for their funny eating habits and effete dress—though, with the perennial duality of Anglo-Saxon attitudes to France, the locals also copied their clothes, flowers and recipes.
For a while, these habits, and the bonds of trade, religion and language, preserved the Huguenots' sense of separateness. But in time many changed their names, especially when regular wars with France made them a liability, just as Germanic names would be changed during the first world war. The immigrants' grandchildren married English men and women, and eschewed weaving for the professions and Calvinism for the Church of England. Rich Huguenot families moved out of Spitalfields (sometimes returning to be buried in the grounds of Christ Church), leaving behind their street names—Fleur-de-Lis, Leman, Fournier—and their enlarged weavers' windows.
In 1855 there were still old women in London who had been born there yet spoke only French. But the Huguenot community's departure from the Neuve Eglise in 1809 was the symbolic end of the Frenchness of Spitalfields. For a short time the chapel was occupied by the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, which proselytised in it (not very successfully) to the small Jewish community in the district. In August of 1819, a Methodist congregation moved in; John Wesley, the father of Methodism, is said to have preached in the church in 1760. The building was “restored to Beauty and Comfort” at a cost of £1,300.
Huguenot assimilation was both a cause and a consequence of the decline of the Spitalfields weaving trade, which in the 18th century was undermined by mechanisation and cheap imports. The area became notorious for its unemployment and poverty. In 1851 Charles Dickens wrote about its “squalid streets, lying like narrow black trenches...where sallow, unshaven weavers...prowl languidly about, or lean against posts, or sit brooding on doorsteps.” The weavers were joined by refugees from Ireland's potato famine. The Irish were already in London: in 1736, a mob of weavers protesting at their cheap labour stormed two Irish pubs, yelling, “Down with the Irishmen!” Then, a century later, they came en masse.
The City of Dreadful Night
This was the period in which Spitalfields and the neighbouring parishes became “the East End” of the popular imagination: liminal, lawless, deprived and depraved. To visiting writers and sociologists it was “the Abyss”, “the Empire of Hunger” and “the City of Dreadful Night”. All the bad publicity made it an affordable place of settlement for the Jews who began to arrive in droves in the 1880s.
Jews had trickled back to England since Cromwell readmitted them in 1656. But between 1881 and 1914 they came in a gush. New restrictions governing where they could live and work in the Russian empire, plus pogroms, war and revolution, drove more than 2m Jews out of eastern Europe. Many came to London only to make their way to Liverpool and re-embark for New York. But some stayed, and London's Jewish population exploded.
Like other communities that were later to cluster around London's airports and railway stations, the Jews mainly settled in Spitalfields and Whitechapel, close to their point of arrival in the docks. Today the only mementoes of their sojourn in Brick Lane are an always-open bagel bakery and the odd fading Jewish name above a shop. But gentile visitors of a century ago felt they had been transported to a foreign country. Charles Booth, a sociologist, wrote that “[the Jews] live and crowd together and work and meet their fate independent of the great stream of London life surging around them.” They ate strange foods, spoke a foreign tongue, and made their livings from the markets, from boot-making and cabinet-making and, especially, from tailoring, toiling in small workshops, which, like the Huguenots, they crammed on to or into their homes.
These days the east European Jews are often extolled as model immigrants, in contradistinction to the feckless hordes that followed them. But most people's perceptions of them were very different when they first arrived.
The Jews had one main advantage over some later arrivals: they were white. At first, that availed them little. As the Ripper murders of 1888 illustrated, they were convenient scapegoats for the ills of their adopted city. Jack (“the Ripper”) met some of his victims at the Ten Bells pub, at the other end of Fournier Street from what is now the mosque, and opposite Christ Church. He attributed his handiwork to “the Juewes” in graffiti scrawled near the scene of his fifth evisceration (the scribble was removed by the police lest it ignite a pogrom). The Huguenots, it was agreed, had been “profitable strangers”; but the Jews stole the natives' jobs and, at the same time (an impressive trick), were a burden on the rates. They were “flotsam” and “vermin”, as well as “scum”. Their admission made Britain a laughing-stock. The strength of these feelings led, in 1905, to a law restricting immigration, the ancestor of the stricter ones in place today.
Beggars and barbarians
There were also divisions within the Jewish community: between bosses and the workers who plotted in the pubs of Brick Lane, as journeymen weavers had done 200 years previously; between sub-groups of Litvaks, Galizianers, Romanians and Polacks; and between believers and atheists. A two-day riot took place in 1904 after Jewish radicals invited the rabbis to a concert on the Day of Atonement, provoking worshippers in the Brick Lane synagogues by smoking and brandishing ham sandwiches. There were also tensions between the old, established Jewish families and the newcomers. As one of the new arrivals put it, the “English” Jews thought of their co-religionists as “ignorant beggars, as barbarians, who must be civilised through Sabbath sermons, soup kitchens and such like”. For their part, the devout immigrants considered the English Jews doctrinally lax to the point of apostasy.
This hostility led to the next mutation of the Neuve Eglise. In 1891 the Machzike Hadath (“Upholders of the Law”) Society was formed to promote religious orthodoxy. In 1895 its members occupied the schoolhouse adjoining the Fournier Street chapel, a house that, since the Wesleyans left, had become “a common lodging-house, and the resort of thieves”. In 1898 they moved into the church itself, marching down Brick Lane in procession with their scrolls and a band. They reorganised the pews around a central prayer platform, and made a shrine on the eastern wall. The organ, which had been given to the Huguenots by George III, was removed. The building became known as the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. The piety of its congregation was proverbial.
In time, the Jews, like the Huguenots, left Spitalfields for less cramped parts of London. Most who had not gone already were bombed out by the Luftwaffe. The Spitalfields Great Synagogue was damaged, then done up, but by the 1970s it had fallen into disrepair. It seemed it might be demolished or—against the Huguenots' wishes—become a theatre. Then, in 1976, it was bought for the Bangladeshi community by the Jame-e-masjid Trust.
London's Bangladeshis form one of the largest minority groups in the capital, and one of the oldest. Like the Jews, its earliest members arrived by boat. Sailors from the Indian subcontinent, some of them from the region that is now Bangladesh, were recruited by the East India Company from the early 18th century. Some jumped ship in the London docks; a few later found work and lodgings with the Jews of Spitalfields. More came during the world wars.
But the big boom in Bangladeshi migration—mostly from the eastern Sylhet region—came in the 1950s and early 1960s. Though natural disasters and political instability played a part, the influx was driven more by economics than were the Huguenot and Jewish ones. Families or small villages pooled resources to send a young man to the bidesh (foreign land). Villages that prospered through their remittances became known as Londoni. The advent of new immigration rules in 1962 induced a last-chance rush; since then more Bangladeshis have come to join (or marry) those already in London. Like the Huguenots and Jews, the Bangladeshis started work mainly in textiles—at first in the rug trade, later in leather and suede—and sewing machines once again hummed in the Spitalfields sweatshops.
Tower Hamlets, the borough that now contains Spitalfields, plays host to the largest community of Bangladeshis outside their native country. The streets around Brick Lane once known as “Petty France”, then as the “ghetto”, now comprise “Banglatown”. In place of the kosher butchers, fish-fryers, boot-makers, furriers and tailors who lined Brick Lane itself a century ago, and the weavers and cheese-makers of Huguenot days, there are now sari centres, halal restaurants and vendors of exotic produce. And at the corner of Fournier Street stands the Jame-e-masjid mosque.
Apart from a sign in Arabic, Bengali and English, the building's exterior looks much the same as ever. Inside, things are different. The gallery in which Jewish women once prayed behind lace curtains has been removed, and another floor installed. (A plan to add a minaret was scotched by the local council.) Except for its chandeliers and the ornate carving around its doors, the main prayer hall is much more austere than in its Christian and Jewish phases. A Hebrew plaque outside one of the upstairs classrooms, now used by the madrassa (Islamic school), is the only reminder of the Jewish occupants. The church minister's house next door is home to the Bangladesh Welfare Association. The defunct Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor is round the corner.
The same again, but different
The Bangladeshis have the disadvantages of being neither white nor Christian. Like the Huguenots and Jews before them, they have been lambasted for stealing jobs, poor hygiene, monopolising housing and spongeing from the state. In 1993 a racist councillor (slogan: “Do you want to end up like Brick Lane?”) was elected nearby, and his supporters rampaged through the streets in celebration.
The Bangladeshi experience has also been affected by the fact that, like some Huguenots, many of the first arrivals from Sylhet intended to go home once their fortunes were made. Compared with other immigrants, they have rarely married outside the community and have stuck together geographically, suffering grave poverty and unemployment.
The world, however, has come to them. Because the area's poverty has inhibited redevelopment, the streets around the mosque now comprise one of the best-preserved Georgian enclaves in London. This architectural time-warp has attracted well-heeled artists and yuppies, and some of the old silk-weavers' lofts are now pricey apartments. Meanwhile, like the adventurous Victorians who used to day-trip to the Jewish ghetto, visitors now flock to Brick Lane. Bangladeshi entrepreneurs have tarted up their restaurants to provide them with sustenance.
Because it is a human entrepot, Spitalfields remains one of London's poorest and most conservative districts; but now, for the same reason, it is also among the hippest. When old men in traditional dress congregate beneath the mosque's prophetic sundial, immodestly clad young women weave between them.
Changing shadows
Dec 18th 2003
The many mansions in one east London house of God
DURING Friday prayers, shoes spill down the steps of the Jame-e-masjid mosque in Spitalfields. The main doors, giving on to Fournier Street, are thrown open, and the supplications of the faithful mingle with the noise of the perpetual building work in the City, a little way to the west. When the devotions end, thousands of men reclaim their footwear and congregate in Brick Lane to natter in English, Bengali and “Benglish”. Most wear the kufi, the Muslim prayer cap.
A hundred years ago, similar assemblies formed in the same spot on Friday evenings and Saturday lunchtimes, except that instead of the kufi the men wore yarmulkes, and they and the accompanying women spoke Yiddish instead of Bengali. Between 1898 and 1976, the building on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane was the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. Before that, it was occupied by the Methodists, who had inherited it from the displaced Huguenots—Calvinists fleeing persecution in France—who had built it in 1743. On the pediment at the top of the Fournier Street façade, the Huguenots had placed a sun-dial, inscribing it with an allusion to a Horatian ode that has turned out to be a fitting motto for their temple: “Umbra sumus” (“We are shadows”).
The mosque is a bricks-and-mortar correction to those Britons who think that immigration is a new and harmful phenomenon. It is a symbol of the way history is packed as tightly into poor neighbourhoods as their residents. And its past suggests that while everything changes in this most chameleonic part of London, some things stay the same. Disparate groups of strangers have looked for a better life in this neighbourhood, have faced the same difficulties and reactions, and have found their solace under the same roof.
Models in the making
The Huguenots have long been extolled in Britain as model immigrants, in contradistinction to the feckless hordes that followed them. But most people's perceptions of them were very different when they first arrived.
The first mass migration to Britain since the Normans took place in the 50 years after 1680. French Protestants, known as Huguenots (the name may derive from eyguenot, the term in Genevan dialect for an opponent of Geneva's annexation by the Roman Catholic Duke of Savoy), had first trickled into London in the 16th century, along with some of their Swiss and Walloon co-religionists. Later, after 1681, the Huguenots became subject to a form of persecution known as the dragonnades, in which rowdy soldiers were billeted in their houses, and in 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them a semblance of security. Most stayed in France, officially abjuring their faith, but around 250,000 fled, illegally. Many slipped out by sea, hiding their children in beer barrels. Customs officers slid their swords between the planks of the decks to skewer anyone concealed below.
Some 40,000-50,000 came to England, giving the country a new word—“refugee”, from “réfugié”, one who seeks sanctuary—and a largely new industry, silk-weaving. Around half settled in Spitalfields, close to the Thames, where raw silk from Italy and China was unloaded. Lying just outside the bounds of the City, the area was free of the restrictions imposed on craftsmen by the City guilds. They built broad windows in their weaving lofts, planted mulberry trees to sustain their imported silkworms, and installed canaries to ameliorate the racket of their looms.
In 1742 the ministers, elders and deacons of the Huguenot church in Threadneedle Street petitioned King George II for a licence to erect a new church to accommodate their overflow. Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Christopher Wren, had only just completed Christ Church, at the other end of Fournier Street. It may have acted as a spur, because when work began on the Huguenot church in 1743 only the very finest materials were used. The Neuve Eglise, as it was known, was a brick building with a stone cornice and plenty of windows, its austere yet elegant classicism contrasting sharply with its neighbour's Baroque exuberance. Its founders stipulated that it was not “to be used for any other purpose but for the worship of God”, but leased its vaults to brewers and vintners, who occupied them until late in the 19th century.
The Huguenots had two main advantages over subsequent immigrants: they were white, and they were Protestants. England was in a frenzy of anti-popery, and their devotion to their faith was widely admired. The lord mayor of London organised a collection for them in 1696, and both Charles II and James II donated cash to help them resettle.
A plague of Frogs
Unfortunately, they were still foreigners, a class of people widely (and wrongly) believed to have started the Great Fire of London of 1666. Just as any spending on newcomers does today, royal and mayoral charity embittered the indigenous poor. And worse than simply being foreign, they were French, the very worst type of foreigner to be. A wretched French visitor to London in the 18th century recorded how “at the corner of every street” he suffered “a volley of abusive litanies...The constant burthen of these litanies was, French dog, French b—.” An MP described the Huguenot influx as a “plague of Frogs”. In 1702 a commentator labelled them “scum”, a term that has been popular with anti-immigrant demagogues ever since. Natives complained that English was barely spoken in Spitalfields.
Like their successors, the Huguenots were accused of doing to the city what in reality the city had done to them. London's population grew tenfold between 1500 and 1700, mainly because of migration from the English provinces, creating overcrowding and squalor. The Huguenots took the blame, and anti-French riots broke out in 1675, 1681 and 1683. The immigrants were also ridiculed for their funny eating habits and effete dress—though, with the perennial duality of Anglo-Saxon attitudes to France, the locals also copied their clothes, flowers and recipes.
For a while, these habits, and the bonds of trade, religion and language, preserved the Huguenots' sense of separateness. But in time many changed their names, especially when regular wars with France made them a liability, just as Germanic names would be changed during the first world war. The immigrants' grandchildren married English men and women, and eschewed weaving for the professions and Calvinism for the Church of England. Rich Huguenot families moved out of Spitalfields (sometimes returning to be buried in the grounds of Christ Church), leaving behind their street names—Fleur-de-Lis, Leman, Fournier—and their enlarged weavers' windows.
In 1855 there were still old women in London who had been born there yet spoke only French. But the Huguenot community's departure from the Neuve Eglise in 1809 was the symbolic end of the Frenchness of Spitalfields. For a short time the chapel was occupied by the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, which proselytised in it (not very successfully) to the small Jewish community in the district. In August of 1819, a Methodist congregation moved in; John Wesley, the father of Methodism, is said to have preached in the church in 1760. The building was “restored to Beauty and Comfort” at a cost of £1,300.
Huguenot assimilation was both a cause and a consequence of the decline of the Spitalfields weaving trade, which in the 18th century was undermined by mechanisation and cheap imports. The area became notorious for its unemployment and poverty. In 1851 Charles Dickens wrote about its “squalid streets, lying like narrow black trenches...where sallow, unshaven weavers...prowl languidly about, or lean against posts, or sit brooding on doorsteps.” The weavers were joined by refugees from Ireland's potato famine. The Irish were already in London: in 1736, a mob of weavers protesting at their cheap labour stormed two Irish pubs, yelling, “Down with the Irishmen!” Then, a century later, they came en masse.
The City of Dreadful Night
This was the period in which Spitalfields and the neighbouring parishes became “the East End” of the popular imagination: liminal, lawless, deprived and depraved. To visiting writers and sociologists it was “the Abyss”, “the Empire of Hunger” and “the City of Dreadful Night”. All the bad publicity made it an affordable place of settlement for the Jews who began to arrive in droves in the 1880s.
Jews had trickled back to England since Cromwell readmitted them in 1656. But between 1881 and 1914 they came in a gush. New restrictions governing where they could live and work in the Russian empire, plus pogroms, war and revolution, drove more than 2m Jews out of eastern Europe. Many came to London only to make their way to Liverpool and re-embark for New York. But some stayed, and London's Jewish population exploded.
Like other communities that were later to cluster around London's airports and railway stations, the Jews mainly settled in Spitalfields and Whitechapel, close to their point of arrival in the docks. Today the only mementoes of their sojourn in Brick Lane are an always-open bagel bakery and the odd fading Jewish name above a shop. But gentile visitors of a century ago felt they had been transported to a foreign country. Charles Booth, a sociologist, wrote that “[the Jews] live and crowd together and work and meet their fate independent of the great stream of London life surging around them.” They ate strange foods, spoke a foreign tongue, and made their livings from the markets, from boot-making and cabinet-making and, especially, from tailoring, toiling in small workshops, which, like the Huguenots, they crammed on to or into their homes.
These days the east European Jews are often extolled as model immigrants, in contradistinction to the feckless hordes that followed them. But most people's perceptions of them were very different when they first arrived.
The Jews had one main advantage over some later arrivals: they were white. At first, that availed them little. As the Ripper murders of 1888 illustrated, they were convenient scapegoats for the ills of their adopted city. Jack (“the Ripper”) met some of his victims at the Ten Bells pub, at the other end of Fournier Street from what is now the mosque, and opposite Christ Church. He attributed his handiwork to “the Juewes” in graffiti scrawled near the scene of his fifth evisceration (the scribble was removed by the police lest it ignite a pogrom). The Huguenots, it was agreed, had been “profitable strangers”; but the Jews stole the natives' jobs and, at the same time (an impressive trick), were a burden on the rates. They were “flotsam” and “vermin”, as well as “scum”. Their admission made Britain a laughing-stock. The strength of these feelings led, in 1905, to a law restricting immigration, the ancestor of the stricter ones in place today.
Beggars and barbarians
There were also divisions within the Jewish community: between bosses and the workers who plotted in the pubs of Brick Lane, as journeymen weavers had done 200 years previously; between sub-groups of Litvaks, Galizianers, Romanians and Polacks; and between believers and atheists. A two-day riot took place in 1904 after Jewish radicals invited the rabbis to a concert on the Day of Atonement, provoking worshippers in the Brick Lane synagogues by smoking and brandishing ham sandwiches. There were also tensions between the old, established Jewish families and the newcomers. As one of the new arrivals put it, the “English” Jews thought of their co-religionists as “ignorant beggars, as barbarians, who must be civilised through Sabbath sermons, soup kitchens and such like”. For their part, the devout immigrants considered the English Jews doctrinally lax to the point of apostasy.
This hostility led to the next mutation of the Neuve Eglise. In 1891 the Machzike Hadath (“Upholders of the Law”) Society was formed to promote religious orthodoxy. In 1895 its members occupied the schoolhouse adjoining the Fournier Street chapel, a house that, since the Wesleyans left, had become “a common lodging-house, and the resort of thieves”. In 1898 they moved into the church itself, marching down Brick Lane in procession with their scrolls and a band. They reorganised the pews around a central prayer platform, and made a shrine on the eastern wall. The organ, which had been given to the Huguenots by George III, was removed. The building became known as the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. The piety of its congregation was proverbial.
In time, the Jews, like the Huguenots, left Spitalfields for less cramped parts of London. Most who had not gone already were bombed out by the Luftwaffe. The Spitalfields Great Synagogue was damaged, then done up, but by the 1970s it had fallen into disrepair. It seemed it might be demolished or—against the Huguenots' wishes—become a theatre. Then, in 1976, it was bought for the Bangladeshi community by the Jame-e-masjid Trust.
London's Bangladeshis form one of the largest minority groups in the capital, and one of the oldest. Like the Jews, its earliest members arrived by boat. Sailors from the Indian subcontinent, some of them from the region that is now Bangladesh, were recruited by the East India Company from the early 18th century. Some jumped ship in the London docks; a few later found work and lodgings with the Jews of Spitalfields. More came during the world wars.
But the big boom in Bangladeshi migration—mostly from the eastern Sylhet region—came in the 1950s and early 1960s. Though natural disasters and political instability played a part, the influx was driven more by economics than were the Huguenot and Jewish ones. Families or small villages pooled resources to send a young man to the bidesh (foreign land). Villages that prospered through their remittances became known as Londoni. The advent of new immigration rules in 1962 induced a last-chance rush; since then more Bangladeshis have come to join (or marry) those already in London. Like the Huguenots and Jews, the Bangladeshis started work mainly in textiles—at first in the rug trade, later in leather and suede—and sewing machines once again hummed in the Spitalfields sweatshops.
Tower Hamlets, the borough that now contains Spitalfields, plays host to the largest community of Bangladeshis outside their native country. The streets around Brick Lane once known as “Petty France”, then as the “ghetto”, now comprise “Banglatown”. In place of the kosher butchers, fish-fryers, boot-makers, furriers and tailors who lined Brick Lane itself a century ago, and the weavers and cheese-makers of Huguenot days, there are now sari centres, halal restaurants and vendors of exotic produce. And at the corner of Fournier Street stands the Jame-e-masjid mosque.
Apart from a sign in Arabic, Bengali and English, the building's exterior looks much the same as ever. Inside, things are different. The gallery in which Jewish women once prayed behind lace curtains has been removed, and another floor installed. (A plan to add a minaret was scotched by the local council.) Except for its chandeliers and the ornate carving around its doors, the main prayer hall is much more austere than in its Christian and Jewish phases. A Hebrew plaque outside one of the upstairs classrooms, now used by the madrassa (Islamic school), is the only reminder of the Jewish occupants. The church minister's house next door is home to the Bangladesh Welfare Association. The defunct Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor is round the corner.
