BERLIN, Nov 21 (IPS) - Outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush has been unpopular in Europe, but his policies in fighting the 'war on terror' have found many takers.

Daniel Finke and Thomas Koenig, professors of politics at the University of Mannheim, 500 km south of Berlin, have found numerous similarities between U.S. "homeland security" and European laws since 2001.

"We do not want to attack all EU homeland security policies, but we have found there is a law-making trend across Europe that reduces civil liberties in exchange for more collective security," Koenig told IPS.

Finke and Koenig studied Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany and Sweden.

The new European laws reducing civil rights range from introducing biometric control devices such as computerised passports and the digital registration of fingerprints to surveillance and storage of all telephone and Internet traffic and transaction data, including bank operations.

Finke and Koenig say the European trend of trading off civil freedoms against homeland security goes against the rights of democratic institutions such as parliaments. "Parliaments are forced to ratify all government decisions in this matter without questioning, and without the right to discuss and eventually reject elements of the laws," Koenig said.

Martine Aubry, the architect of France's 35-hour work week, has won a ballot for the leadership of the opposition Socialists by the tiny margin of 42 votes, the party said in a statement early this morning.

Supporters of her arch rival Segolene Royal immediately contested the result and demanded a re-run, raising the prospect of prolonged feuding within France's main opposition party.

The Socialists said Aubry won 50.02 percent support in Friday's ballot against 49.98 percent for Royal. Valid votes were cast by only 134,784 of the party's 233,000 members.

Royal's lawyer Jean Pierre Mignard said they result was "contested and