The same again, but different
The Bangladeshis have the disadvantages of being neither white nor Christian. Like the Huguenots and Jews before them, they have been lambasted for stealing jobs, poor hygiene, monopolising housing and spongeing from the state. In 1993 a racist councillor (slogan: “Do you want to end up like Brick Lane?”) was elected nearby, and his supporters rampaged through the streets in celebration.
The Bangladeshi experience has also been affected by the fact that, like some Huguenots, many of the first arrivals from Sylhet intended to go home once their fortunes were made. Compared with other immigrants, they have rarely married outside the community and have stuck together geographically, suffering grave poverty and unemployment.
The world, however, has come to them. Because the area's poverty has inhibited redevelopment, the streets around the mosque now comprise one of the best-preserved Georgian enclaves in London. This architectural time-warp has attracted well-heeled artists and yuppies, and some of the old silk-weavers' lofts are now pricey apartments. Meanwhile, like the adventurous Victorians who used to day-trip to the Jewish ghetto, visitors now flock to Brick Lane. Bangladeshi entrepreneurs have tarted up their restaurants to provide them with sustenance.
Because it is a human entrepot, Spitalfields remains one of London's poorest and most conservative districts; but now, for the same reason, it is also among the hippest. When old men in traditional dress congregate beneath the mosque's prophetic sundial, immodestly clad young women weave between them.
Friday, February 20, 2004
One last push for peace
Feb 19th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
After a breakthrough at the United Nations, fresh peace talks on the divided island of Cyprus have begun, and will be followed by a referendum. If all goes well, the whole island will join the European Union on May 1st—also boosting Turkey’s chances of joining eventually
EVER since Turkish troops invaded the north of Cyprus 30 years ago, leading to its division into Greek and Turkish zones, repeated rounds of internationally backed talks have failed to reunite the Mediterranean island. The United Nations maintains a 1,200-strong peacekeeping force along the “Green Line” boundary between the two sectors. Turkey, the only country that recognises the northern, Turkish sector as an independent state, keeps about 30,000 troops there. Greece has about 12,000 troops on the other side. As recently as last March, the two sides came close to agreement, only for the talks to collapse. But now, following a breakthrough at the UN late last week, a fresh round of talks opened on Thursday February 19th, in the UN buffer zone that runs through the divided capital, Nicosia. Their chances seem better than the last attempt to reach a lasting peace.
Last Friday, after three days of tough talks at the UN’s headquarters in New York, its secretary-general, Kofi Annan, announced that Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders had accepted his proposals for rapid negotiations on a peace deal that will then be put to a referendum of all Cypriots on April 21st—just ten days before the Greek part of Cyprus (with or without the Turkish part) will join the European Union. The talks will be based on the UN’s existing plan to stitch Cyprus back together as a loose federation, in which the Greek and Turkish sectors largely run their own affairs but a power-sharing central government runs the island’s foreign relations.
Under the deal agreed on Friday, if the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders cannot agree by March 22nd, the governments of Greece and Turkey will be brought in for a week of intensive talks. If there is still no final text of an agreement by the 29th, Mr Annan will fill in the blanks and the referendum will go ahead anyway. If the last-ditch attempt to forge a settlement fails, the Turkish Cypriot sector’s isolation will only increase, and Turkey’s own hopes of joining the EU may be set back by years.
When Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960, its constitution guaranteed power-sharing between the ethnic Greek majority and Turkish minority. But these arrangements broke down in the 1960s and the Greek Cypriots were left in control of most of the island, leading to years of inter-communal violence. In 1974, Greece’s then military dictatorship backed a coup on the island, staged by militants who wanted to make Cyprus a part of Greece. This prompted Turkey’s invasion of northern Cyprus. Many thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and the island was left divided, with the Turkish side holding 37% of its land, even though Turkish Cypriots were only 18% of the population before the conflict. The UN’s plan envisages returning several chunks of land to the Greek Cypriot sector (see map) but the two sides have been unable to reach agreement on the details. Among the other important issues that remain to be resolved are: how many Greek Cypriots will be allowed to return to live in the north; and how many Turkish and Greek troops will be allowed to remain on the island.
One of the main reasons that the talks collapsed last March was that Turkey’s government failed to put enough pressure on Rauf Denktash, the notoriously stubborn Turkish Cypriot leader. His people, much poorer than their ethnic Greek counterparts, have become increasingly frustrated at their isolation and at Mr Denktash. A few weeks before the talks, he faced a huge protest, with demonstrators carrying placards saying “Yes to peace, Yes to the EU”. But Mr Denktash rejected the UN’s proposals, arguing that a land transfer on the scale envisaged would lead to a refugee crisis among Turkish Cypriots.
An election on the Turkish Cypriot side, in December, ended more or less in a dead heat between supporters and opponents of unification. A coalition government was formed, led jointly by Mr Denktash’s son and a pro-unification leader. In January, the new government regained the initiative by calling for fresh talks, in which the UN plan would be a “reference point”.
A change in stance by Turkey seems to have played an important role in the revival of the talks. Its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is said to have put firm pressure on the various Turkish Cypriot leaders to form a coalition and return to the negotiating table. Mr Erdogan is also thought to have persuaded the Turkish armed forces—which have clung to northern Cyprus as a military asset—to accept an eventual deal. Other international powers have also been leaning hard on both Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders: diplomats said America’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, had intervened personally during last week’s talks at the UN.
Even now, though, successful talks, followed by a successful outcome in the referendum, are not guaranteed. If all goes well, and the Turkish sector of Cyprus joins the EU along with the Greek part in May, this will boost Turkey’s own hopes of starting EU membership negotiations by early next year. “After we have done everything and solved the Cyprus problem, nobody can say no to starting the talks,” the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said at the weekend.
The EU’s leaders will hold a summit in December to review Turkey’s candidacy. But there are some in the EU—such as Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats—who argue that Turkey is too big and too Muslim to be given full membership. However, the EU already has millions of Muslim citizens; and the entry of hundreds of thousands of Turkish Cypriots would make such arguments look increasingly unconvincing. Turkey will be more likely to continue pursuing its democratic and economic reforms, and to contain Islamic militancy, if its aspirations to join the EU are met. So a lot more than the future of Cyprus is hanging on the talks that the island’s leaders have commenced.
Feb 19th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
After a breakthrough at the United Nations, fresh peace talks on the divided island of Cyprus have begun, and will be followed by a referendum. If all goes well, the whole island will join the European Union on May 1st—also boosting Turkey’s chances of joining eventually
EVER since Turkish troops invaded the north of Cyprus 30 years ago, leading to its division into Greek and Turkish zones, repeated rounds of internationally backed talks have failed to reunite the Mediterranean island. The United Nations maintains a 1,200-strong peacekeeping force along the “Green Line” boundary between the two sectors. Turkey, the only country that recognises the northern, Turkish sector as an independent state, keeps about 30,000 troops there. Greece has about 12,000 troops on the other side. As recently as last March, the two sides came close to agreement, only for the talks to collapse. But now, following a breakthrough at the UN late last week, a fresh round of talks opened on Thursday February 19th, in the UN buffer zone that runs through the divided capital, Nicosia. Their chances seem better than the last attempt to reach a lasting peace.
Last Friday, after three days of tough talks at the UN’s headquarters in New York, its secretary-general, Kofi Annan, announced that Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders had accepted his proposals for rapid negotiations on a peace deal that will then be put to a referendum of all Cypriots on April 21st—just ten days before the Greek part of Cyprus (with or without the Turkish part) will join the European Union. The talks will be based on the UN’s existing plan to stitch Cyprus back together as a loose federation, in which the Greek and Turkish sectors largely run their own affairs but a power-sharing central government runs the island’s foreign relations.
Under the deal agreed on Friday, if the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders cannot agree by March 22nd, the governments of Greece and Turkey will be brought in for a week of intensive talks. If there is still no final text of an agreement by the 29th, Mr Annan will fill in the blanks and the referendum will go ahead anyway. If the last-ditch attempt to forge a settlement fails, the Turkish Cypriot sector’s isolation will only increase, and Turkey’s own hopes of joining the EU may be set back by years.
When Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960, its constitution guaranteed power-sharing between the ethnic Greek majority and Turkish minority. But these arrangements broke down in the 1960s and the Greek Cypriots were left in control of most of the island, leading to years of inter-communal violence. In 1974, Greece’s then military dictatorship backed a coup on the island, staged by militants who wanted to make Cyprus a part of Greece. This prompted Turkey’s invasion of northern Cyprus. Many thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and the island was left divided, with the Turkish side holding 37% of its land, even though Turkish Cypriots were only 18% of the population before the conflict. The UN’s plan envisages returning several chunks of land to the Greek Cypriot sector (see map) but the two sides have been unable to reach agreement on the details. Among the other important issues that remain to be resolved are: how many Greek Cypriots will be allowed to return to live in the north; and how many Turkish and Greek troops will be allowed to remain on the island.
One of the main reasons that the talks collapsed last March was that Turkey’s government failed to put enough pressure on Rauf Denktash, the notoriously stubborn Turkish Cypriot leader. His people, much poorer than their ethnic Greek counterparts, have become increasingly frustrated at their isolation and at Mr Denktash. A few weeks before the talks, he faced a huge protest, with demonstrators carrying placards saying “Yes to peace, Yes to the EU”. But Mr Denktash rejected the UN’s proposals, arguing that a land transfer on the scale envisaged would lead to a refugee crisis among Turkish Cypriots.
An election on the Turkish Cypriot side, in December, ended more or less in a dead heat between supporters and opponents of unification. A coalition government was formed, led jointly by Mr Denktash’s son and a pro-unification leader. In January, the new government regained the initiative by calling for fresh talks, in which the UN plan would be a “reference point”.
A change in stance by Turkey seems to have played an important role in the revival of the talks. Its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is said to have put firm pressure on the various Turkish Cypriot leaders to form a coalition and return to the negotiating table. Mr Erdogan is also thought to have persuaded the Turkish armed forces—which have clung to northern Cyprus as a military asset—to accept an eventual deal. Other international powers have also been leaning hard on both Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders: diplomats said America’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, had intervened personally during last week’s talks at the UN.
Even now, though, successful talks, followed by a successful outcome in the referendum, are not guaranteed. If all goes well, and the Turkish sector of Cyprus joins the EU along with the Greek part in May, this will boost Turkey’s own hopes of starting EU membership negotiations by early next year. “After we have done everything and solved the Cyprus problem, nobody can say no to starting the talks,” the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said at the weekend.
The EU’s leaders will hold a summit in December to review Turkey’s candidacy. But there are some in the EU—such as Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats—who argue that Turkey is too big and too Muslim to be given full membership. However, the EU already has millions of Muslim citizens; and the entry of hundreds of thousands of Turkish Cypriots would make such arguments look increasingly unconvincing. Turkey will be more likely to continue pursuing its democratic and economic reforms, and to contain Islamic militancy, if its aspirations to join the EU are met. So a lot more than the future of Cyprus is hanging on the talks that the island’s leaders have commenced.
Human nature is spanner in the works
By Janadas Devan
FOREIGN MATTERS
'DEMOGRAPHY,' said Auguste Comte, 'is destiny'. He might have added that demography is an inexact science, which explains why destiny is inscrutable.
Plato believed cities couldn't have more than 5,040 landholders. Economist Thomas Malthus famously argued in 1825 that since human populations grew at a 'geometric' rate, they will outstrip food supplies. Historian Thomas Carlyle found this prospect so frightening, he coined the term 'dismal science' to describe economics. The epithet has survived, but not Malthus' theory.
Too many people still don't have enough to eat - about 60 per cent of South Asian children, for instance, suffer from malnutrition - but global food production has far outpaced population growth, thanks in large part to the Green Revolution. As the economist Amartya Sen has noted, 'not only is food generally much cheaper to buy today, in constant dollars, than it was in Malthus' time, it also has become cheaper during recent decades'.
Malthus, however, did enjoy a boom in the 1960s, when books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb appeared. In 1972, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, using computer models, went so far as to predict that growing populations would place such pressure on the environment that arable land would be exhausted by 2000, oil by 1992, gold by 1981, and civilisation itself would collapse by 2070.
With countries like India bursting at the seams with pullulating humanity, and suffering famines as a result, such predictions didn't seem outlandish.
The world's population was only one billion in 1825, a figure it took the species 150,000 years to reach. But within 100 years, it had doubled to two billion; and within another 50 years, it doubled again to four billion. Humanity seemed to be growing at a galloping 'geometric' rate.
And yet, as early as 1974, it became clear to demographers that there was a 'demographic transition' under way, with the pattern shifting from the high birth rates and low death rates of the preceding 150 years, to the low birth and death rates of today.
The experts assumed, however, that birth and death rates would somehow equalise at some point, and the global population would stabilise around 10-12 billion in the 21st century. As it turns out, they were both right and wrong - right, in that the 'demographic transition' is indeed real; but wrong, in that there is no sign of the population stabilising at any level.
Indeed, the consensus now is that if fertility rates continue to fall at the current pace, the world's population will increase from six billion now to eight billion in 2050 - and then decline rapidly after that. How rapidly? Nobody knows. By one estimate, if the global birth rate were to fall to as low as Japan's or Italy's today - 1.32 and 1.24 respectively - it is conceivable that several centuries from now, the planet may hold fewer people than the United States does today. It will be a 'small world' indeed.
But why have demographers been wrong so often? How could the world experience two diametrically opposite trends within the space of 250 years - an epochal doubling, and then re-doubling, up to 2050; to be followed by an equally epochal decline thereafter? It is important to understand why we can be surprised by such shifts if we hope to meet the challenge of falling birth rates. The first thing to note is that demography is inexact precisely because the material it deals with - human beings - is unpredictable.
Just consider: If US death rates had remained the same at the end of the 20th century as at the beginning, its population would be 140 million today, not 292 million. Nobody could have predicted the astonishing progress of modern medicine.
Just consider: If fertility rates remained at current levels - with developing countries breeding at 3.1 and developed countries de-breeding at 1.5 - there would be 296 billion people in 2150! Even if the fertility rate stabilised at 2.5 children per woman, the world's population would reach 28 billion.
Just consider: If Korea's population grew by 2 per cent each year, and the rest of the world's declined by 1 per cent, Koreans would constitute 10 per cent of the world's population within a generation, instead of today's 1 per cent.
What all this tell us is that it is impossible to make precise demographic forecasts. Minute changes can balloon into astronomic consequences. Nobody could have predicted 50 years ago that 44 per cent of humanity today would be living in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below replacement levels, that even China's fertility rate would fall below 2.1, or that Japan will shrink from 128 million people today to 45 million in 2100. And we couldn't (and can't) because this is ultimately not a matter of biology or instinct, but values.
An analogy might be useful here. Consider the two theories which dominate evolutionary biology today: One, Steven Jay Gould's notion that natural selection occurs at the level of whole organisms, even species; the other, Richard Dawkin's theory that it is the gene, the 'selfish gene', not the species, that drives natural selection.
We worry about demography as destiny at the level of whole societies, when we conceive ourselves as part of a greater whole. But the engine that drives demography is not whole societies, but individuals - 'selfish individuals'. We will not come to grips with the problem of declining birth rates till we understand the 'selfishness' that drives modern men and women.
What do modern wo(men) want?
This is the first in a series of three articles
By Janadas Devan
FOREIGN MATTERS
'DEMOGRAPHY,' said Auguste Comte, 'is destiny'. He might have added that demography is an inexact science, which explains why destiny is inscrutable.
Plato believed cities couldn't have more than 5,040 landholders. Economist Thomas Malthus famously argued in 1825 that since human populations grew at a 'geometric' rate, they will outstrip food supplies. Historian Thomas Carlyle found this prospect so frightening, he coined the term 'dismal science' to describe economics. The epithet has survived, but not Malthus' theory.
Too many people still don't have enough to eat - about 60 per cent of South Asian children, for instance, suffer from malnutrition - but global food production has far outpaced population growth, thanks in large part to the Green Revolution. As the economist Amartya Sen has noted, 'not only is food generally much cheaper to buy today, in constant dollars, than it was in Malthus' time, it also has become cheaper during recent decades'.
Malthus, however, did enjoy a boom in the 1960s, when books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb appeared. In 1972, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, using computer models, went so far as to predict that growing populations would place such pressure on the environment that arable land would be exhausted by 2000, oil by 1992, gold by 1981, and civilisation itself would collapse by 2070.
With countries like India bursting at the seams with pullulating humanity, and suffering famines as a result, such predictions didn't seem outlandish.
The world's population was only one billion in 1825, a figure it took the species 150,000 years to reach. But within 100 years, it had doubled to two billion; and within another 50 years, it doubled again to four billion. Humanity seemed to be growing at a galloping 'geometric' rate.
And yet, as early as 1974, it became clear to demographers that there was a 'demographic transition' under way, with the pattern shifting from the high birth rates and low death rates of the preceding 150 years, to the low birth and death rates of today.
The experts assumed, however, that birth and death rates would somehow equalise at some point, and the global population would stabilise around 10-12 billion in the 21st century. As it turns out, they were both right and wrong - right, in that the 'demographic transition' is indeed real; but wrong, in that there is no sign of the population stabilising at any level.
Indeed, the consensus now is that if fertility rates continue to fall at the current pace, the world's population will increase from six billion now to eight billion in 2050 - and then decline rapidly after that. How rapidly? Nobody knows. By one estimate, if the global birth rate were to fall to as low as Japan's or Italy's today - 1.32 and 1.24 respectively - it is conceivable that several centuries from now, the planet may hold fewer people than the United States does today. It will be a 'small world' indeed.
But why have demographers been wrong so often? How could the world experience two diametrically opposite trends within the space of 250 years - an epochal doubling, and then re-doubling, up to 2050; to be followed by an equally epochal decline thereafter? It is important to understand why we can be surprised by such shifts if we hope to meet the challenge of falling birth rates. The first thing to note is that demography is inexact precisely because the material it deals with - human beings - is unpredictable.
Just consider: If US death rates had remained the same at the end of the 20th century as at the beginning, its population would be 140 million today, not 292 million. Nobody could have predicted the astonishing progress of modern medicine.
Just consider: If fertility rates remained at current levels - with developing countries breeding at 3.1 and developed countries de-breeding at 1.5 - there would be 296 billion people in 2150! Even if the fertility rate stabilised at 2.5 children per woman, the world's population would reach 28 billion.
Just consider: If Korea's population grew by 2 per cent each year, and the rest of the world's declined by 1 per cent, Koreans would constitute 10 per cent of the world's population within a generation, instead of today's 1 per cent.
What all this tell us is that it is impossible to make precise demographic forecasts. Minute changes can balloon into astronomic consequences. Nobody could have predicted 50 years ago that 44 per cent of humanity today would be living in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below replacement levels, that even China's fertility rate would fall below 2.1, or that Japan will shrink from 128 million people today to 45 million in 2100. And we couldn't (and can't) because this is ultimately not a matter of biology or instinct, but values.
An analogy might be useful here. Consider the two theories which dominate evolutionary biology today: One, Steven Jay Gould's notion that natural selection occurs at the level of whole organisms, even species; the other, Richard Dawkin's theory that it is the gene, the 'selfish gene', not the species, that drives natural selection.
We worry about demography as destiny at the level of whole societies, when we conceive ourselves as part of a greater whole. But the engine that drives demography is not whole societies, but individuals - 'selfish individuals'. We will not come to grips with the problem of declining birth rates till we understand the 'selfishness' that drives modern men and women.
What do modern wo(men) want?
This is the first in a series of three articles
Taking the long view in countering terrorism
By BARRY DESKER
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
THE emergence of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) threat in South-east Asia has spawned a cottage industry of books and commentaries discussing terrorism in the region.
Most of the analyses are by counter-terrorism specialists, theorists in international relations and political pundits.
Those who have spent years studying the region, including area specialists and scholars in Islamic studies, have been absent from the debate. Instead, they have decried the lack of depth in these analyses.
One reason for their late involvement: Most were mesmerised by the moderate character of Islam in the region. There was denial that there are groups intent on disrupting the peaceful evolution of societies, such as Indonesia, in a transition to democratic governance.
Lacking the long view these specialists could provide, the debate on JI resulted in the perception that militancy in Islam is a recent phenomenon.
In reality, radical interpretations of Islam are not a new development. In the 1870s, religious Muslims who returned from the haj inspired by the austere Wahabbi fundamentalism they encountered in Mecca embarked on the Padri wars in West Sumatra.
The use of the term 'padri' was an astute recognition of the overlap between fundamentalists of different religious faiths: The white robes of the Wahabbi followers and their religious zeal reminded local villagers of Christian missionaries or padres.
At the beginning of the 20th century, pamphleteers and editors in Singapore, then the hub of the regional Malay-language media, spread competing Islamic doctrines around the region. They set the stage for a political contest between the Kaum Muda (the reformists) and the Kaum Tua (the traditional establishment).
In the 1950s, the new Indonesian republic faced a major challenge from the Darul Islam revolt, which was supported by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, the leaders of today's JI.
Colonial regimes in the region, as well as post-colonial leaderships, agonised over the role of Islam and recognised the challenge posed by Islamic radicals bent on overturning the existing state order.
Radical interpretations of Islam will be a recurrent challenge, as today's JI shows. Like other similar movements in the Islamic world which describe themselves as Salafi, JI sought a revival of the pristine Islam of the founding ancestors (salaf), by replicating the historic conquest of pagan Arabia.
The JI redefined jihad to justify revolutionary violence against internal and external enemies of Islam. Like Osama bin Laden, its leaders justified violence against Muslim rulers on the grounds that they suppressed Islamic law and were therefore apostates to be punished with death. Violence against Americans and other 'Crusaders' was justified on the grounds that they promoted secular societies which subjugated Islam.
One fascinating aspect is the unintended consequences of earlier actions. United States support for the mujahideen who opposed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s led to the creation of a multinational network of Afghan veterans who returned to their home countries desiring to replicate their successful jihad.
The late Abdullah Sungkar laid the groundwork for future cooperation between JI and Al-Qaeda when he went to Afghanistan to participate in the resistance. The decision by the US to withdraw from Afghanistan after the end of the Cold War allowed Al-Qaeda to use this failed state as a sanctuary and training ground for a global jihad.
The networks created in Afghanistan formed the building blocks for Al-Qaeda's global reach, as local concerns were fused with its global agenda.
To appreciate Al-Qaeda's global as well as regional impact, one should look at the organisation as a venture capitalist acting as a revolutionary catalyst. It provides training and funding while allowing for local initiative and a sense of empowerment.
Instead of a hierarchical transnational organisation, Al-Qaeda is a hydra-headed network linking operatives with shared beliefs. Although Al-Qaeda has provided logistics support and financial assistance to JI, its most significant role lay in the creation of a shared identity and a global vision.
HEARTS AND MINDS
IT IS frequently argued that the rage within Muslim communities arises from the conflicts in the Middle East - the Israel-Palestine conflict and now the American occupation of Iraq. We should not ignore the radicalising impact of these developments.
However, a closer reading of Osama's pronouncements and of jihadist literature suggests that even if these conflicts were resolved, a host of new issues would arise, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, the southern Philippines and domestic governance in Algeria.
The aborted Singapore JI plan in 2002 to hijack an Aeroflot aircraft after its stopover in Bangkok and crash it into the Changi Airport control tower illustrates this new dimension. A Russian aircraft was chosen to demonstrate Singapore JI's solidarity with the struggle in Chechnya.
While attention has been focused on the globalising impact of MNCs, even terrorist movements have become globalised. The CNN effect has magnified the impact of the Middle East and other conflicts.
In meeting the threat of terrorism, a critical aspect will be the use of soft power, the use of non-military strategies to respond to this threat, which go beyond military, law enforcement and intelligence collection responses. It is a battle for hearts and minds.
The important role of strengthening cooperative networks tends to be underestimated.
In South-east Asia, counter-terrorism cooperation is at the bilateral and trilateral levels. Asean agreements are primarily declaratory in intent. Asean has been most useful in establishing norms and in capacity building through the sharing of expertise.
Nevertheless, the current level of intra-Asean cooperation is considerably improved today compared to the mutual recriminations when the first evidence of the JI network emerged in December 2001.
The writer is director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.
By BARRY DESKER
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
THE emergence of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) threat in South-east Asia has spawned a cottage industry of books and commentaries discussing terrorism in the region.
Most of the analyses are by counter-terrorism specialists, theorists in international relations and political pundits.
Those who have spent years studying the region, including area specialists and scholars in Islamic studies, have been absent from the debate. Instead, they have decried the lack of depth in these analyses.
One reason for their late involvement: Most were mesmerised by the moderate character of Islam in the region. There was denial that there are groups intent on disrupting the peaceful evolution of societies, such as Indonesia, in a transition to democratic governance.
Lacking the long view these specialists could provide, the debate on JI resulted in the perception that militancy in Islam is a recent phenomenon.
In reality, radical interpretations of Islam are not a new development. In the 1870s, religious Muslims who returned from the haj inspired by the austere Wahabbi fundamentalism they encountered in Mecca embarked on the Padri wars in West Sumatra.
The use of the term 'padri' was an astute recognition of the overlap between fundamentalists of different religious faiths: The white robes of the Wahabbi followers and their religious zeal reminded local villagers of Christian missionaries or padres.
At the beginning of the 20th century, pamphleteers and editors in Singapore, then the hub of the regional Malay-language media, spread competing Islamic doctrines around the region. They set the stage for a political contest between the Kaum Muda (the reformists) and the Kaum Tua (the traditional establishment).
In the 1950s, the new Indonesian republic faced a major challenge from the Darul Islam revolt, which was supported by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, the leaders of today's JI.
Colonial regimes in the region, as well as post-colonial leaderships, agonised over the role of Islam and recognised the challenge posed by Islamic radicals bent on overturning the existing state order.
Radical interpretations of Islam will be a recurrent challenge, as today's JI shows. Like other similar movements in the Islamic world which describe themselves as Salafi, JI sought a revival of the pristine Islam of the founding ancestors (salaf), by replicating the historic conquest of pagan Arabia.
The JI redefined jihad to justify revolutionary violence against internal and external enemies of Islam. Like Osama bin Laden, its leaders justified violence against Muslim rulers on the grounds that they suppressed Islamic law and were therefore apostates to be punished with death. Violence against Americans and other 'Crusaders' was justified on the grounds that they promoted secular societies which subjugated Islam.
One fascinating aspect is the unintended consequences of earlier actions. United States support for the mujahideen who opposed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s led to the creation of a multinational network of Afghan veterans who returned to their home countries desiring to replicate their successful jihad.
The late Abdullah Sungkar laid the groundwork for future cooperation between JI and Al-Qaeda when he went to Afghanistan to participate in the resistance. The decision by the US to withdraw from Afghanistan after the end of the Cold War allowed Al-Qaeda to use this failed state as a sanctuary and training ground for a global jihad.
The networks created in Afghanistan formed the building blocks for Al-Qaeda's global reach, as local concerns were fused with its global agenda.
To appreciate Al-Qaeda's global as well as regional impact, one should look at the organisation as a venture capitalist acting as a revolutionary catalyst. It provides training and funding while allowing for local initiative and a sense of empowerment.
Instead of a hierarchical transnational organisation, Al-Qaeda is a hydra-headed network linking operatives with shared beliefs. Although Al-Qaeda has provided logistics support and financial assistance to JI, its most significant role lay in the creation of a shared identity and a global vision.
HEARTS AND MINDS
IT IS frequently argued that the rage within Muslim communities arises from the conflicts in the Middle East - the Israel-Palestine conflict and now the American occupation of Iraq. We should not ignore the radicalising impact of these developments.
However, a closer reading of Osama's pronouncements and of jihadist literature suggests that even if these conflicts were resolved, a host of new issues would arise, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, the southern Philippines and domestic governance in Algeria.
The aborted Singapore JI plan in 2002 to hijack an Aeroflot aircraft after its stopover in Bangkok and crash it into the Changi Airport control tower illustrates this new dimension. A Russian aircraft was chosen to demonstrate Singapore JI's solidarity with the struggle in Chechnya.
While attention has been focused on the globalising impact of MNCs, even terrorist movements have become globalised. The CNN effect has magnified the impact of the Middle East and other conflicts.
In meeting the threat of terrorism, a critical aspect will be the use of soft power, the use of non-military strategies to respond to this threat, which go beyond military, law enforcement and intelligence collection responses. It is a battle for hearts and minds.
The important role of strengthening cooperative networks tends to be underestimated.
In South-east Asia, counter-terrorism cooperation is at the bilateral and trilateral levels. Asean agreements are primarily declaratory in intent. Asean has been most useful in establishing norms and in capacity building through the sharing of expertise.
Nevertheless, the current level of intra-Asean cooperation is considerably improved today compared to the mutual recriminations when the first evidence of the JI network emerged in December 2001.
The writer is director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.
EDITORIAL Straits Times Feb 20 2004
Foreigners' second home
THE belief is that a skilled foreign worker in Singapore is an economic mercenary who is here only for the benefits. The reality is that many foreigners want to sink roots here. The point is made in a sample survey of 400 Singaporeans carried out in 2001 but included in a recently-published book, which found seven out of 10 saying that foreigners are here only for the economic benefits and are not committed to Singapore. But more than four in five of 501 foreigners who were interviewed for the survey said they hoped to continue working here over the next five years, and more than half of the 301 employment pass-holders interviewed wished to become permanent residents. The mismatch of perceptions is problematic for a global city like Singapore which thrives on the quality of its workforce, whether indigenous or imported. What is good, however, is that underlying local perceptions is the implied hope that foreigners will go local. And to the extent that foreigners want to do so, there is no contradiction with what Singaporeans expect of them. This convergence is important given the large number of foreigners in this country. According to figures cited by the survey's authors, the non-resident workforce rose from 248,200 in 1990 to 612,000 in 2000. The number of the better-educated holding employment passes also grew sharply. In 1997 they numbered about 55,000; by 2000 the figure had doubled to 110,000.
The presence of skilled foreigners is an intrinsic part of Singapore's attempts to move up the achievement scale. What they deserve, by way of reciprocity from Singaporeans, is a recognition of the contribution which they make to the country's total welfare. The best way for Singaporeans to look at workers here is not to compartmentalise them mentally into 'foreigners' and 'locals', 'them' and 'us', but to see everybody as being part of an integrated national effort to stay one step ahead in the global race. Of course, this is easier said than done, not least because unemployment and the threat of losing one's jobs have wounded the Singaporean psyche. A Gallup poll last year found that 56 per cent of Singaporeans and permanent residents believed that foreign infusions were necessary for the country's continued economic vitality, but this was down from 64 per cent two years earlier and 72 per cent in 1997. The eroding sentiment cannot be ignored, but the reality is that if foreigners were not to compete with Singaporeans and ultimately make companies here more competitive, they would raise the competitiveness of firms abroad that would be taking on Singaporean companies. Then, entire companies - including their Singaporean workers - could be at risk.
Harsh though it sounds, the globalisation that is changing the demography of Singapore's workforce is at least as old as the founding of Singapore itself. The ancestors of today's Singaporeans who came here in search of a living before sinking roots turned it into a thriving entrepot. Those arriving today are doing nothing different. Now, as then, a country which survives by exporting to the rest of the world cannot close its doors to the import of capital - and talent. A country predicated on success cannot shut out the successful just because they were not born in it. And why should it? The latest survey suggests that many foreigners want to make Singapore their home. Enlightened Singaporeans create a second home for them on the road to what, it is hoped, will become a permanent home and a more prosperous one for all.
Foreigners' second home
THE belief is that a skilled foreign worker in Singapore is an economic mercenary who is here only for the benefits. The reality is that many foreigners want to sink roots here. The point is made in a sample survey of 400 Singaporeans carried out in 2001 but included in a recently-published book, which found seven out of 10 saying that foreigners are here only for the economic benefits and are not committed to Singapore. But more than four in five of 501 foreigners who were interviewed for the survey said they hoped to continue working here over the next five years, and more than half of the 301 employment pass-holders interviewed wished to become permanent residents. The mismatch of perceptions is problematic for a global city like Singapore which thrives on the quality of its workforce, whether indigenous or imported. What is good, however, is that underlying local perceptions is the implied hope that foreigners will go local. And to the extent that foreigners want to do so, there is no contradiction with what Singaporeans expect of them. This convergence is important given the large number of foreigners in this country. According to figures cited by the survey's authors, the non-resident workforce rose from 248,200 in 1990 to 612,000 in 2000. The number of the better-educated holding employment passes also grew sharply. In 1997 they numbered about 55,000; by 2000 the figure had doubled to 110,000.
The presence of skilled foreigners is an intrinsic part of Singapore's attempts to move up the achievement scale. What they deserve, by way of reciprocity from Singaporeans, is a recognition of the contribution which they make to the country's total welfare. The best way for Singaporeans to look at workers here is not to compartmentalise them mentally into 'foreigners' and 'locals', 'them' and 'us', but to see everybody as being part of an integrated national effort to stay one step ahead in the global race. Of course, this is easier said than done, not least because unemployment and the threat of losing one's jobs have wounded the Singaporean psyche. A Gallup poll last year found that 56 per cent of Singaporeans and permanent residents believed that foreign infusions were necessary for the country's continued economic vitality, but this was down from 64 per cent two years earlier and 72 per cent in 1997. The eroding sentiment cannot be ignored, but the reality is that if foreigners were not to compete with Singaporeans and ultimately make companies here more competitive, they would raise the competitiveness of firms abroad that would be taking on Singaporean companies. Then, entire companies - including their Singaporean workers - could be at risk.
Harsh though it sounds, the globalisation that is changing the demography of Singapore's workforce is at least as old as the founding of Singapore itself. The ancestors of today's Singaporeans who came here in search of a living before sinking roots turned it into a thriving entrepot. Those arriving today are doing nothing different. Now, as then, a country which survives by exporting to the rest of the world cannot close its doors to the import of capital - and talent. A country predicated on success cannot shut out the successful just because they were not born in it. And why should it? The latest survey suggests that many foreigners want to make Singapore their home. Enlightened Singaporeans create a second home for them on the road to what, it is hoped, will become a permanent home and a more prosperous one for all.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The fight against spam
Make 'em pay
Feb 14th 2004 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
The dismal science takes on spam
THE short history of society's fight against spam—usually defined as unwanted commercial e-mail—may be about to pass into a significant third phase. In the first phase, it was geeks who led the resistance, using techie weapons such as e-mail filters with fancy Bayesian mathematics. In the second phase, politicians joined in, eager to get their names on to new legislation—in America, for instance, 36 states and Congress have passed laws of some sort against spam. Now, in the third phase, the economists are taking over.
The market opening for the economists is obvious. Both the geeks and the politicians are widely seen to have failed miserably. E-mail filters, though helpful, often block genuine e-mails, while still letting through some spam. And legislation, so far, seems to have had no effect at all, probably because hard-core spammers have moved offshore. More than half of all e-mail is now spam, and the share is rising.
To an economist, the reason for this mess is obvious. “At the moment, both the sender and the receiver of an e-mail pay a marginal price of zero,” says Benjamin Hermalin, a professor at Berkeley. “That must be wrong,” for e-mails do have marginal costs (such as electricity, storage and network congestion). For spammers, this presents a sure-win strategy: mail as much as you can, because even one hit out of a million is profitable.
An obvious solution, then, is to charge for e-mail, or at least for the sort that spammers send. This idea has even been endorsed by the über-geek, Bill Gates of Microsoft. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, he predicted that fancy technology and payment schemes would together defeat spam within two years. (Sceptics noted that Microsoft could also help by fixing security flaws in its products—the latest confessed to this week—that can be exploited by spammers.)
To libertarians, among the earliest internet enthusiasts, the notion that e-mail should be un-free is anathema. They would fiercely oppose any economist daring to suggest charging “ordinary” people. Besides, any system that would rely on processing millions of tiny “micropayments” would be an administrative nightmare. In short, a good system has to remedy the perverse incentives that attract spammers, but leave everyone else alone, and thus better off.
Goodmail Systems, a start-up in Silicon Valley, hopes to launch such a solution this summer. Its idea, says Richard Gingras, its boss, is to create “a new, trusted class of e-mail from volume senders” which recipients would instantly spot as such in their inboxes. An example: Amazon, keen that its automatic order-confirmations not be filtered out as spam by mistake, would buy a million e-mail “stamps” for $0.01 each from Goodmail, which would share the $10,000 with participating internet service providers (ISPs). Goodmail fixes the stamps to Amazon's e-mails as encrypted e-mail headers, and sends the decryption key to the ISPs. The ISPs can then identify Amazon's e-mails as they arrive, and pass them on to the inboxes of consumers.
Under Goodmail's egalitarian system, spammers would also be free to buy stamps, just as senders of junk-mail buy postage from the post office. This, however, would introduce into their equation the normal economics of marketing. For most hawkers of penis enlargements, one can assume, the numbers would not add up, so they would not buy postage. They would therefore be left in a shrinking subculture of illegitimate spammers, which ISPs can filter out more easily. Thus, says Mr Gingras, Goodmail's system would reduce (though not eliminate) spam, even if it is adopted only partially.
A different approach is not to charge senders for every message upfront, as Goodmail will, but only for those that lead to complaints from recipients, and in arrears. This is the route taken by IronPort Systems, another firm in Silicon Valley. For a bit over a year, it has been offering a service in which legitimate bulk e-mailers, such as newsletters, post a financial bond in return for assured delivery past spam filters into inboxes. Senders have to honour the bond and pay only if recipients complain. “We've designed the financial incentives to be insurmountable for spammers,” says Craig Sprosts, a director. The idea, as with Goodmail, is that this whitelist eventually grows so large that spammers will in effect be quarantined, as though they were on a blacklist. About 18,000 ISPs have already joined the system, and over 200 senders, including Google, a search engine, have posted bonds.
Some people want to go even further. Balachander Krishnamurthy, a boffin at AT&T Labs, the research arm of the phone company, proposes a system in which ISPs would establish a consortium—similar to banks creating Visa—that would act as a clearing house. ISPs would then give all of their subscribers credit limits. From then on, every time a recipient declares an e-mail “unwanted” to the clearing house, the sender is charged, say, $1. Once his credit limit—$200, for instance—is reached, the ISP shuts down his account.
This neatly addresses another big problem. The most insidious way of spreading spam these days is by writing software viruses, such as last week's MyDoom, that turn the computers of innocent consumers into spam machines. In Mr Krishnamurthy's system, however, the credit limits of infected users would max out within seconds of a new virus spreading, stopping it from travelling further. Presumably, ISPs will know enough to realise that grandma was the victim, not the hacker, and will eventually reconnect her.
Make 'em pay
Feb 14th 2004 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
The dismal science takes on spam
THE short history of society's fight against spam—usually defined as unwanted commercial e-mail—may be about to pass into a significant third phase. In the first phase, it was geeks who led the resistance, using techie weapons such as e-mail filters with fancy Bayesian mathematics. In the second phase, politicians joined in, eager to get their names on to new legislation—in America, for instance, 36 states and Congress have passed laws of some sort against spam. Now, in the third phase, the economists are taking over.
The market opening for the economists is obvious. Both the geeks and the politicians are widely seen to have failed miserably. E-mail filters, though helpful, often block genuine e-mails, while still letting through some spam. And legislation, so far, seems to have had no effect at all, probably because hard-core spammers have moved offshore. More than half of all e-mail is now spam, and the share is rising.
To an economist, the reason for this mess is obvious. “At the moment, both the sender and the receiver of an e-mail pay a marginal price of zero,” says Benjamin Hermalin, a professor at Berkeley. “That must be wrong,” for e-mails do have marginal costs (such as electricity, storage and network congestion). For spammers, this presents a sure-win strategy: mail as much as you can, because even one hit out of a million is profitable.
An obvious solution, then, is to charge for e-mail, or at least for the sort that spammers send. This idea has even been endorsed by the über-geek, Bill Gates of Microsoft. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, he predicted that fancy technology and payment schemes would together defeat spam within two years. (Sceptics noted that Microsoft could also help by fixing security flaws in its products—the latest confessed to this week—that can be exploited by spammers.)
To libertarians, among the earliest internet enthusiasts, the notion that e-mail should be un-free is anathema. They would fiercely oppose any economist daring to suggest charging “ordinary” people. Besides, any system that would rely on processing millions of tiny “micropayments” would be an administrative nightmare. In short, a good system has to remedy the perverse incentives that attract spammers, but leave everyone else alone, and thus better off.
Goodmail Systems, a start-up in Silicon Valley, hopes to launch such a solution this summer. Its idea, says Richard Gingras, its boss, is to create “a new, trusted class of e-mail from volume senders” which recipients would instantly spot as such in their inboxes. An example: Amazon, keen that its automatic order-confirmations not be filtered out as spam by mistake, would buy a million e-mail “stamps” for $0.01 each from Goodmail, which would share the $10,000 with participating internet service providers (ISPs). Goodmail fixes the stamps to Amazon's e-mails as encrypted e-mail headers, and sends the decryption key to the ISPs. The ISPs can then identify Amazon's e-mails as they arrive, and pass them on to the inboxes of consumers.
Under Goodmail's egalitarian system, spammers would also be free to buy stamps, just as senders of junk-mail buy postage from the post office. This, however, would introduce into their equation the normal economics of marketing. For most hawkers of penis enlargements, one can assume, the numbers would not add up, so they would not buy postage. They would therefore be left in a shrinking subculture of illegitimate spammers, which ISPs can filter out more easily. Thus, says Mr Gingras, Goodmail's system would reduce (though not eliminate) spam, even if it is adopted only partially.
A different approach is not to charge senders for every message upfront, as Goodmail will, but only for those that lead to complaints from recipients, and in arrears. This is the route taken by IronPort Systems, another firm in Silicon Valley. For a bit over a year, it has been offering a service in which legitimate bulk e-mailers, such as newsletters, post a financial bond in return for assured delivery past spam filters into inboxes. Senders have to honour the bond and pay only if recipients complain. “We've designed the financial incentives to be insurmountable for spammers,” says Craig Sprosts, a director. The idea, as with Goodmail, is that this whitelist eventually grows so large that spammers will in effect be quarantined, as though they were on a blacklist. About 18,000 ISPs have already joined the system, and over 200 senders, including Google, a search engine, have posted bonds.
Some people want to go even further. Balachander Krishnamurthy, a boffin at AT&T Labs, the research arm of the phone company, proposes a system in which ISPs would establish a consortium—similar to banks creating Visa—that would act as a clearing house. ISPs would then give all of their subscribers credit limits. From then on, every time a recipient declares an e-mail “unwanted” to the clearing house, the sender is charged, say, $1. Once his credit limit—$200, for instance—is reached, the ISP shuts down his account.
This neatly addresses another big problem. The most insidious way of spreading spam these days is by writing software viruses, such as last week's MyDoom, that turn the computers of innocent consumers into spam machines. In Mr Krishnamurthy's system, however, the credit limits of infected users would max out within seconds of a new virus spreading, stopping it from travelling further. Presumably, ISPs will know enough to realise that grandma was the victim, not the hacker, and will eventually reconnect her.
Monday, February 16, 2004
FEB 16, 2004
It pays to invest in the environment
By CLAUDE MARTIN
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
IN ITS simplest sense, a good investment is one that either creates wealth, or prevents the destruction of wealth. The world's natural environment does both. So one might think that governments and the international community would invest heavily in the protection of natural ecosystems and biodiversity to ensure the continued economic benefits they provide. Sadly, this is not the case.
Current global spending on protected areas - national parks, reserves and the like - is pitifully small. These areas cover 12 per cent of the earth's surface, yet, according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, total government spending on them is only about US$3.2 billion (S$5.4 billion) a year.
By comparison, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that global government spending on fishing subsidies is at least five times this amount. It has also been estimated that the scientific community spends more money on the search for extra-terrestrial life than in looking for ways to preserve the biological diversity on earth. Perhaps this search will one day yield returns, but the fishing subsidies definitely will not: thanks to oversized fleets, over 75 per cent of fisheries are suffering from over-fishing, putting the long-term future of the fishing industry at risk.
The economic benefits of natural ecosystems are huge. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has calculated that oceans and coasts contribute 40 to 60 per cent of Asia's GDP. Independent research has shown that coral reefs contribute US$30 billion in net benefits to global economies each year, through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection. Similarly, WWF recently estimated that the world's wetlands provide US$70 billion worth of goods and services annually, including water filtration and flood control.
Tourism is one of the world's fastest growing industries - and one that often relies on natural areas and charismatic species. Whale and dolphin watching is but one example. This sector has grown 18 per cent a year since 1991, with direct and indirect spending associated with the industry now worth an estimated US$1.1 billion annually. But this can only continue if there are whales and dolphins to watch.
Natural areas can also be a cost-effective alternative to engineering projects. By protecting coasts against storms, mangrove swamps save coastal areas millions each year in sea-defence costs. And by capturing and storing water, and filtering pollutants, forests provide a cost-effective means of supplying cities with high-quality drinking water. In New York, for instance, protecting forests will be seven times cheaper than building a water treatment plant.
Biodiversity, too, offers huge economic benefits. Plants, marine animals and micro-organisms are extremely valuable raw materials to many industries. Indeed, around half of all drugs are derived from natural products, and the search for more is ongoing.
Natural areas can also help save on social costs. They provide jobs, income, food, medicine and other natural resources for some of the world's poorest, especially those living in remote areas. If these areas are protected and managed properly, these communities can live in and look after their traditional homelands without being forced to already overcrowded urban areas.
But despite the evidence for the economic, social and cultural benefits of biodiversity and natural ecosystems, they are still being destroyed and degraded. Each day, wetlands are drained or dammed, forests are cleared, the seas are over-exploited and species die out.
Increased investment in well-managed protected areas is desperately needed to properly safeguard biodiversity and ecosystems. This money is not a one-off expenditure with no return. And neither must it all come from new government spending. WWF has identified 30 innovative ways to raise billions of dollars for marine conservation. These include redirecting harmful subsidies, conservation fees from tourism and fines paid by the ocean's polluters. Similar mechanisms could be used to fund terrestrial protected areas.
The 187 governments meeting in Kuala Lumpur now for a major conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity must commit to increasing protection of endangered species and ecosystems, and to adequately financing these protected areas. Failure to do so will be a missed investment opportunity - and one
The writer is director-general of WWF International, based in Gland, Switzerland. The seventh Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is on in Kuala Lumpur until Friday.
It pays to invest in the environment
By CLAUDE MARTIN
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
IN ITS simplest sense, a good investment is one that either creates wealth, or prevents the destruction of wealth. The world's natural environment does both. So one might think that governments and the international community would invest heavily in the protection of natural ecosystems and biodiversity to ensure the continued economic benefits they provide. Sadly, this is not the case.
Current global spending on protected areas - national parks, reserves and the like - is pitifully small. These areas cover 12 per cent of the earth's surface, yet, according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, total government spending on them is only about US$3.2 billion (S$5.4 billion) a year.
By comparison, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that global government spending on fishing subsidies is at least five times this amount. It has also been estimated that the scientific community spends more money on the search for extra-terrestrial life than in looking for ways to preserve the biological diversity on earth. Perhaps this search will one day yield returns, but the fishing subsidies definitely will not: thanks to oversized fleets, over 75 per cent of fisheries are suffering from over-fishing, putting the long-term future of the fishing industry at risk.
The economic benefits of natural ecosystems are huge. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has calculated that oceans and coasts contribute 40 to 60 per cent of Asia's GDP. Independent research has shown that coral reefs contribute US$30 billion in net benefits to global economies each year, through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection. Similarly, WWF recently estimated that the world's wetlands provide US$70 billion worth of goods and services annually, including water filtration and flood control.
Tourism is one of the world's fastest growing industries - and one that often relies on natural areas and charismatic species. Whale and dolphin watching is but one example. This sector has grown 18 per cent a year since 1991, with direct and indirect spending associated with the industry now worth an estimated US$1.1 billion annually. But this can only continue if there are whales and dolphins to watch.
Natural areas can also be a cost-effective alternative to engineering projects. By protecting coasts against storms, mangrove swamps save coastal areas millions each year in sea-defence costs. And by capturing and storing water, and filtering pollutants, forests provide a cost-effective means of supplying cities with high-quality drinking water. In New York, for instance, protecting forests will be seven times cheaper than building a water treatment plant.
Biodiversity, too, offers huge economic benefits. Plants, marine animals and micro-organisms are extremely valuable raw materials to many industries. Indeed, around half of all drugs are derived from natural products, and the search for more is ongoing.
Natural areas can also help save on social costs. They provide jobs, income, food, medicine and other natural resources for some of the world's poorest, especially those living in remote areas. If these areas are protected and managed properly, these communities can live in and look after their traditional homelands without being forced to already overcrowded urban areas.
But despite the evidence for the economic, social and cultural benefits of biodiversity and natural ecosystems, they are still being destroyed and degraded. Each day, wetlands are drained or dammed, forests are cleared, the seas are over-exploited and species die out.
Increased investment in well-managed protected areas is desperately needed to properly safeguard biodiversity and ecosystems. This money is not a one-off expenditure with no return. And neither must it all come from new government spending. WWF has identified 30 innovative ways to raise billions of dollars for marine conservation. These include redirecting harmful subsidies, conservation fees from tourism and fines paid by the ocean's polluters. Similar mechanisms could be used to fund terrestrial protected areas.
The 187 governments meeting in Kuala Lumpur now for a major conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity must commit to increasing protection of endangered species and ecosystems, and to adequately financing these protected areas. Failure to do so will be a missed investment opportunity - and one
The writer is director-general of WWF International, based in Gland, Switzerland. The seventh Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is on in Kuala Lumpur until Friday.
Saturday, February 14, 2004
8 Things Stores Don't Want You to Know
An insider's guide to the strategies stores use to make you spend.
1. Music makes you buy more
Stores boost sales by adjusting the tempo of the music they play. Research has determined that people buy more when listening to slow ballads.
2. The sweet smell of success
Studies show that customers in shops filled with soothing fragrances, such as vanilla or lavender, browse longer and buy more. Similarly, supermarkets have learned to locate their bakeries in a place where the smell of fresh bread wafts throughout the store -- which means they wind up selling more of everything.
3. The color of money
Colors speak a definite language. In the 1970s and '80s, the late color researcher Carlton Wagner put the same coffee in four different colored canisters. Samplers judged the brew from the yellow can too weak, from the brown can too strong, from the blue can mild and from the red can, ideally rich.
Red is not the only red-hot hue. Pink is another strong seller. Research shows that people say pastries taste better in a pink box than any other color, and they'll willingly pay more for them. Cosmetics packaged in pink are also more likely to sell.
4. Location, location, location
Research shows that items at eye level outsell goods on other shelves by as much as three to one. And interestingly, products near the floor do better than those on the top shelf. Savvy sellers also nestle items with something that complements them -- for instance, cookies next to the milk, barbecue sauce above the spareribs -- so that you'll buy both.
5. The price is right
Ever notice how many items are priced at $10.99, $15.99 and $20.99? Nine is the most popular final digit on products because, according to researchers, it makes people feel they're getting a bargain.
6. The power of touch
Placing everything from sweaters to bed linens on displays that consumers can touch increases store sales. That's because people like to feel fabrics before they buy them.
7. Getting personal
Each year, 78 percent of us cash in coupons. The newest twist: personalized product pitches. Working with Internet coupon firms, some companies are creating customized coupons and sending them to consumers in hope of luring them into stores and boosting sales.
8. The shopping-cart strategy
Carts are no longer just for grocery or discount stores. Studies show that shoppers buy more at other retail outlets when they have a cart than when they don't. Retailers such as Sears and Old Navy are now making carts available in some of their stores. And beware the size of shopping carts: The larger the cart, the more goodies we're likely to put in it. --Bernice Kanner
An insider's guide to the strategies stores use to make you spend.
1. Music makes you buy more
Stores boost sales by adjusting the tempo of the music they play. Research has determined that people buy more when listening to slow ballads.
2. The sweet smell of success
Studies show that customers in shops filled with soothing fragrances, such as vanilla or lavender, browse longer and buy more. Similarly, supermarkets have learned to locate their bakeries in a place where the smell of fresh bread wafts throughout the store -- which means they wind up selling more of everything.
3. The color of money
Colors speak a definite language. In the 1970s and '80s, the late color researcher Carlton Wagner put the same coffee in four different colored canisters. Samplers judged the brew from the yellow can too weak, from the brown can too strong, from the blue can mild and from the red can, ideally rich.
Red is not the only red-hot hue. Pink is another strong seller. Research shows that people say pastries taste better in a pink box than any other color, and they'll willingly pay more for them. Cosmetics packaged in pink are also more likely to sell.
4. Location, location, location
Research shows that items at eye level outsell goods on other shelves by as much as three to one. And interestingly, products near the floor do better than those on the top shelf. Savvy sellers also nestle items with something that complements them -- for instance, cookies next to the milk, barbecue sauce above the spareribs -- so that you'll buy both.
5. The price is right
Ever notice how many items are priced at $10.99, $15.99 and $20.99? Nine is the most popular final digit on products because, according to researchers, it makes people feel they're getting a bargain.
6. The power of touch
Placing everything from sweaters to bed linens on displays that consumers can touch increases store sales. That's because people like to feel fabrics before they buy them.
7. Getting personal
Each year, 78 percent of us cash in coupons. The newest twist: personalized product pitches. Working with Internet coupon firms, some companies are creating customized coupons and sending them to consumers in hope of luring them into stores and boosting sales.
8. The shopping-cart strategy
Carts are no longer just for grocery or discount stores. Studies show that shoppers buy more at other retail outlets when they have a cart than when they don't. Retailers such as Sears and Old Navy are now making carts available in some of their stores. And beware the size of shopping carts: The larger the cart, the more goodies we're likely to put in it. --Bernice Kanner
Friday, February 13, 2004
FEB 13, 2004
Ho Ching lifts veil over Temasek - partly
Often shrouded in a mystique, not many people know much about Temasek Holdings. Its executive director, HO CHING, gave some clues in a speech at the Institute of Policy Studies yesterday. Excerpts from her speech:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WE WERE incorporated in 1974 to hold the Singapore Government's investments in companies and businesses. As the monitoring arm of the Finance Minister, we were responsible for tracking the performance of the various investments and companies, and for reviewing and appointing directors and chairmen to the boards of various companies to represent the Government's interest as a shareholder.
This thoughtful move to interpose an investment holding company between the Government and its investee companies also clearly separated the incidental role of government as an owner and shareholder, from its over-arching responsibility as policymaker and market regulator. A mandate was thus tacitly given for government-owned companies to operate purely as commercial enterprises, and for Temasek to deliver value as an investment holding company.
Since then, much has come to pass, and Singapore too has evolved in that process.
Throughout, Temasek acted very much as a commercial entity, investing as well as divesting our stakes in companies, where it made commercial sense.
NatSteel is a case in point. Temasek first invested $2.9 million in 1975, and fully divested its stake 11 years later in 1986. A further 12 years passed, before Temasek reinvested in NatSteel in 1998, convinced of the commercial merits for co-investing with NatSteel overseas in Brazil. Today, Temasek is again completely out from NatSteel as well as NatSteel Brasil, achieving an overall internal rate of return of 14 per cent in the process, with net profits of $98 million. Perhaps we should have used a three-digit name, instead of 98 Holdings, for the general offer vehicle to help us get even better profits!
On its part, the Government took care not to be involved in the business decisions of the government-linked companies, whether in the choice of aircraft that Singapore Airlines (SIA) buys, or in the overseas investment decisions of PSA Corp or SingTel.
This voluntary abstinence from direct involvement in the operational management of state-owned enterprise is a unique and admirable ownership stance that sets the Singapore state-owned enterprises apart from many of their counterparts in the world. Credit is overdue to the far-sighted founding fathers of modern Singapore.
To date, Temasek has given its shareholder a total return of more than 16 per cent compounded annually over the last 30 years, based on dividend flow and growth in shareholders' funds. If we consider the market value of our investments, then the total shareholder returns to the Government would be a compounded annual return of more than 18 per cent over a 30-year period, including an average annual dividend yield of some 6.7 per cent.
Our TSR or total shareholder return over the last 10 years was more than 13 per cent based on dividends and market value of our shareholdings. While this is well below General Electric's TSR of 27 per cent for the same period, it is comparable or better than some of the large international groups, which we benchmark ourselves against. Dividend yield to the Ministry of Finance over the last 10 years averaged a respectable 7 per cent annually, partly bolstered by the return of proceeds from full or partial divestments of companies, large and small, from SingTel to CPG Corp.
GOVERNMENT AS SHAREHOLDER
IN TERMS of our relationship with the Government as our shareholder, I would like to note two points.
First, Temasek holds and manages its investments for the long-term benefit of Singapore, as distinct from the Singapore Government per se. To use a corporate analogy, we could regard the government of the day as a shareholder representative, which is chosen at every election. The ultimate shareholders of Temasek are the past, present and future generations of Singapore.
This analogy is consistent with Temasek's position as one of the three Fifth Schedule companies under the constitutional provisions for the Elected President.
Appointments to the board or CEO positions of a Fifth Schedule company or statutory board are subject to the approval of the Elected President. The implication is that the Temasek board and CEO have a responsibility to safeguard the value and assets of the company against profligate or value-destroying government directives. In other words, we have a responsibility to preserve and create value not just for the present generation but also the future generations of Singapore.
Second, the addendum to the Temasek charter outlined examples of companies or businesses, which the Government deems to need ownership or control of, for specific policy or strategic reasons. For these companies, Temasek will continue its traditional role as a responsible steward to ensure sound management and financial discipline.
Beyond these, Temasek will act to enhance long-term value, and will not divest for divestment's sake. We don't intend to raid the larder, nor sell the family jewels. We will jealously guard our interest, and invest, rationalise, consolidate or divest where it makes sense, and where we can achieve clear sustainable value.
To this end, we will look to institutionalise a framework for ourselves to maintain discipline and deliver value. Apart from the transformation that we have gone through over the last five years, I am pleased to note that we have recently obtained board approval and shareholder endorsement for a credit rating of Temasek. We hope to do this some time this year or next. This will be part of a measured process of opening up and demystifying Temasek. More importantly, such changes will help reinforce and sustain focus and financial discipline.
ACTIVE SHAREHOLDER
LIKE the Government, Temasek does not believe in getting involved in the operational decisions of its investee companies.
We believe the best way for Temasek to add value to our companies is to ensure that we constitute high-quality, commercially experienced and diverse boards to complement outstanding business leadership and dedicated staff.
In our minds, outstanding leadership is not simply consistency and discipline in operational delivery, but also a passion and commitment to people inside and outside the company, in particular, their staff and the customers of the company.
In short, we believe in finding the best people to lead, and in getting ourselves out of the way of honest, capable and competent people.
However, where there is a need, we have not hesitated to engage the boards and management as active shareholders to ensure that we preserve value and create a sustainable position for our companies. Other than that, we limit ourselves to the issues of value systems, business focus, human capital, sustainable growth and strategic development.
In general, we are, and have been, very fortunate to have active board members who take their responsibilities seriously, some at considerable personal sacrifice. Several have been contributing and acting with deep commitment, no different than if they had economic ownership of their companies. To these chairmen and board directors, we owe a great debt of gratitude and thanks for the success of our companies.
Just as a small example of what Mr S. Dhanabalan (Temasek chairman) would describe as promoting good governance, we have made known our expectations to the boards of our key companies that they should actively review the performance of their CEOs through executive sessions without the presence of management.
Such sessions should also regularly review succession options from internal and external sources for the immediate, medium and longer term. Such processes formalise the framework for building professionalism and meritocracy in business leadership and management. It enables the board to work openly and proactively with its management to put in place a robust and deep bench of talents from around the world.
In terms of the process for CEO succession, our participation extends to searching for names and possibilities to add to the search pool. The boards themselves constitute their search committees, define the selection criteria, and make the CEO choice themselves. We will clear the underbrush if needed, to ensure that the boards can exercise this single most important responsibility with full authority and clarity.
Our focus on board governance is not an end in itself, but one of the means to ensure that there is sustainable future.
As mentioned earlier, our Temasek-linked companies (TLCs) have grown and prospered because the Government took care not to get involved in the operational or commercial decisions of its companies. Many companies around the world, whether family- or government-owned, have failed because there is no separation between ownership and management responsibilities.
For example, unlike most national airlines in the world, SIA does not go to Temasek, much less the Government, on commercial decisions such as the aircraft it buys or the routes it flies. True, the Government contributed to SIA's success as a sound regulator, and as chief negotiator for bilateral air rights. However, it is totally at SIA's discretion whether particular routes make commercial sense for SIA from a short- or long-term business perspective. As Mr J.Y. Pillay, former chairman of SIA, likes to explain modestly, his key contribution to SIA's success was to keep the Government out of SIA's business.
Perhaps benign neglect is a good strategy for all governments when it comes to their direct involvement in companies and businesses.
But really, the success story of so many of our TLCs is really the story of a dedicated and capable people, of bold men and women and visionary leadership, past and present, coupled with the trust and delivery of honest dedicated staff at all levels. It is a story very much like the story of Singapore itself. The integrity, commitment, competence and hunger to achieve and build for our children have driven our people to create very good companies on the back of Singapore's success. From the pilots who fly, to the quay crane operators who move container boxes, from the engineer working on his computer screen to the accountant working her numbers late into the night, from CEO to tea lady, they have not just put in their sweat capital, but also their emotional capital to build great companies.
Clearly, as shareholders, we owe these fine men and women our thanks.
However, as fund managers will qualify in their promotional materials, past success is no guarantee for future gains. The world is changing. Singapore is part of an increasingly open and highly competitive world. There is no way we can isolate or insulate ourselves from the tidal shifts of globalisation. Our businesses need to ask themselves what they hope to be when they grow up. If they think they have already grown up, they will need to figure out how to stay young and fit, to take on newcomers or to move into the next league championship. As leaders, we need to ask of ourselves, our people and our businesses: 'Where can we make a difference?', and 'Where can we achieve sustainable advantage and turn that into sustainable value?'
This transformation will not be easy. It will take hearts and minds, as well as guts and hands, to think, to act and to drive change. Companies in Asia are already rapidly transforming, in all aspects, from efficient operations to sleek designs. A top resort playground of American movie stars was surprised to find not just highly competitive linen and silverware from India, but also really world-class standards in terms of quality, delivery and designs. A top American IT company is putting a Chinese company on its radar screen as the competitor to watch. Companies which believe in their own hype are lulled by false confidence and will be swamped by the rising tide.
Even as Temasek continues to make its own investments in promising companies and businesses, we will continue to work and learn with our existing TLCs to challenge ourselves and to transform, to think and to partner, to create and to stretch, in order to give ourselves the best chance for long-term success. But from time to time, don't be surprised if Temasek invests in an emerging competitor, or makes its own judgment, which may differ from those of our TLCs.
ACTIVE INVESTOR
A COMMON theme that cuts across all boundaries will be our interest in companies and businesses with competitive strengths and potential to grow regionally or globally.
First, at the macro level, we are bullish about the medium- to long-term prospects for Asia. While the 1997 financial crisis has severely set back many of the Asian economies, the macro indicators point to a steady recovery.
Not only are foreign reserves at record highs from Pakistan to China, from Thailand to Indonesia, inflation and interest rates have come down sharply. Companies within many of these economies, from India to South Korea, have not only restructured but have also dramatically transformed themselves into internationally competitive players, adopting and adapting best practices such as lean manufacturing or fast quarterly closing of their financial numbers. They are not just pushing the envelope against domestic competitors, but also taking on international leaders.
This learning takes place constantly, across industries and geographies. As an example, the staff of a leading private bank in India, ICICI, has an average age of below 30 years, and it hires service quality managers from the airline industry to develop and sustain a strong service culture among its branches and staff.
Second, with the recovery and growth in Asia, comes the rise of the middle class, and the emergence of consumer sophistication. This will be a common engine of growth across Asia.
Third, there is a shared view among most governments and populations, that market economies and free trade bring benefits. While still sporadic in some countries, the heavyweights like China and India are pushing ahead with liberalisation, restructuring and reform. There is no turning back.
In the short term, we will still need to watch the impact of the US, while Europe and Japan continue their gradual revitalisation. But in general, we see broad-based recovery and growth in Asia, with increasing demands in the consumer sector and also in supporting sectors such as energy and resources.
In such a scenario, we believe there is an opportunity to invest in the services such as the banking and finance sector as a leveraged proxy to ride on the broad recovery of the respective economies. The other services of interest would be telecommunications, health care and education, which ride on the emergence of the middle class.
Each investment we make must stand on its own merits, including our existing portfolio of TLCs. We are fully open to diluting our stakes in our existing TLCs to minority positions, especially if it creates an opportunity for us to enhance our long-term returns. Likewise, we are happy to take both minority or majority stakes in promising companies with international potential in the sectors of our interest.
Just as many of our TLCs have grown offshore with a large part of income and profits now derived from offshore operations and investments, the Temasek portfolio will in time reflect our presence and interest in Asia and further afield. This portfolio in turn will reflect the dynamism and vibrancy of Asia as a whole.
In short, we will work to transform our portfolio from a proxy for the Singapore gross domestic product, into a balanced gross national product portfolio leveraging on the growth and promise of Singapore, Asean, Asia and the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
TEMASEK will act to enhance long-term value, and will not divest for divestment's sake. We don't intend to raid the larder, nor sell the family jewels. We will jealously guard our interest, and invest, rationalise, consolidate or divest where it makes sense, and where we can achieve clear sustainable value.
BEHIND THE SUCCESS STORY
Temasek-linked companies have grown and prospered because the Government took care not to get involved in the operational or commercial decisions of its companies... Perhaps benign neglect is a good strategy for all governments when it comes to their direct involvement in companies and businesses.
Ho Ching lifts veil over Temasek - partly
Often shrouded in a mystique, not many people know much about Temasek Holdings. Its executive director, HO CHING, gave some clues in a speech at the Institute of Policy Studies yesterday. Excerpts from her speech:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WE WERE incorporated in 1974 to hold the Singapore Government's investments in companies and businesses. As the monitoring arm of the Finance Minister, we were responsible for tracking the performance of the various investments and companies, and for reviewing and appointing directors and chairmen to the boards of various companies to represent the Government's interest as a shareholder.
This thoughtful move to interpose an investment holding company between the Government and its investee companies also clearly separated the incidental role of government as an owner and shareholder, from its over-arching responsibility as policymaker and market regulator. A mandate was thus tacitly given for government-owned companies to operate purely as commercial enterprises, and for Temasek to deliver value as an investment holding company.
Since then, much has come to pass, and Singapore too has evolved in that process.
Throughout, Temasek acted very much as a commercial entity, investing as well as divesting our stakes in companies, where it made commercial sense.
NatSteel is a case in point. Temasek first invested $2.9 million in 1975, and fully divested its stake 11 years later in 1986. A further 12 years passed, before Temasek reinvested in NatSteel in 1998, convinced of the commercial merits for co-investing with NatSteel overseas in Brazil. Today, Temasek is again completely out from NatSteel as well as NatSteel Brasil, achieving an overall internal rate of return of 14 per cent in the process, with net profits of $98 million. Perhaps we should have used a three-digit name, instead of 98 Holdings, for the general offer vehicle to help us get even better profits!
On its part, the Government took care not to be involved in the business decisions of the government-linked companies, whether in the choice of aircraft that Singapore Airlines (SIA) buys, or in the overseas investment decisions of PSA Corp or SingTel.
This voluntary abstinence from direct involvement in the operational management of state-owned enterprise is a unique and admirable ownership stance that sets the Singapore state-owned enterprises apart from many of their counterparts in the world. Credit is overdue to the far-sighted founding fathers of modern Singapore.
To date, Temasek has given its shareholder a total return of more than 16 per cent compounded annually over the last 30 years, based on dividend flow and growth in shareholders' funds. If we consider the market value of our investments, then the total shareholder returns to the Government would be a compounded annual return of more than 18 per cent over a 30-year period, including an average annual dividend yield of some 6.7 per cent.
Our TSR or total shareholder return over the last 10 years was more than 13 per cent based on dividends and market value of our shareholdings. While this is well below General Electric's TSR of 27 per cent for the same period, it is comparable or better than some of the large international groups, which we benchmark ourselves against. Dividend yield to the Ministry of Finance over the last 10 years averaged a respectable 7 per cent annually, partly bolstered by the return of proceeds from full or partial divestments of companies, large and small, from SingTel to CPG Corp.
GOVERNMENT AS SHAREHOLDER
IN TERMS of our relationship with the Government as our shareholder, I would like to note two points.
First, Temasek holds and manages its investments for the long-term benefit of Singapore, as distinct from the Singapore Government per se. To use a corporate analogy, we could regard the government of the day as a shareholder representative, which is chosen at every election. The ultimate shareholders of Temasek are the past, present and future generations of Singapore.
This analogy is consistent with Temasek's position as one of the three Fifth Schedule companies under the constitutional provisions for the Elected President.
Appointments to the board or CEO positions of a Fifth Schedule company or statutory board are subject to the approval of the Elected President. The implication is that the Temasek board and CEO have a responsibility to safeguard the value and assets of the company against profligate or value-destroying government directives. In other words, we have a responsibility to preserve and create value not just for the present generation but also the future generations of Singapore.
Second, the addendum to the Temasek charter outlined examples of companies or businesses, which the Government deems to need ownership or control of, for specific policy or strategic reasons. For these companies, Temasek will continue its traditional role as a responsible steward to ensure sound management and financial discipline.
Beyond these, Temasek will act to enhance long-term value, and will not divest for divestment's sake. We don't intend to raid the larder, nor sell the family jewels. We will jealously guard our interest, and invest, rationalise, consolidate or divest where it makes sense, and where we can achieve clear sustainable value.
To this end, we will look to institutionalise a framework for ourselves to maintain discipline and deliver value. Apart from the transformation that we have gone through over the last five years, I am pleased to note that we have recently obtained board approval and shareholder endorsement for a credit rating of Temasek. We hope to do this some time this year or next. This will be part of a measured process of opening up and demystifying Temasek. More importantly, such changes will help reinforce and sustain focus and financial discipline.
ACTIVE SHAREHOLDER
LIKE the Government, Temasek does not believe in getting involved in the operational decisions of its investee companies.
We believe the best way for Temasek to add value to our companies is to ensure that we constitute high-quality, commercially experienced and diverse boards to complement outstanding business leadership and dedicated staff.
In our minds, outstanding leadership is not simply consistency and discipline in operational delivery, but also a passion and commitment to people inside and outside the company, in particular, their staff and the customers of the company.
In short, we believe in finding the best people to lead, and in getting ourselves out of the way of honest, capable and competent people.
However, where there is a need, we have not hesitated to engage the boards and management as active shareholders to ensure that we preserve value and create a sustainable position for our companies. Other than that, we limit ourselves to the issues of value systems, business focus, human capital, sustainable growth and strategic development.
In general, we are, and have been, very fortunate to have active board members who take their responsibilities seriously, some at considerable personal sacrifice. Several have been contributing and acting with deep commitment, no different than if they had economic ownership of their companies. To these chairmen and board directors, we owe a great debt of gratitude and thanks for the success of our companies.
Just as a small example of what Mr S. Dhanabalan (Temasek chairman) would describe as promoting good governance, we have made known our expectations to the boards of our key companies that they should actively review the performance of their CEOs through executive sessions without the presence of management.
Such sessions should also regularly review succession options from internal and external sources for the immediate, medium and longer term. Such processes formalise the framework for building professionalism and meritocracy in business leadership and management. It enables the board to work openly and proactively with its management to put in place a robust and deep bench of talents from around the world.
In terms of the process for CEO succession, our participation extends to searching for names and possibilities to add to the search pool. The boards themselves constitute their search committees, define the selection criteria, and make the CEO choice themselves. We will clear the underbrush if needed, to ensure that the boards can exercise this single most important responsibility with full authority and clarity.
Our focus on board governance is not an end in itself, but one of the means to ensure that there is sustainable future.
As mentioned earlier, our Temasek-linked companies (TLCs) have grown and prospered because the Government took care not to get involved in the operational or commercial decisions of its companies. Many companies around the world, whether family- or government-owned, have failed because there is no separation between ownership and management responsibilities.
For example, unlike most national airlines in the world, SIA does not go to Temasek, much less the Government, on commercial decisions such as the aircraft it buys or the routes it flies. True, the Government contributed to SIA's success as a sound regulator, and as chief negotiator for bilateral air rights. However, it is totally at SIA's discretion whether particular routes make commercial sense for SIA from a short- or long-term business perspective. As Mr J.Y. Pillay, former chairman of SIA, likes to explain modestly, his key contribution to SIA's success was to keep the Government out of SIA's business.
Perhaps benign neglect is a good strategy for all governments when it comes to their direct involvement in companies and businesses.
But really, the success story of so many of our TLCs is really the story of a dedicated and capable people, of bold men and women and visionary leadership, past and present, coupled with the trust and delivery of honest dedicated staff at all levels. It is a story very much like the story of Singapore itself. The integrity, commitment, competence and hunger to achieve and build for our children have driven our people to create very good companies on the back of Singapore's success. From the pilots who fly, to the quay crane operators who move container boxes, from the engineer working on his computer screen to the accountant working her numbers late into the night, from CEO to tea lady, they have not just put in their sweat capital, but also their emotional capital to build great companies.
Clearly, as shareholders, we owe these fine men and women our thanks.
However, as fund managers will qualify in their promotional materials, past success is no guarantee for future gains. The world is changing. Singapore is part of an increasingly open and highly competitive world. There is no way we can isolate or insulate ourselves from the tidal shifts of globalisation. Our businesses need to ask themselves what they hope to be when they grow up. If they think they have already grown up, they will need to figure out how to stay young and fit, to take on newcomers or to move into the next league championship. As leaders, we need to ask of ourselves, our people and our businesses: 'Where can we make a difference?', and 'Where can we achieve sustainable advantage and turn that into sustainable value?'
This transformation will not be easy. It will take hearts and minds, as well as guts and hands, to think, to act and to drive change. Companies in Asia are already rapidly transforming, in all aspects, from efficient operations to sleek designs. A top resort playground of American movie stars was surprised to find not just highly competitive linen and silverware from India, but also really world-class standards in terms of quality, delivery and designs. A top American IT company is putting a Chinese company on its radar screen as the competitor to watch. Companies which believe in their own hype are lulled by false confidence and will be swamped by the rising tide.
Even as Temasek continues to make its own investments in promising companies and businesses, we will continue to work and learn with our existing TLCs to challenge ourselves and to transform, to think and to partner, to create and to stretch, in order to give ourselves the best chance for long-term success. But from time to time, don't be surprised if Temasek invests in an emerging competitor, or makes its own judgment, which may differ from those of our TLCs.
ACTIVE INVESTOR
A COMMON theme that cuts across all boundaries will be our interest in companies and businesses with competitive strengths and potential to grow regionally or globally.
First, at the macro level, we are bullish about the medium- to long-term prospects for Asia. While the 1997 financial crisis has severely set back many of the Asian economies, the macro indicators point to a steady recovery.
Not only are foreign reserves at record highs from Pakistan to China, from Thailand to Indonesia, inflation and interest rates have come down sharply. Companies within many of these economies, from India to South Korea, have not only restructured but have also dramatically transformed themselves into internationally competitive players, adopting and adapting best practices such as lean manufacturing or fast quarterly closing of their financial numbers. They are not just pushing the envelope against domestic competitors, but also taking on international leaders.
This learning takes place constantly, across industries and geographies. As an example, the staff of a leading private bank in India, ICICI, has an average age of below 30 years, and it hires service quality managers from the airline industry to develop and sustain a strong service culture among its branches and staff.
Second, with the recovery and growth in Asia, comes the rise of the middle class, and the emergence of consumer sophistication. This will be a common engine of growth across Asia.
Third, there is a shared view among most governments and populations, that market economies and free trade bring benefits. While still sporadic in some countries, the heavyweights like China and India are pushing ahead with liberalisation, restructuring and reform. There is no turning back.
In the short term, we will still need to watch the impact of the US, while Europe and Japan continue their gradual revitalisation. But in general, we see broad-based recovery and growth in Asia, with increasing demands in the consumer sector and also in supporting sectors such as energy and resources.
In such a scenario, we believe there is an opportunity to invest in the services such as the banking and finance sector as a leveraged proxy to ride on the broad recovery of the respective economies. The other services of interest would be telecommunications, health care and education, which ride on the emergence of the middle class.
Each investment we make must stand on its own merits, including our existing portfolio of TLCs. We are fully open to diluting our stakes in our existing TLCs to minority positions, especially if it creates an opportunity for us to enhance our long-term returns. Likewise, we are happy to take both minority or majority stakes in promising companies with international potential in the sectors of our interest.
Just as many of our TLCs have grown offshore with a large part of income and profits now derived from offshore operations and investments, the Temasek portfolio will in time reflect our presence and interest in Asia and further afield. This portfolio in turn will reflect the dynamism and vibrancy of Asia as a whole.
In short, we will work to transform our portfolio from a proxy for the Singapore gross domestic product, into a balanced gross national product portfolio leveraging on the growth and promise of Singapore, Asean, Asia and the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
TEMASEK will act to enhance long-term value, and will not divest for divestment's sake. We don't intend to raid the larder, nor sell the family jewels. We will jealously guard our interest, and invest, rationalise, consolidate or divest where it makes sense, and where we can achieve clear sustainable value.
BEHIND THE SUCCESS STORY
Temasek-linked companies have grown and prospered because the Government took care not to get involved in the operational or commercial decisions of its companies... Perhaps benign neglect is a good strategy for all governments when it comes to their direct involvement in companies and businesses.
An embryonic development
Feb 12th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
After a series of bogus claims, a real breakthrough from South Korea
THERE have been several claims to have cloned humans over the past few years. Most have been bogus. But the announcement made this week by Woo Suk Hwang, of Seoul National University in South Korea, and his colleagues, is serious. It is the first to achieve the accolade of publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Dr Hwang’s work appears in Science.
The terminology of human development has become slippery over the past few years, in the hands of both “life-begins-at-conception” propagandists who want to stop this sort of research, and publicity-seeking scientists who have claimed more than they have really achieved. What Dr Hwang and his team have created is not what developmental biologists would normally refer to as an embryo (nor does Dr Hwang claim it is). But it is a genuine scientific advance. South Korea’s researchers have taken egg cells from volunteer women, removed the nuclei from those cells (which contain only half of the genetic complement required to make a human being, since the other half is provided by the sperm), and replaced each nucleus with one taken from one of the volunteer’s body cells (which contains a full genetic complement). Given a suitable chemical kick-start, such re-nucleated cells will begin dividing as though they were eggs that had been fertilised in the more traditional manner. Since they have all of the mother’s genes, they count as clones.
Then the team cultured the dividing eggs until they had formed structures called blastocysts, with a few dozen cells each. This is the significant advance. At this stage the structure, though still just a featureless ball of cells, has started to differentiate into the body’s three basic cell types (known as endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm). The researchers were able to extract cells from some of their blastocysts, and grow tissues containing all three cell types.
These are so-called stem cells, which can be directed to form a wide variety of the specialised cells from which organs are built. That, not the creation of new human beings, is the stated reason for this sort of research, since specialised cells made this way might be used to replace the cells lost in diseases such as Parkinson’s and type-I diabetes. This process is known as therapeutic cloning.
No doubt Dr Hwang’s scientific success will sharpen the debate between those who see therapeutic cloning as a potential force for good, and those who see it as a step on the road to a cloned human being. The former have been queuing up to praise the scientist’s work. It is “a major medical milestone” that could help spur a “revolution”, said Robert Lanza, a cloning expert.
But opponents of therapeutic cloning should not worry too much yet. The road from a blastocyst to a baby is a long and complex one. Nevertheless, the South Korean breakthrough makes it more urgent than ever that legislation be passed differentiating clearly between therapeutic and reproductive cloning—permitting the former and prohibiting the latter.
Feb 12th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
After a series of bogus claims, a real breakthrough from South Korea
THERE have been several claims to have cloned humans over the past few years. Most have been bogus. But the announcement made this week by Woo Suk Hwang, of Seoul National University in South Korea, and his colleagues, is serious. It is the first to achieve the accolade of publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Dr Hwang’s work appears in Science.
The terminology of human development has become slippery over the past few years, in the hands of both “life-begins-at-conception” propagandists who want to stop this sort of research, and publicity-seeking scientists who have claimed more than they have really achieved. What Dr Hwang and his team have created is not what developmental biologists would normally refer to as an embryo (nor does Dr Hwang claim it is). But it is a genuine scientific advance. South Korea’s researchers have taken egg cells from volunteer women, removed the nuclei from those cells (which contain only half of the genetic complement required to make a human being, since the other half is provided by the sperm), and replaced each nucleus with one taken from one of the volunteer’s body cells (which contains a full genetic complement). Given a suitable chemical kick-start, such re-nucleated cells will begin dividing as though they were eggs that had been fertilised in the more traditional manner. Since they have all of the mother’s genes, they count as clones.
Then the team cultured the dividing eggs until they had formed structures called blastocysts, with a few dozen cells each. This is the significant advance. At this stage the structure, though still just a featureless ball of cells, has started to differentiate into the body’s three basic cell types (known as endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm). The researchers were able to extract cells from some of their blastocysts, and grow tissues containing all three cell types.
These are so-called stem cells, which can be directed to form a wide variety of the specialised cells from which organs are built. That, not the creation of new human beings, is the stated reason for this sort of research, since specialised cells made this way might be used to replace the cells lost in diseases such as Parkinson’s and type-I diabetes. This process is known as therapeutic cloning.
No doubt Dr Hwang’s scientific success will sharpen the debate between those who see therapeutic cloning as a potential force for good, and those who see it as a step on the road to a cloned human being. The former have been queuing up to praise the scientist’s work. It is “a major medical milestone” that could help spur a “revolution”, said Robert Lanza, a cloning expert.
But opponents of therapeutic cloning should not worry too much yet. The road from a blastocyst to a baby is a long and complex one. Nevertheless, the South Korean breakthrough makes it more urgent than ever that legislation be passed differentiating clearly between therapeutic and reproductive cloning—permitting the former and prohibiting the latter.
Integrating minorities
The war of the headscarves
Feb 5th 2004 | EVRY
From The Economist print edition
France and Britain have radically different approaches to ethnic and religious diversity. Each can learn from the other
BY THE grassy banks of the Seine, under a vast white marquee the size of a football pitch, 4,000 sheep are bleating. In the muddy field outside, a makeshift sign has been nailed to a wooden post: “Aid-el-Kebir”. This middling town south of Paris, home to some 15,000 Muslims (nearly a third of its population), is preparing for the Islamic festival of Eid.
The sheep-slaughter, which used to take place in living rooms, has been highly organised. Each family identifies and tags its own sheep. An official Muslim sacrificateur dispatches it, and each family then takes its animal home for the feast. In a country that is battling to protect the separation of religion and state, the entire event has been run by the town hall. “The French must understand that France is changing,” says a local official. “Islam has its place here now.”
Evry is particularly ethnically diverse. Some 40 different creeds, colours, faiths or tongues crowd into the town's rain-streaked tower-blocks. Croissants are on sale at the local boulangerie, mint tea and foufou at the halal butcher, and the “Afro-Coiffure” has skin-whitening cream and hair extensions on special offer. In the local paper, death announcements speak of “Pierre” and “Charles”; the births are of “Moussa” and “Fatih”. Half the town's housing is publicly owned, over three times the French average. Joblessness is high, particularly among young men. “It's not the Bronx,” suggests an official, but some estates “are a bit like a ghetto.”
While the French remain mesmerised by the proposed ban on the Muslim headscarf in state schools, other matters have preoccupied Evry. Last year, for instance, the mayor kicked up a fuss when the Muslim managers of a local Franprix supermarket stopped selling alcohol and pork. Local French shoppers, he argued, could not do without their saucisson and red wine. In vain: the supermarket is now another halal butcher.
In general, however, Evry wears multi-culturalism with confidence. It hosts evenings of Algerian poetry or Malian music. It is home to the biggest mosque in France. A multicultural team of youth workers—“Hamid, Bachir, Souleymane, Claire and Pétroline”—is on hand to get jobless young people back to work, with the help of “positive discrimination”. And ritual slaughter is now an official activity.
Evry illustrates clearly the issues troubling France in dealing with ethnic diversity. At root are difficult questions of identity, social mobility and religious expression. In particular, Islam is challenging the strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, which marks France out from most other western democracies. Under this doctrine, equality before the law of all citizens, regardless of their private beliefs, is supposed to be guaranteed by barring religion from the public arena. Even the “So help me God” intoned by incoming American presidents would be unthinkable in France.
A ban unveiled
Under the version of history which all French schools teach, the rigorously secular character of the state is a hard-won victory against the dark forces of obscurantism, anti-Semitism and authoritarian Catholicism which previously held sway. In theory, the involvement of Evry town hall in sheep-slaughter flies in the face of secularist principle. In practice, it shows increasing pragmatism and accommodation in ordinary French life.
At national level, however, debate has been reduced to a single issue: President Jacques Chirac's proposed ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools. Next week parliament will vote on the new law, which enjoys wide cross-party support. After that, further laws to protect secularism in public hospitals and public offices are expected.
Outside France the headscarf ban has caused bafflement and indignation, and not only in the Arab world. Yet French support for the ban remains strong (see chart), and unites unlikely bedfellows. Secularists join ranks with feminists, who are dismayed that daughters now choose to wear the veil their mothers battled to discard. Politically, the ban is seen as a way to take support from the far-right National Front.
It is also regarded as a message to fundamentalist Islamists, whose certainties are seducing disaffected young French Muslims. The government stresses that its new law refers to all religions, but nobody is fooled. How many schoolchildren turn up to class wearing crucifixes of a “manifestly excessive dimension”? “It's not the crucifix or the kippa that is targeted,” insists Khalil Merroun, the rector of the Evry mosque, “but Islam.”
Many French people feel deeply uncomfortable about defiant, assertive Islam. France, after all, is home to Europe's biggest Muslim population (outside Turkey): some 5m, next to 3m in Germany and 1.5m in Britain. The country has about 1,600 mosques or prayer halls. Many young French Muslims find no difficulty in balancing private faith with French secularism. But an increasingly vocal minority, many of whom speak no Arabic and freely mix Nike trainers with the hijab, finds such compromise unacceptable.
This ban is widely seen as a test of what obligations modern France is willing to, or can, impose on its ethnically and ideologically diverse citizens. Either it can attempt a compromise, and allow Islam and other ethnic groups and religions a public voice, on condition that they at least pay lip-service to the secular republic. This, crudely, is the position of Nicolas Sarkozy, the outspoken interior minister, who has set up an official body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, to that end. Or France can continue to try to defend its integrationist tradition and refuse compromise, as Mr Chirac is trying to do with the ban.
For those defending the existing model, the fear is that giving in to one demand will lead to many more. If, for religious reasons, women are allowed separate hours in municipal swimming pools, will the country end up separating whites and blacks? On this argument, there seems nothing to stop France sliding towards communautarisme, a dreaded state of affairs in which ethnic or religious groups could freely segregate themselves and form “states within a state” with their own rules and values. “I refuse to take France in that direction,” Mr Chirac said when announcing the ban. Not least because it leads, in French minds, to Britain's laisser-faire multiculturalism.
Meanwhile, in Finsbury Park
For French observers, the dire consequences of British sloppiness are clear to see in Finsbury Park, an edgy area of north London. There, the local mosque is boarded up with corrugated iron. The storming of the mosque by armed police a year ago, the arrest of seven men suspected of terrorism and the deportation order for its former imam, Abu Hamza al-Masri, confirmed every French fear about Britain's multiculturalism. “I told you so,” was the reaction across the Channel.
Yet Mr Hamza's mosque was a very odd place, not least for its extremism. Far more typical of Islam in Britain is the nearby Muslim Welfare House, which has been overflowing ever since moderate local faithful got fed up with Mr Hamza's excesses. The centre supplies English-language and Arabic lessons, advice on job-seeking, and youth and homework clubs, as well as holding weekly prayers—all with the help of an annual grant from the British government. It not only serves traditional populations of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, but newer groups of Algerians and Albanians too. In France, this might be regarded as state-sponsored ethnic segregation. At the Muslim Welfare House they consider it integration. “We do the grass-roots job the government can't,” comments an official.
The British model of integration consists, essentially, of not worrying about it. Where the French have an official High Council for Integration, designed to ensure that the process takes place, the British shy away from the term. Ethnic minority groups are not only left alone by the state to practise their faith, language or culture, but are encouraged and subsidised to do so. In one or two schools, the wearing of headscarves has caused trouble; but this is seen as a problem for school governors, not politicians. A vast majority disapproves of headscarf bans for impeccably liberal reasons.
Britain does not use quotas or American-style affirmative-action programmes to enforce multiculturalism. It relies, in part, on the routine acceptance of it, and also on strong laws against discrimination. The onus is now on employers to prove that they have not discriminated, rather than on employees to show that they have been treated unfairly. Fired by a self-interested desire to protect reputation, private companies scramble to adopt “diversity” programmes as a mark of good citizenship. France has none of this. In secularist French theory, the principle of rigorous, colour-blind equality before the law should remove the need for “positive discrimination”.
The British and French models for dealing with diversity have deep roots in history. The French model stems not only from secularism but from the country's revolutionary ideal, which enshrines the equal rights and obligations of citizens as individuals. The model in Britain, which is an assembly of nations, has always allowed a more pragmatic, looser connection to the centre. Moreover, Commonwealth citizens arrived in Britain with the right to vote. Geographical concentration propped up that voting power. So bargaining rights—over the building of mosques, the introduction of halal food in schools, or railway-station signs in Urdu—were won more easily.
These differences acknowledged, is British multiculturalism as wrong-headed as the French suggest? The British model has at least ensured the visibility of ethnic Britons in public life, such as TV news-reading. French television news, by contrast, is almost lily-white. France may celebrate its multi-ethnic national football team; Zinedine Zidane was voted the most admired Frenchman last year. But such exceptions, mostly in arts or sports, stand out. France's emphasis on integration would be more compelling if more of its minorities had become public figures.
In terms of political representation, Britain scores better. At the latest count, there were 12 ethnic-minority members of Parliament and 24 such members of the House of Lords. The French National Assembly contains no Muslims, and the black faces are those from French overseas constituencies. Even the French Socialist Party, with its links to anti-racism movements, has no black deputies.
But surely the British model leads to more isolation and segregation? Britain has highly concentrated minorities. Two entire London boroughs, Brent and Newham, now have a non-white majority. In some primary schools, white faces are non-existent. Yet the French model has not averted segregation. It is hard to measure, because minorities are not monitored. But on certain estates, like those in Evry, white faces are also rare.
Tracking the extremists
Racial tension is harder to judge. Britain was marked by riots in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001. An official report blamed in part the “parallel lives” and “separation of communities” in the towns. London, however, where a third of the population is now from an ethnic minority, is visibly multi-racial, and the capital has not seen a big race riot for many years.
France, to its credit, has also averted mass race riots. Racial tension, however, shows up in other ways. The far-right National Front, which grabbed second place in the first round of the presidential election in 2002, is expected to do well again in regional elections in March. It campaigns heavily on an anti-immigrant platform. In addition, anti-Semitic attacks in France continue, widely blamed on the influence of Islamic extremism and anti-Zionism.
And what of religious fanaticism? It may be easier to plot, preach and disappear in London than in Paris. Yet intelligence sources suggest that the two countries have comparable, though different, levels of activity. Only last month, six people, including an imam, were arrested in Vénissieux, a suburb of Lyons, on suspicion of terrorism. France acts as an important “supply base” for finance and recruitment to the terrorist front, many of whose members move on to London and thence to Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The more the traditional mosques in France are watched, the more the networks disappear into clandestine prayer halls and corner shops. In short, a tradition of integration has not sheltered France from extremism.
Where does all this leave the balance sheet? Crudely, the British model seems to produce more social mobility, though perhaps at the price of greater extremist activity and complacency about its entrenched ghettos. The French model may give less space to radicalism, but fails to promote social mobility, and is no guard against ghettos forming. Evry's mayor puts it well when he comments that France is accumulating the disadvantages of British multiculturalism without the advantages.
The difficulty lies in deciding what to do about it. Current policy carries risks. The headscarf ban, designed to strengthen French secularism, could end up threatening it: the ban plays into the hands of Islamist groups, who claim that Islam is being stigmatised. At the same time, Mr Sarkozy's new Muslim council brings its own dangers. The more Muslim leaders once considered extremist co-operate with the government, the more young jobless Muslims could turn to other voices outside the council, such as those behind the recent march against the ban in Paris. Tariq Ramadan, for instance, the Swiss grandson of the founder of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, is fast becoming a hero on run-down French housing estates.
Some are beginning to advocate a more radical rethink of the current French model. There are stirrings, for instance, of a public debate on “positive discrimination”, despite Mr Chirac's declaration that such thinking is “unacceptable”. If waiting for individual merit to rise to the top is not working, argues Mr Sarkozy, then some sort of hand-up should be considered. The idea of favouring groups, though, makes the French tie themselves in knots. How do you discriminate in favour of a group when the country doesn't recognise any, and all are equal before the law?
Quietly, practical ways are being found around the theoretical objections. Sciences-Po, a respected college in Paris, lets schoolchildren living in certain “educational priority zones” skip the fiercely competitive entrance exam. Most happen to be non-white. “It's illegitimate to hide behind republican principles and do nothing,” argues Richard Descoings, the college's head. Towns like Evry are finding ways to support Muslim activities and skirt the official ban on state finance and religion. Indeed, Evry's mayor argues that France should explicitly help to finance legitimate mosques, in order to avoid the radicalism that comes in from the Gulf and North Africa. Some 90% of France's 900 or so official and self-proclaimed imams are foreign-trained and sponsored.
Perhaps the most devastating criticism of the rigidity of current French policy was delivered in a recent report from the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank. It talked of France's “rampant ethnic segregation” and “veritable ghettos”. The country, it said, “scarcely recognises itself as a pluri-ethnic nation”. It urged France to “recognise the reality of minorities”, and, most important, to put in place a programme designed to reflect ethnic “diversity”, including positive discrimination.
That common glue
The British, too, are beginning to recognise the drawbacks of their own approach. David Blunkett, the home secretary, is introducing citizenship classes to ensure that Britons can at least speak English and know a little of their history—not hitherto much of a concern. Quite sensibly, there is more talk of the need to strengthen common glue so that differences can continue to flourish. Trevor Phillips, the black head of the Commission for Racial Equality, says he wants to rehabilitate the term “integration”. “People think we tolerate any old nonsense because it's part of their culture: that's nonsense,” he says. “To make the idea of a British Muslim a reality means paying as much attention to “British” as to “Muslim”.
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France open to all religions
BY JEAN-PAUL REAU
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
THE headscarf issue has been covered extensively by the media in Singapore, which has presented mostly the opinions of the foreign media. I should like to mention that the French Embassy here has not received protests concerning the law to ban Islamic headscarves and other conspicuous religious insignia in schools, proposed by the French government, except for a few letters from Singaporeans voicing their concern in a very courteous manner. The Bill is now before the French Senate, which is due to examine it on March 2.
France has a strong tradition of hospitality and is open to all religions. Their numbers - be they Christians, Muslims (the largest in Europe), Buddhists or Jews (second in size only to the United States, after Israel) - underline the religious diversity of France. The harmonious integration of all religions in my country is based on secularism (laicite in French). Secularism is an essential part of the French national heritage and a fundamental republican principle, closely linked with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Indeed, since the French Revolution in 1789, citizenship in France has been founded on a shared will to live together on the basis of these principles, and not on any cultural, national, ethnic or religious attachments. As a secular country, France observes the strict separation of church and state and strives to ensure respect for all creeds and beliefs, and equal individual rights for all citizens irrespective of their affiliation with any particular religion.
A few months ago, President Jacques Chirac asked for an independent commission, chaired by the ombudsman of the republic and comprising members from different ethnic backgrounds, to see how this principle should be implemented and social cohesion maintained and strengthened in France.
This review became necessary in the light of the increasing cultural diversity of French society. It was a response to a number of incidents between different groups, specifically in schools, and to a series of cases where the effective provision of public services was disrupted on religious grounds (for example, parents refusing to allow their children to be taught certain subjects or be taught by female teachers, and relatives of female patients refusing to allow them to be seen by male doctors). In a speech on Dec 17 last year, Mr Chirac endorsed the proposals of the commission recommending, among other things:
The establishment of an independent commission early this year to combat all forms of discrimination;
Increased efforts to stem the currents of xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism;
Ensuring that school syllabuses include lessons on the various world religions;
New legislation reaffirming the principle of neutrality of all state institutions as the best means to ensure peaceful co-existence between various religions and, in the framework of this legislation, imposing a ban on the wearing of conspicuous - but not all - religious symbols in state schools.
This last recommendation aroused the greatest attention. It aims at ensuring that state schools remain neutral and immune to tensions between different groups belonging to different religions. State schools need to ensure equality and non-discrimination between boys and girls, and be free from any form of political or religious propaganda or proselytism.
Classes need to be co-educational, and all subjects, including natural sciences and sports, taught to boys and girls together. These measures do not necessarily apply to private schools, whether religious or not, which also receive state aid. So the principles of neutrality and freedom work together in the interest of social harmony.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have welcomed Mr Chirac's remarks. The Bishops of France Conference responded, calling it 'highly positive that the conditions for living together should be explicitly spelt out'.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France hailed the speech, emphasising that 'all who live in France are required to submit to the rules and customs of the republic'.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, who is also the chairman of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, took a favourable view of the President's 'wise position'.
Such reactions show that the principle of secularism, which guarantees religious freedoms and is crucial to France's republican identity, has broad support in France from the main religions and intellectual groups.
The steps announced by Mr Chirac don't alter in any way the fundamental principles of the French Republic. Rather they are adjustments made to take into greater account the substantive changes in French society and, specifically, to enable the Muslims of France to find their full place there, after the establishment last year of the French Council of the Muslim Faith.
The writer is the French Ambassador to Singapore.
The war of the headscarves
Feb 5th 2004 | EVRY
From The Economist print edition
France and Britain have radically different approaches to ethnic and religious diversity. Each can learn from the other
BY THE grassy banks of the Seine, under a vast white marquee the size of a football pitch, 4,000 sheep are bleating. In the muddy field outside, a makeshift sign has been nailed to a wooden post: “Aid-el-Kebir”. This middling town south of Paris, home to some 15,000 Muslims (nearly a third of its population), is preparing for the Islamic festival of Eid.
The sheep-slaughter, which used to take place in living rooms, has been highly organised. Each family identifies and tags its own sheep. An official Muslim sacrificateur dispatches it, and each family then takes its animal home for the feast. In a country that is battling to protect the separation of religion and state, the entire event has been run by the town hall. “The French must understand that France is changing,” says a local official. “Islam has its place here now.”
Evry is particularly ethnically diverse. Some 40 different creeds, colours, faiths or tongues crowd into the town's rain-streaked tower-blocks. Croissants are on sale at the local boulangerie, mint tea and foufou at the halal butcher, and the “Afro-Coiffure” has skin-whitening cream and hair extensions on special offer. In the local paper, death announcements speak of “Pierre” and “Charles”; the births are of “Moussa” and “Fatih”. Half the town's housing is publicly owned, over three times the French average. Joblessness is high, particularly among young men. “It's not the Bronx,” suggests an official, but some estates “are a bit like a ghetto.”
While the French remain mesmerised by the proposed ban on the Muslim headscarf in state schools, other matters have preoccupied Evry. Last year, for instance, the mayor kicked up a fuss when the Muslim managers of a local Franprix supermarket stopped selling alcohol and pork. Local French shoppers, he argued, could not do without their saucisson and red wine. In vain: the supermarket is now another halal butcher.
In general, however, Evry wears multi-culturalism with confidence. It hosts evenings of Algerian poetry or Malian music. It is home to the biggest mosque in France. A multicultural team of youth workers—“Hamid, Bachir, Souleymane, Claire and Pétroline”—is on hand to get jobless young people back to work, with the help of “positive discrimination”. And ritual slaughter is now an official activity.
Evry illustrates clearly the issues troubling France in dealing with ethnic diversity. At root are difficult questions of identity, social mobility and religious expression. In particular, Islam is challenging the strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, which marks France out from most other western democracies. Under this doctrine, equality before the law of all citizens, regardless of their private beliefs, is supposed to be guaranteed by barring religion from the public arena. Even the “So help me God” intoned by incoming American presidents would be unthinkable in France.
A ban unveiled
Under the version of history which all French schools teach, the rigorously secular character of the state is a hard-won victory against the dark forces of obscurantism, anti-Semitism and authoritarian Catholicism which previously held sway. In theory, the involvement of Evry town hall in sheep-slaughter flies in the face of secularist principle. In practice, it shows increasing pragmatism and accommodation in ordinary French life.
At national level, however, debate has been reduced to a single issue: President Jacques Chirac's proposed ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools. Next week parliament will vote on the new law, which enjoys wide cross-party support. After that, further laws to protect secularism in public hospitals and public offices are expected.
Outside France the headscarf ban has caused bafflement and indignation, and not only in the Arab world. Yet French support for the ban remains strong (see chart), and unites unlikely bedfellows. Secularists join ranks with feminists, who are dismayed that daughters now choose to wear the veil their mothers battled to discard. Politically, the ban is seen as a way to take support from the far-right National Front.
It is also regarded as a message to fundamentalist Islamists, whose certainties are seducing disaffected young French Muslims. The government stresses that its new law refers to all religions, but nobody is fooled. How many schoolchildren turn up to class wearing crucifixes of a “manifestly excessive dimension”? “It's not the crucifix or the kippa that is targeted,” insists Khalil Merroun, the rector of the Evry mosque, “but Islam.”
Many French people feel deeply uncomfortable about defiant, assertive Islam. France, after all, is home to Europe's biggest Muslim population (outside Turkey): some 5m, next to 3m in Germany and 1.5m in Britain. The country has about 1,600 mosques or prayer halls. Many young French Muslims find no difficulty in balancing private faith with French secularism. But an increasingly vocal minority, many of whom speak no Arabic and freely mix Nike trainers with the hijab, finds such compromise unacceptable.
This ban is widely seen as a test of what obligations modern France is willing to, or can, impose on its ethnically and ideologically diverse citizens. Either it can attempt a compromise, and allow Islam and other ethnic groups and religions a public voice, on condition that they at least pay lip-service to the secular republic. This, crudely, is the position of Nicolas Sarkozy, the outspoken interior minister, who has set up an official body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, to that end. Or France can continue to try to defend its integrationist tradition and refuse compromise, as Mr Chirac is trying to do with the ban.
For those defending the existing model, the fear is that giving in to one demand will lead to many more. If, for religious reasons, women are allowed separate hours in municipal swimming pools, will the country end up separating whites and blacks? On this argument, there seems nothing to stop France sliding towards communautarisme, a dreaded state of affairs in which ethnic or religious groups could freely segregate themselves and form “states within a state” with their own rules and values. “I refuse to take France in that direction,” Mr Chirac said when announcing the ban. Not least because it leads, in French minds, to Britain's laisser-faire multiculturalism.
Meanwhile, in Finsbury Park
For French observers, the dire consequences of British sloppiness are clear to see in Finsbury Park, an edgy area of north London. There, the local mosque is boarded up with corrugated iron. The storming of the mosque by armed police a year ago, the arrest of seven men suspected of terrorism and the deportation order for its former imam, Abu Hamza al-Masri, confirmed every French fear about Britain's multiculturalism. “I told you so,” was the reaction across the Channel.
Yet Mr Hamza's mosque was a very odd place, not least for its extremism. Far more typical of Islam in Britain is the nearby Muslim Welfare House, which has been overflowing ever since moderate local faithful got fed up with Mr Hamza's excesses. The centre supplies English-language and Arabic lessons, advice on job-seeking, and youth and homework clubs, as well as holding weekly prayers—all with the help of an annual grant from the British government. It not only serves traditional populations of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, but newer groups of Algerians and Albanians too. In France, this might be regarded as state-sponsored ethnic segregation. At the Muslim Welfare House they consider it integration. “We do the grass-roots job the government can't,” comments an official.
The British model of integration consists, essentially, of not worrying about it. Where the French have an official High Council for Integration, designed to ensure that the process takes place, the British shy away from the term. Ethnic minority groups are not only left alone by the state to practise their faith, language or culture, but are encouraged and subsidised to do so. In one or two schools, the wearing of headscarves has caused trouble; but this is seen as a problem for school governors, not politicians. A vast majority disapproves of headscarf bans for impeccably liberal reasons.
Britain does not use quotas or American-style affirmative-action programmes to enforce multiculturalism. It relies, in part, on the routine acceptance of it, and also on strong laws against discrimination. The onus is now on employers to prove that they have not discriminated, rather than on employees to show that they have been treated unfairly. Fired by a self-interested desire to protect reputation, private companies scramble to adopt “diversity” programmes as a mark of good citizenship. France has none of this. In secularist French theory, the principle of rigorous, colour-blind equality before the law should remove the need for “positive discrimination”.
The British and French models for dealing with diversity have deep roots in history. The French model stems not only from secularism but from the country's revolutionary ideal, which enshrines the equal rights and obligations of citizens as individuals. The model in Britain, which is an assembly of nations, has always allowed a more pragmatic, looser connection to the centre. Moreover, Commonwealth citizens arrived in Britain with the right to vote. Geographical concentration propped up that voting power. So bargaining rights—over the building of mosques, the introduction of halal food in schools, or railway-station signs in Urdu—were won more easily.
These differences acknowledged, is British multiculturalism as wrong-headed as the French suggest? The British model has at least ensured the visibility of ethnic Britons in public life, such as TV news-reading. French television news, by contrast, is almost lily-white. France may celebrate its multi-ethnic national football team; Zinedine Zidane was voted the most admired Frenchman last year. But such exceptions, mostly in arts or sports, stand out. France's emphasis on integration would be more compelling if more of its minorities had become public figures.
In terms of political representation, Britain scores better. At the latest count, there were 12 ethnic-minority members of Parliament and 24 such members of the House of Lords. The French National Assembly contains no Muslims, and the black faces are those from French overseas constituencies. Even the French Socialist Party, with its links to anti-racism movements, has no black deputies.
But surely the British model leads to more isolation and segregation? Britain has highly concentrated minorities. Two entire London boroughs, Brent and Newham, now have a non-white majority. In some primary schools, white faces are non-existent. Yet the French model has not averted segregation. It is hard to measure, because minorities are not monitored. But on certain estates, like those in Evry, white faces are also rare.
Tracking the extremists
Racial tension is harder to judge. Britain was marked by riots in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001. An official report blamed in part the “parallel lives” and “separation of communities” in the towns. London, however, where a third of the population is now from an ethnic minority, is visibly multi-racial, and the capital has not seen a big race riot for many years.
France, to its credit, has also averted mass race riots. Racial tension, however, shows up in other ways. The far-right National Front, which grabbed second place in the first round of the presidential election in 2002, is expected to do well again in regional elections in March. It campaigns heavily on an anti-immigrant platform. In addition, anti-Semitic attacks in France continue, widely blamed on the influence of Islamic extremism and anti-Zionism.
And what of religious fanaticism? It may be easier to plot, preach and disappear in London than in Paris. Yet intelligence sources suggest that the two countries have comparable, though different, levels of activity. Only last month, six people, including an imam, were arrested in Vénissieux, a suburb of Lyons, on suspicion of terrorism. France acts as an important “supply base” for finance and recruitment to the terrorist front, many of whose members move on to London and thence to Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The more the traditional mosques in France are watched, the more the networks disappear into clandestine prayer halls and corner shops. In short, a tradition of integration has not sheltered France from extremism.
Where does all this leave the balance sheet? Crudely, the British model seems to produce more social mobility, though perhaps at the price of greater extremist activity and complacency about its entrenched ghettos. The French model may give less space to radicalism, but fails to promote social mobility, and is no guard against ghettos forming. Evry's mayor puts it well when he comments that France is accumulating the disadvantages of British multiculturalism without the advantages.
The difficulty lies in deciding what to do about it. Current policy carries risks. The headscarf ban, designed to strengthen French secularism, could end up threatening it: the ban plays into the hands of Islamist groups, who claim that Islam is being stigmatised. At the same time, Mr Sarkozy's new Muslim council brings its own dangers. The more Muslim leaders once considered extremist co-operate with the government, the more young jobless Muslims could turn to other voices outside the council, such as those behind the recent march against the ban in Paris. Tariq Ramadan, for instance, the Swiss grandson of the founder of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, is fast becoming a hero on run-down French housing estates.
Some are beginning to advocate a more radical rethink of the current French model. There are stirrings, for instance, of a public debate on “positive discrimination”, despite Mr Chirac's declaration that such thinking is “unacceptable”. If waiting for individual merit to rise to the top is not working, argues Mr Sarkozy, then some sort of hand-up should be considered. The idea of favouring groups, though, makes the French tie themselves in knots. How do you discriminate in favour of a group when the country doesn't recognise any, and all are equal before the law?
Quietly, practical ways are being found around the theoretical objections. Sciences-Po, a respected college in Paris, lets schoolchildren living in certain “educational priority zones” skip the fiercely competitive entrance exam. Most happen to be non-white. “It's illegitimate to hide behind republican principles and do nothing,” argues Richard Descoings, the college's head. Towns like Evry are finding ways to support Muslim activities and skirt the official ban on state finance and religion. Indeed, Evry's mayor argues that France should explicitly help to finance legitimate mosques, in order to avoid the radicalism that comes in from the Gulf and North Africa. Some 90% of France's 900 or so official and self-proclaimed imams are foreign-trained and sponsored.
Perhaps the most devastating criticism of the rigidity of current French policy was delivered in a recent report from the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank. It talked of France's “rampant ethnic segregation” and “veritable ghettos”. The country, it said, “scarcely recognises itself as a pluri-ethnic nation”. It urged France to “recognise the reality of minorities”, and, most important, to put in place a programme designed to reflect ethnic “diversity”, including positive discrimination.
That common glue
The British, too, are beginning to recognise the drawbacks of their own approach. David Blunkett, the home secretary, is introducing citizenship classes to ensure that Britons can at least speak English and know a little of their history—not hitherto much of a concern. Quite sensibly, there is more talk of the need to strengthen common glue so that differences can continue to flourish. Trevor Phillips, the black head of the Commission for Racial Equality, says he wants to rehabilitate the term “integration”. “People think we tolerate any old nonsense because it's part of their culture: that's nonsense,” he says. “To make the idea of a British Muslim a reality means paying as much attention to “British” as to “Muslim”.
----------------------------------
France open to all religions
BY JEAN-PAUL REAU
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
THE headscarf issue has been covered extensively by the media in Singapore, which has presented mostly the opinions of the foreign media. I should like to mention that the French Embassy here has not received protests concerning the law to ban Islamic headscarves and other conspicuous religious insignia in schools, proposed by the French government, except for a few letters from Singaporeans voicing their concern in a very courteous manner. The Bill is now before the French Senate, which is due to examine it on March 2.
France has a strong tradition of hospitality and is open to all religions. Their numbers - be they Christians, Muslims (the largest in Europe), Buddhists or Jews (second in size only to the United States, after Israel) - underline the religious diversity of France. The harmonious integration of all religions in my country is based on secularism (laicite in French). Secularism is an essential part of the French national heritage and a fundamental republican principle, closely linked with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Indeed, since the French Revolution in 1789, citizenship in France has been founded on a shared will to live together on the basis of these principles, and not on any cultural, national, ethnic or religious attachments. As a secular country, France observes the strict separation of church and state and strives to ensure respect for all creeds and beliefs, and equal individual rights for all citizens irrespective of their affiliation with any particular religion.
A few months ago, President Jacques Chirac asked for an independent commission, chaired by the ombudsman of the republic and comprising members from different ethnic backgrounds, to see how this principle should be implemented and social cohesion maintained and strengthened in France.
This review became necessary in the light of the increasing cultural diversity of French society. It was a response to a number of incidents between different groups, specifically in schools, and to a series of cases where the effective provision of public services was disrupted on religious grounds (for example, parents refusing to allow their children to be taught certain subjects or be taught by female teachers, and relatives of female patients refusing to allow them to be seen by male doctors). In a speech on Dec 17 last year, Mr Chirac endorsed the proposals of the commission recommending, among other things:
The establishment of an independent commission early this year to combat all forms of discrimination;
Increased efforts to stem the currents of xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism;
Ensuring that school syllabuses include lessons on the various world religions;
New legislation reaffirming the principle of neutrality of all state institutions as the best means to ensure peaceful co-existence between various religions and, in the framework of this legislation, imposing a ban on the wearing of conspicuous - but not all - religious symbols in state schools.
This last recommendation aroused the greatest attention. It aims at ensuring that state schools remain neutral and immune to tensions between different groups belonging to different religions. State schools need to ensure equality and non-discrimination between boys and girls, and be free from any form of political or religious propaganda or proselytism.
Classes need to be co-educational, and all subjects, including natural sciences and sports, taught to boys and girls together. These measures do not necessarily apply to private schools, whether religious or not, which also receive state aid. So the principles of neutrality and freedom work together in the interest of social harmony.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have welcomed Mr Chirac's remarks. The Bishops of France Conference responded, calling it 'highly positive that the conditions for living together should be explicitly spelt out'.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France hailed the speech, emphasising that 'all who live in France are required to submit to the rules and customs of the republic'.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, who is also the chairman of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, took a favourable view of the President's 'wise position'.
Such reactions show that the principle of secularism, which guarantees religious freedoms and is crucial to France's republican identity, has broad support in France from the main religions and intellectual groups.
The steps announced by Mr Chirac don't alter in any way the fundamental principles of the French Republic. Rather they are adjustments made to take into greater account the substantive changes in French society and, specifically, to enable the Muslims of France to find their full place there, after the establishment last year of the French Council of the Muslim Faith.
The writer is the French Ambassador to Singapore.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Bird Flu -- Why Asia?
BANGKOK -- For much of the past century, Asia has been the cradle of influenza, including two of the three major human flu pandemics.
Experts say that given the right conditions, influenza can emerge anywhere, but they say Asia has all the ingredients for spawning flu, such as the outbreak of bird flu now afflicting 10 Asian countries.
All flu viruses probably originate in birds, and the best environment for making the jump to humans is one where densely packed people live closely with birds and animals.
Mr Klaus Stohr, chief influenza scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said: 'In Asia, we have a huge animal population, a huge bird population and two-thirds of the world's people living there.'
Size of Asian population
The population of China alone is bigger than that of the whole of Africa, and 80 per cent of the new human flu strains the last few decades appeared in China first.
With health officers already leery about a return of Sars, experts are keeping watch on the bird flu in Asia, where the virus has killed millions of chickens, and millions more have been slaughtered in an effort to prevent its spread. About a dozen people have died of the illness thus far.
Farming habits
Asia's traditional situation of peasant farmers keeping ducks, chickens and pigs together with the family has long created opportunities for influenza to jump the species barrier.
And now industrial-scale commercial chicken farming is exacerbating the problem, said Mr Robin Weiss, a professor of virology at University College in London.
'We've had nothing like this gigantic chicken breeding in the world before,' he said.
As Asia has become not only more populous but also richer and more urbanised, its wealthy citizens demand a more diversified diet, favouring more meat, eggs and dairy products. To meet that demand, agriculture has undergone a fundamental change, so that even backyard farms have turned almost industrial, filling every square inch with chickens.
'As soon as you have that many animals in one spot, you are likely to get into trouble with disease,' said Dr Samuel Jutzi, director of animal production and health at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
From the early 70s to the early 90s, per capita consumption of meat, eggs and milk grew about 50 per cent in developing countries, leading to big increases in animal herds. Over the last 25 years, the fastest growth has been in the numbers of chickens and pigs, the FAO says.
Asians' shopping habits
Asians' fondness for shopping at live animal markets also adds to the chances for flu jumping species, experts say.
Climate
And climate may play a role. 'Respiratory viruses, like orchids, do seem to like the Asian climate, because they have influenza viruses nearly all year round. It's not so seasonal as it is in the rest of the world,' said Mr John Oxford, a flu expert from Queen Mary School of Medicine in London.
Migratory patterns of wild fowl through Asia
Many scientists believe a major bird migratory pathway from Siberia across Asia could keeps the continent's poultry seeded with the flu virus, which lives naturally in the gut of waterfowl.
Despite Asia's prominent role in spawning flu outbreaks, experts say strains do crop up in other parts of the world.
Scientists are convinced the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemics originated in Asia, but there is much debate about where the biggest killer of them all -- the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic -- came from.
That flu, which killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million people, was so named because the king of Spain got it, not because it originated in Spain.
'We've got a huge amount of information which tells us this virus arose in Europe, not Asia,' Mr Oxford said. 'If it is the case that it started in Europe, that tells us that these new outbreaks could happen anywhere in the world where the circumstances are right.'
The Europe theory holds that the Spanish flu began in the crowded World War I army camps around Etaples in northern France.
There were 100,000 soldiers on any one day there, and they raised chickens, geese and possibly pigs for food, he noted. Those conditions mimic what naturally occurs in Asia.
A bird flu strain also arose in the Netherlands last year, albeit of a milder strain. The Dutch may have averted an epidemic by slaughtering their entire chicken population within a week.
'I don't think anyone should always assume that these new outbreaks are exclusive to Asia,' Mr Oxford said.
He also warned against judging the seriousness of the Asia's current outbreak too quickly. While the World Health Organisation said Friday that testing indicates the strain so far has not been very successful at jumping to humans, he said flu strains may take a year before they really take off.
'We think these outbreaks in these army camps started in 1917, then it took another year of an extra few mutations before it really exploded into the great wide world,' he said. 'That's what could happen in Asia. It could be another year before it really gets moving.' -- AP
FAQ on the bird flu
WHAT IS IT? Bird flu or avian influenza is caused by a virus and can infect all birds. There are many sub-types of the virus, but only three have made the jump from birds to humans, including the current strain, H5N1. Domestic poultry are believed especially prone to it.
WHERE IS IT? Ten countries, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Korea, Laos, Pakistan, Japan and Taiwan, have reported outbreaks in birds in recent weeks. Thailand and Vietnam have reported human cases. Bird flu was first reported in humans in Hong Kong in 1997. Since then, it's popped up mostly in Asia, although the Netherlands reported an outbreak, including human cases, in 2003.
HOW MANY PEOPLE AFFECTED? The disease has infected at least 13 people and killed 10.
HOW IT SPREADS? Usually through close contact with infected chickens. Infected birds spread the virus through saliva, faeces, and nasal secretions.
So far, only humans with direct contact with sick birds -- for example if an infected chicken coughs or sneezes directly on you -- have caught the disease. No human-to-human transmissions have been reported yet. But scientists are worried that bird flu could link with regular human influenza, mutate, and become a deadly new virus and trigger a pandemic.
As a precaution, wash your hands thoroughly with soap if you come into contact with chickens or chicken droppings.
Common birds such as Mynahs and crows are not known to carry bird flu. Migratory birds can be carriers, but the AVA and the National Parks Board conduct regular checks. Sofar, no flu viruses have been detected in such birds.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS IN BIRDS? Its comb, legs and wattles -- the fleshy fold of skin hanging from its throat -- will turn purple, and its head will swell. Cough, sneezing, nasal discharge, lost of appetite, ruffled feathers, fever, weakness, diarrhoea, excessive thirst and swelling are other signs. If the strain is virulent, mortality rate can range between 50 per cent to 100 per cent. Most chickens with the disease will die -- fast. They can be healthy one day - and drop dead the next. Click to view graphic
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS IN HUMANS? Much like the normal human flu: Fever, cough, muscle ache, runny nose, and sore throat. Some get eye infections and have difficulty breathing. At an early stage, it is difficult to tell which infection is responsible for the symptoms, but the bird flu appears to be more aggressive than normal flu in causing pneumonia and other complications.
WHAT TREATMENT IS THERE? World Health Organisation says this year's strain is resistant to cheaper anti-viral drugs, amantadine and rimantadine. Scientists are exploring other treatment.
WHO also recommends quarantining sick people.
IS IT SAFE TO EAT CHICKEN? There's no evidence that the virus is being passed through eating chicken or chicken products such as eggs, that have been thoroughly cooked, health experts say. The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has banned chicken imports fromaffected countries. Heat kills viruses, and WHO says chicken products should be cooked thoroughly at temperatures of at least 70 deg C. WHO also says people should wash their hands after handling poultry and ensure that poultry carcasses do not contaminate other objects.
All processed and prepacked food, containing chicken extract juices, or chicken/duck meat, undergoes heat treatment, which destroys bacteria and viruses. The sealing process during pressurised canning prevents re-contamination. So such food products are safe to eat.
IS IT SAFE TO KEEP BIRDS AS PETS? All live birds imported into Singapore are monitored by AVA for infectious diseases including bird flu. The risk of pet birds getting infected here isvery low. But owners should keep their birds in cages and prevent contact with wild birds. They should wash their hands thoroughly with soap after handling the pet birds.
If you decide to give up your pet birds or chickens, you can hand them over to the AVA's Centre for Animal Welfare and Control, to be put down humanely. The hotline is: 1800-476-1600.
ARE LOCAL FARMS SAFE? AVA officers visit local farms twice a day. Farm and slaughterhouse employees have to monitor and disinfect all vehicles. Employees take daily temperature checks, don protective gear and are immunised against normal flu. That'sbecause there is a danger of the the normal flu and bird flu getting mixed to become a super flu virus.
IS IT SAFE TO TRAVEL? The World Health Organisation has not advised any travel restrictions so far. You will not be quarantined when you return to Singapore. But when visiting affected countries, avoid farms and live poultry and birds, and adopt good hygiene practices.
WHAT PRECAUTIONS CAN I TAKE? Good hygiene practices usually help, such as washing your hands after handling poultry. Those at higher risk of developing complications from flu -- such as the very old, thevery young and those with chronic illnesses -- may want to take flu jabs to minimise complications and the spread of normal flu.
HOW PREPARED IS SINGAPORE TO TACKLE AN OUTBREAK? Within an hour of the first bird flu case being detected, AVA officers can be mobilised to cull all the birds on that farm. All hospitals and doctors have been advised by the Ministry of Health to be on the alert. Suspected bird flupatients will be given a surgical mask, and sent to Tan Tock Seng, the designated bird-flu hospital.
Sources: The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, the Ministry ofHealth, and wire reports.
FEB 12, 2004
Brazil can't meet demand for chicken if US curtails exports
SAO PAULO (Brazil) - The poultry industry in Brazil, the world's second-largest bird exporter, is not expected to meet world demand for chicken if exports from the United States are curtailed because of bird flu, local industry leaders said.
Although the H7 virus strain in Delaware is more benign than the H5N1 strain that has killed 19 people in Asia, importers of US poultry have already started suspending shipments.
'I don't believe there will be significant suspensions on US imports,' said Mr Julio Cardoso, president of Brazil's Poultry Exporters Association.
'But if this does occur, we will have problems with volume. It will be difficult to supply the markets that North America covers.'
The United States, the world's top poultry exporter, exported 2.3 million tonnes last year. Brazil shipped 1.9 million tonnes.
Mr Cardoso said Brazil had the capacity to increase exports but only to a limited degree.
'Making up for the absence of Thailand is one thing, making up for US exports is a very different deal,' said Mr Cardoso.
Thailand was the fourth-largest poultry exporter in 2003, shipping around 550,000 tonnes, but stopped exports after it registered various outbreaks of the more lethal Asian bird flu.
As a consequence, Brazil has received a notable increase in purchases of poultry from Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. -- Reuters
BANGKOK -- For much of the past century, Asia has been the cradle of influenza, including two of the three major human flu pandemics.
Experts say that given the right conditions, influenza can emerge anywhere, but they say Asia has all the ingredients for spawning flu, such as the outbreak of bird flu now afflicting 10 Asian countries.
All flu viruses probably originate in birds, and the best environment for making the jump to humans is one where densely packed people live closely with birds and animals.
Mr Klaus Stohr, chief influenza scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said: 'In Asia, we have a huge animal population, a huge bird population and two-thirds of the world's people living there.'
Size of Asian population
The population of China alone is bigger than that of the whole of Africa, and 80 per cent of the new human flu strains the last few decades appeared in China first.
With health officers already leery about a return of Sars, experts are keeping watch on the bird flu in Asia, where the virus has killed millions of chickens, and millions more have been slaughtered in an effort to prevent its spread. About a dozen people have died of the illness thus far.
Farming habits
Asia's traditional situation of peasant farmers keeping ducks, chickens and pigs together with the family has long created opportunities for influenza to jump the species barrier.
And now industrial-scale commercial chicken farming is exacerbating the problem, said Mr Robin Weiss, a professor of virology at University College in London.
'We've had nothing like this gigantic chicken breeding in the world before,' he said.
As Asia has become not only more populous but also richer and more urbanised, its wealthy citizens demand a more diversified diet, favouring more meat, eggs and dairy products. To meet that demand, agriculture has undergone a fundamental change, so that even backyard farms have turned almost industrial, filling every square inch with chickens.
'As soon as you have that many animals in one spot, you are likely to get into trouble with disease,' said Dr Samuel Jutzi, director of animal production and health at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
From the early 70s to the early 90s, per capita consumption of meat, eggs and milk grew about 50 per cent in developing countries, leading to big increases in animal herds. Over the last 25 years, the fastest growth has been in the numbers of chickens and pigs, the FAO says.
Asians' shopping habits
Asians' fondness for shopping at live animal markets also adds to the chances for flu jumping species, experts say.
Climate
And climate may play a role. 'Respiratory viruses, like orchids, do seem to like the Asian climate, because they have influenza viruses nearly all year round. It's not so seasonal as it is in the rest of the world,' said Mr John Oxford, a flu expert from Queen Mary School of Medicine in London.
Migratory patterns of wild fowl through Asia
Many scientists believe a major bird migratory pathway from Siberia across Asia could keeps the continent's poultry seeded with the flu virus, which lives naturally in the gut of waterfowl.
Despite Asia's prominent role in spawning flu outbreaks, experts say strains do crop up in other parts of the world.
Scientists are convinced the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemics originated in Asia, but there is much debate about where the biggest killer of them all -- the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic -- came from.
That flu, which killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million people, was so named because the king of Spain got it, not because it originated in Spain.
'We've got a huge amount of information which tells us this virus arose in Europe, not Asia,' Mr Oxford said. 'If it is the case that it started in Europe, that tells us that these new outbreaks could happen anywhere in the world where the circumstances are right.'
The Europe theory holds that the Spanish flu began in the crowded World War I army camps around Etaples in northern France.
There were 100,000 soldiers on any one day there, and they raised chickens, geese and possibly pigs for food, he noted. Those conditions mimic what naturally occurs in Asia.
A bird flu strain also arose in the Netherlands last year, albeit of a milder strain. The Dutch may have averted an epidemic by slaughtering their entire chicken population within a week.
'I don't think anyone should always assume that these new outbreaks are exclusive to Asia,' Mr Oxford said.
He also warned against judging the seriousness of the Asia's current outbreak too quickly. While the World Health Organisation said Friday that testing indicates the strain so far has not been very successful at jumping to humans, he said flu strains may take a year before they really take off.
'We think these outbreaks in these army camps started in 1917, then it took another year of an extra few mutations before it really exploded into the great wide world,' he said. 'That's what could happen in Asia. It could be another year before it really gets moving.' -- AP
FAQ on the bird flu
WHAT IS IT? Bird flu or avian influenza is caused by a virus and can infect all birds. There are many sub-types of the virus, but only three have made the jump from birds to humans, including the current strain, H5N1. Domestic poultry are believed especially prone to it.
WHERE IS IT? Ten countries, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Korea, Laos, Pakistan, Japan and Taiwan, have reported outbreaks in birds in recent weeks. Thailand and Vietnam have reported human cases. Bird flu was first reported in humans in Hong Kong in 1997. Since then, it's popped up mostly in Asia, although the Netherlands reported an outbreak, including human cases, in 2003.
HOW MANY PEOPLE AFFECTED? The disease has infected at least 13 people and killed 10.
HOW IT SPREADS? Usually through close contact with infected chickens. Infected birds spread the virus through saliva, faeces, and nasal secretions.
So far, only humans with direct contact with sick birds -- for example if an infected chicken coughs or sneezes directly on you -- have caught the disease. No human-to-human transmissions have been reported yet. But scientists are worried that bird flu could link with regular human influenza, mutate, and become a deadly new virus and trigger a pandemic.
As a precaution, wash your hands thoroughly with soap if you come into contact with chickens or chicken droppings.
Common birds such as Mynahs and crows are not known to carry bird flu. Migratory birds can be carriers, but the AVA and the National Parks Board conduct regular checks. Sofar, no flu viruses have been detected in such birds.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS IN BIRDS? Its comb, legs and wattles -- the fleshy fold of skin hanging from its throat -- will turn purple, and its head will swell. Cough, sneezing, nasal discharge, lost of appetite, ruffled feathers, fever, weakness, diarrhoea, excessive thirst and swelling are other signs. If the strain is virulent, mortality rate can range between 50 per cent to 100 per cent. Most chickens with the disease will die -- fast. They can be healthy one day - and drop dead the next. Click to view graphic
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS IN HUMANS? Much like the normal human flu: Fever, cough, muscle ache, runny nose, and sore throat. Some get eye infections and have difficulty breathing. At an early stage, it is difficult to tell which infection is responsible for the symptoms, but the bird flu appears to be more aggressive than normal flu in causing pneumonia and other complications.
WHAT TREATMENT IS THERE? World Health Organisation says this year's strain is resistant to cheaper anti-viral drugs, amantadine and rimantadine. Scientists are exploring other treatment.
WHO also recommends quarantining sick people.
IS IT SAFE TO EAT CHICKEN? There's no evidence that the virus is being passed through eating chicken or chicken products such as eggs, that have been thoroughly cooked, health experts say. The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has banned chicken imports fromaffected countries. Heat kills viruses, and WHO says chicken products should be cooked thoroughly at temperatures of at least 70 deg C. WHO also says people should wash their hands after handling poultry and ensure that poultry carcasses do not contaminate other objects.
All processed and prepacked food, containing chicken extract juices, or chicken/duck meat, undergoes heat treatment, which destroys bacteria and viruses. The sealing process during pressurised canning prevents re-contamination. So such food products are safe to eat.
IS IT SAFE TO KEEP BIRDS AS PETS? All live birds imported into Singapore are monitored by AVA for infectious diseases including bird flu. The risk of pet birds getting infected here isvery low. But owners should keep their birds in cages and prevent contact with wild birds. They should wash their hands thoroughly with soap after handling the pet birds.
If you decide to give up your pet birds or chickens, you can hand them over to the AVA's Centre for Animal Welfare and Control, to be put down humanely. The hotline is: 1800-476-1600.
ARE LOCAL FARMS SAFE? AVA officers visit local farms twice a day. Farm and slaughterhouse employees have to monitor and disinfect all vehicles. Employees take daily temperature checks, don protective gear and are immunised against normal flu. That'sbecause there is a danger of the the normal flu and bird flu getting mixed to become a super flu virus.
IS IT SAFE TO TRAVEL? The World Health Organisation has not advised any travel restrictions so far. You will not be quarantined when you return to Singapore. But when visiting affected countries, avoid farms and live poultry and birds, and adopt good hygiene practices.
WHAT PRECAUTIONS CAN I TAKE? Good hygiene practices usually help, such as washing your hands after handling poultry. Those at higher risk of developing complications from flu -- such as the very old, thevery young and those with chronic illnesses -- may want to take flu jabs to minimise complications and the spread of normal flu.
HOW PREPARED IS SINGAPORE TO TACKLE AN OUTBREAK? Within an hour of the first bird flu case being detected, AVA officers can be mobilised to cull all the birds on that farm. All hospitals and doctors have been advised by the Ministry of Health to be on the alert. Suspected bird flupatients will be given a surgical mask, and sent to Tan Tock Seng, the designated bird-flu hospital.
Sources: The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, the Ministry ofHealth, and wire reports.
FEB 12, 2004
Brazil can't meet demand for chicken if US curtails exports
SAO PAULO (Brazil) - The poultry industry in Brazil, the world's second-largest bird exporter, is not expected to meet world demand for chicken if exports from the United States are curtailed because of bird flu, local industry leaders said.
Although the H7 virus strain in Delaware is more benign than the H5N1 strain that has killed 19 people in Asia, importers of US poultry have already started suspending shipments.
'I don't believe there will be significant suspensions on US imports,' said Mr Julio Cardoso, president of Brazil's Poultry Exporters Association.
'But if this does occur, we will have problems with volume. It will be difficult to supply the markets that North America covers.'
The United States, the world's top poultry exporter, exported 2.3 million tonnes last year. Brazil shipped 1.9 million tonnes.
Mr Cardoso said Brazil had the capacity to increase exports but only to a limited degree.
'Making up for the absence of Thailand is one thing, making up for US exports is a very different deal,' said Mr Cardoso.
Thailand was the fourth-largest poultry exporter in 2003, shipping around 550,000 tonnes, but stopped exports after it registered various outbreaks of the more lethal Asian bird flu.
As a consequence, Brazil has received a notable increase in purchases of poultry from Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. -- Reuters
FEB 11, 2004
Fiestas are great but discipline still needed
By ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
SINGAPORE - Here is one problem we won't have for many years. This Valentine week in the land that's lacking in romance, the Government is promoting dinners between eligible strangers, with supposed aphrodisiacs such as oysters and chocolate torte on the menu. It is also encouraging people to send romantic cards the old-fashioned way, by snail mail.
This country even has a special office to encourage singles to marry and have children. So far official schemes, such as financial incentives, have failed to boost the city-state's birth rate, which in 2002 fell to a 14-year low of 40,800, or about 1.37 per woman in a population of just over three million. Last year, the birth rate hit an all-time low, with only 37,600 babies born.
The Government is aiming for an annual minimum of 50,000 births. Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, in a speech marking the start of the Year of the Monkey last month, once again prodded his compatriots to help address this national concern. For once, however, I think Singaporeans aren't cooperating with their Government.
The amorous Pinoy will tell any Singaporean control freak that if you have to order people to indulge in romance, you're missing the point. But give the Singapore Government an 'A' for effort. 'Romancing Singapore' is a year-long programme reminding citizens here, as it did last year, that 'love is the little things'.
Filipinos have known that for a long time, and we never had problems following the biblical admonition to go forth and multiply. Who foots the bill for raising the children? God will provide.
Singaporeans, on the other hand, see not the little things in love but the major headaches that can follow. The typical highly educated Singaporean woman is reluctant to become a stay-at-home mum. When both parents are working, who will wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby? How much will it cost to send the kid to a good school? How will a child fit in an already cramped flat?
Each time I visit this city-state, the chaos of Manila looks even worse in comparison. And I wonder if we will ever have the discipline to turn our country into a place as clean and orderly as Singapore, where everything works and the rule of law prevails. Here public officials worry not about politics but about the falling birth rate.
When Singapore became an independent state in 1965, it was way behind the Philippines in terms of progress. Now Singapore is projecting itself as the Switzerland of the East and is even attaining enough confidence to loosen up socially. Medical chewing gum is now allowed.
Visiting Boat Quay over the weekend, I was surprised to find a scantily clad woman dancing on stage to pounding music in a bar. A Singaporean events coordinator told me the dancing started only six months ago. It was not a girlie bar, he emphasised - the dancer was there merely to lure customers.
Singapore is also trying to position itself as an Asian cultural mecca, sponsoring art exhibits, stage plays and concerts. On Valentine's Day, it will be the venue for the MTV Asia Awards 2004 hosted by Michelle Branch and F4's Vanness Wu. Among those in the running for Favourite Artist is our very own Rivermaya. The nightlife here is still slow compared with Bangkok or even Manila, and if you need a cab you need to look for a taxi stand and wait your turn in what is often a long queue.
But you can walk the streets late at night without worrying about getting mugged. And after that long line at the taxi stand, you are at least sure of reaching your hotel quickly and without fear of being robbed by the driver. If there's no cab, the subway is very efficient, clean and safe. That kind of efficiency and cleanliness can come only when discipline becomes part of the national psyche. Sadly, the guy who tried to drum that into the Pinoy head went about it the wrong way. So to this day we still say 'discipline' with a sneer, recalling dictator Ferdinand Marcos' martial law slogan: Sa ikauunlad ngbayan, disiplina ang kailangan (For the nation's progress, discipline is needed).
We remember his idea of discipline: banning long hair for men and mini-skirts for girls, and arresting all his political enemies. And we remember that the first thing Marcos forgot was to discipline himself and his wife, the shoe lady. After that tragic attempt at national discipline, we were only too happy to revert to anarchy. Singapore, on the other hand, embraced the benevolent authoritarianism of its founding father Lee Kuan Yew, whose wife was no obsessed collector of shoes or flashy jewellery. Confucian values helped the new nation along, just as long-held codes of honour and discipline fuelled Japan's unprecedented post-war economic surge.
There are no similar values or codes of honour in the Philippines. Our people lack the discipline to queue up for anything or even hang on long enough to their cigarette butts until they can find a proper receptacle to discard it. We're happy with our fiestas and processions, in seeking forgiveness for our sins every week, and especially in going out and multiplying. Discipline, however, also has its pitfalls. State control can stifle creativity. There's a thin line between cleanliness and prissiness. All that discipline can be boring. At a certain point, even success can be boring. The Singapore Government got it right: there's more to life than money and a successful career. But Singaporeans may not be sure exactly what's missing in their life. The Singaporean events coordinator told me he and his wife always enjoyed visiting the Philippines because people always seemed so relaxed and happy and sang a lot wherever they went.
Our government need not worry about having to offer free trips abroad for those who decide to marry. It need not bother putting together romantic packages on Valentine's Day, as Singapore is doing with the 'Love Express' at the Night Safari (about 10,560 pesos, or S$320 net per couple) and the love bird watching at the Jurong BirdPark (open despite bird flu; just look, don't touch the birds). And yet, seeing how much Singapore has achieved in just four decades, you can't help wishing that we had even a bit of the discipline that has propelled this city-state.
The writer is executive editor of The Philippine Star.
Fiestas are great but discipline still needed
By ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
SINGAPORE - Here is one problem we won't have for many years. This Valentine week in the land that's lacking in romance, the Government is promoting dinners between eligible strangers, with supposed aphrodisiacs such as oysters and chocolate torte on the menu. It is also encouraging people to send romantic cards the old-fashioned way, by snail mail.
This country even has a special office to encourage singles to marry and have children. So far official schemes, such as financial incentives, have failed to boost the city-state's birth rate, which in 2002 fell to a 14-year low of 40,800, or about 1.37 per woman in a population of just over three million. Last year, the birth rate hit an all-time low, with only 37,600 babies born.
The Government is aiming for an annual minimum of 50,000 births. Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, in a speech marking the start of the Year of the Monkey last month, once again prodded his compatriots to help address this national concern. For once, however, I think Singaporeans aren't cooperating with their Government.
The amorous Pinoy will tell any Singaporean control freak that if you have to order people to indulge in romance, you're missing the point. But give the Singapore Government an 'A' for effort. 'Romancing Singapore' is a year-long programme reminding citizens here, as it did last year, that 'love is the little things'.
Filipinos have known that for a long time, and we never had problems following the biblical admonition to go forth and multiply. Who foots the bill for raising the children? God will provide.
Singaporeans, on the other hand, see not the little things in love but the major headaches that can follow. The typical highly educated Singaporean woman is reluctant to become a stay-at-home mum. When both parents are working, who will wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby? How much will it cost to send the kid to a good school? How will a child fit in an already cramped flat?
Each time I visit this city-state, the chaos of Manila looks even worse in comparison. And I wonder if we will ever have the discipline to turn our country into a place as clean and orderly as Singapore, where everything works and the rule of law prevails. Here public officials worry not about politics but about the falling birth rate.
When Singapore became an independent state in 1965, it was way behind the Philippines in terms of progress. Now Singapore is projecting itself as the Switzerland of the East and is even attaining enough confidence to loosen up socially. Medical chewing gum is now allowed.
Visiting Boat Quay over the weekend, I was surprised to find a scantily clad woman dancing on stage to pounding music in a bar. A Singaporean events coordinator told me the dancing started only six months ago. It was not a girlie bar, he emphasised - the dancer was there merely to lure customers.
Singapore is also trying to position itself as an Asian cultural mecca, sponsoring art exhibits, stage plays and concerts. On Valentine's Day, it will be the venue for the MTV Asia Awards 2004 hosted by Michelle Branch and F4's Vanness Wu. Among those in the running for Favourite Artist is our very own Rivermaya. The nightlife here is still slow compared with Bangkok or even Manila, and if you need a cab you need to look for a taxi stand and wait your turn in what is often a long queue.
But you can walk the streets late at night without worrying about getting mugged. And after that long line at the taxi stand, you are at least sure of reaching your hotel quickly and without fear of being robbed by the driver. If there's no cab, the subway is very efficient, clean and safe. That kind of efficiency and cleanliness can come only when discipline becomes part of the national psyche. Sadly, the guy who tried to drum that into the Pinoy head went about it the wrong way. So to this day we still say 'discipline' with a sneer, recalling dictator Ferdinand Marcos' martial law slogan: Sa ikauunlad ngbayan, disiplina ang kailangan (For the nation's progress, discipline is needed).
We remember his idea of discipline: banning long hair for men and mini-skirts for girls, and arresting all his political enemies. And we remember that the first thing Marcos forgot was to discipline himself and his wife, the shoe lady. After that tragic attempt at national discipline, we were only too happy to revert to anarchy. Singapore, on the other hand, embraced the benevolent authoritarianism of its founding father Lee Kuan Yew, whose wife was no obsessed collector of shoes or flashy jewellery. Confucian values helped the new nation along, just as long-held codes of honour and discipline fuelled Japan's unprecedented post-war economic surge.
There are no similar values or codes of honour in the Philippines. Our people lack the discipline to queue up for anything or even hang on long enough to their cigarette butts until they can find a proper receptacle to discard it. We're happy with our fiestas and processions, in seeking forgiveness for our sins every week, and especially in going out and multiplying. Discipline, however, also has its pitfalls. State control can stifle creativity. There's a thin line between cleanliness and prissiness. All that discipline can be boring. At a certain point, even success can be boring. The Singapore Government got it right: there's more to life than money and a successful career. But Singaporeans may not be sure exactly what's missing in their life. The Singaporean events coordinator told me he and his wife always enjoyed visiting the Philippines because people always seemed so relaxed and happy and sang a lot wherever they went.
Our government need not worry about having to offer free trips abroad for those who decide to marry. It need not bother putting together romantic packages on Valentine's Day, as Singapore is doing with the 'Love Express' at the Night Safari (about 10,560 pesos, or S$320 net per couple) and the love bird watching at the Jurong BirdPark (open despite bird flu; just look, don't touch the birds). And yet, seeing how much Singapore has achieved in just four decades, you can't help wishing that we had even a bit of the discipline that has propelled this city-state.
The writer is executive editor of The Philippine Star.
FEB 11, 2004
Call For Return To Asian Purity
Don't hark back to romanticised past
IN HIS letter, 'Boost Singapore's Asian identity' (ST, Feb 6), Mr Sean Trafford has two main complaints: that Singapore has lost its Asian identity, and that it has concurrently become more American.
However, his views are based upon a selective view of Singapore's past and society.
In the first place, Mr Trafford equates the 'charming and courteous culture' of 1960s Singapore with the Straits Chinese. However, his exclusive concentration on the Chinese begs the question of what he believes the contributions of first-generation Chinese immigrants, Indians, Malays, Eurasians, Armenians, Jews, Sikhs, Parsis and others were to Singapore's culture.
Given this, it is difficult to believe him when he claims that 'during the 1970s that culture was destroyed in one fell swoop by discouraging the use of dialect and replacing it with an unfamiliar language: Mandarin'.
Indeed, we should question the extent to which 'Mandarinisation' has succeeded in the first place.
In any case, Mr Trafford's equation of language to cultural practices needs to be examined further. He claims that language 'encodes' culture. What does the term 'encode' here really mean?
'Chinese characters reflect the Chinese system of thought,' he claims. But many of the same Chinese characters can be read in Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Mandarin, and even Japanese and Vietnamese. How then does he come to the conclusion that the replacement of dialects by Mandarin led to the disappearance of charm and courtesy?
This leads us to the second complaint - that Americanisation in Singapore society is akin to its deterioration. Woven through this argument is the same old tendency to equate all things American (or Western) with the morally decrepit, and materialistic. Hence, Mr Trafford claims that the charm and courtesy of the Straits Chinese have been replaced by a 'watered-down version of American culture'.
Firstly, charm and courtesy are not the preserve of the Straits Chinese. I have personally come across plenty of perfectly courteous and charming people in the city of Cambridge in Massachusetts, and Americans from the south of the United States are reputed to be particularly endowed with these qualities.
Secondly, one must wonder what Mr Trafford thinks 'unadulterated' American culture would be, if he perceives television, pop culture and turns of phrases to be the 'watered down' version.
Most importantly, however, simply because traits are 'American' does not mean that they are therefore poorer. Take accents, for example. The 'rightness' of pronunciation is more a reflection of the power of the region from which the language comes from, rather than any objective criteria of 'correctness'.
Singaporeans do not slavishly 'imitate' American culture. They also do not seem to express shame regarding local traditions. Simply because a newspaper fails to unreservedly fawn over the cheongsam does not mean that Singaporean society is ashamed of it. Yes, the cheongsam can be extremely flattering but not everybody will look their best in it.
In conclusion, Mr Trafford's call for a return to the Asian purity of Singapore society is a call that unfairly ignores the multiethnic and multicultural character of Singapore's demography, and that undeservedly equates Americanisation with deterioration. Singaporeans today live in a highly connected world - many of us have ancestry that are no longer purely 'Asian' anymore.
His call for censorship that would restore the country's 'Asian-ness' is a step backward into a romanticised past.
VERNIE ALISON OLIVEIRO (MS)
Massachusetts, USA
Boost Asian identity, but not cultural censorship
I REFER to the letter by Mr Sean Trafford. While I agree that there is a need to promote a more Asian culture and identity for Singapore, I do not agree with the approach that he has suggested on how to go about it.
He said that cultural censorship is the way to go if we want to preserve the Asian identity of the nation. By doing that, I feel we will be taking a step back from realising a more open and mature society, one able to differentiate between exogenous influences that are good or bad, and one with the maturity to adopt Western influences without any detrimental effect to its own traditional cultures.
Instead of shielding our society even further from negative influences that might emerge from the West - which, regardless of what we do, will still come into Singapore, thanks to the growth of the Internet and the power of the media, we should be more focused on how to teach society to partake in the fruits of globalisation, yet able to maintain its traditional cultures and preserve its Asian way of life.
HAMZAH MUZAINI
Call For Return To Asian Purity
Don't hark back to romanticised past
IN HIS letter, 'Boost Singapore's Asian identity' (ST, Feb 6), Mr Sean Trafford has two main complaints: that Singapore has lost its Asian identity, and that it has concurrently become more American.
However, his views are based upon a selective view of Singapore's past and society.
In the first place, Mr Trafford equates the 'charming and courteous culture' of 1960s Singapore with the Straits Chinese. However, his exclusive concentration on the Chinese begs the question of what he believes the contributions of first-generation Chinese immigrants, Indians, Malays, Eurasians, Armenians, Jews, Sikhs, Parsis and others were to Singapore's culture.
Given this, it is difficult to believe him when he claims that 'during the 1970s that culture was destroyed in one fell swoop by discouraging the use of dialect and replacing it with an unfamiliar language: Mandarin'.
Indeed, we should question the extent to which 'Mandarinisation' has succeeded in the first place.
In any case, Mr Trafford's equation of language to cultural practices needs to be examined further. He claims that language 'encodes' culture. What does the term 'encode' here really mean?
'Chinese characters reflect the Chinese system of thought,' he claims. But many of the same Chinese characters can be read in Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Mandarin, and even Japanese and Vietnamese. How then does he come to the conclusion that the replacement of dialects by Mandarin led to the disappearance of charm and courtesy?
This leads us to the second complaint - that Americanisation in Singapore society is akin to its deterioration. Woven through this argument is the same old tendency to equate all things American (or Western) with the morally decrepit, and materialistic. Hence, Mr Trafford claims that the charm and courtesy of the Straits Chinese have been replaced by a 'watered-down version of American culture'.
Firstly, charm and courtesy are not the preserve of the Straits Chinese. I have personally come across plenty of perfectly courteous and charming people in the city of Cambridge in Massachusetts, and Americans from the south of the United States are reputed to be particularly endowed with these qualities.
Secondly, one must wonder what Mr Trafford thinks 'unadulterated' American culture would be, if he perceives television, pop culture and turns of phrases to be the 'watered down' version.
Most importantly, however, simply because traits are 'American' does not mean that they are therefore poorer. Take accents, for example. The 'rightness' of pronunciation is more a reflection of the power of the region from which the language comes from, rather than any objective criteria of 'correctness'.
Singaporeans do not slavishly 'imitate' American culture. They also do not seem to express shame regarding local traditions. Simply because a newspaper fails to unreservedly fawn over the cheongsam does not mean that Singaporean society is ashamed of it. Yes, the cheongsam can be extremely flattering but not everybody will look their best in it.
In conclusion, Mr Trafford's call for a return to the Asian purity of Singapore society is a call that unfairly ignores the multiethnic and multicultural character of Singapore's demography, and that undeservedly equates Americanisation with deterioration. Singaporeans today live in a highly connected world - many of us have ancestry that are no longer purely 'Asian' anymore.
His call for censorship that would restore the country's 'Asian-ness' is a step backward into a romanticised past.
VERNIE ALISON OLIVEIRO (MS)
Massachusetts, USA
Boost Asian identity, but not cultural censorship
I REFER to the letter by Mr Sean Trafford. While I agree that there is a need to promote a more Asian culture and identity for Singapore, I do not agree with the approach that he has suggested on how to go about it.
He said that cultural censorship is the way to go if we want to preserve the Asian identity of the nation. By doing that, I feel we will be taking a step back from realising a more open and mature society, one able to differentiate between exogenous influences that are good or bad, and one with the maturity to adopt Western influences without any detrimental effect to its own traditional cultures.
Instead of shielding our society even further from negative influences that might emerge from the West - which, regardless of what we do, will still come into Singapore, thanks to the growth of the Internet and the power of the media, we should be more focused on how to teach society to partake in the fruits of globalisation, yet able to maintain its traditional cultures and preserve its Asian way of life.
HAMZAH MUZAINI
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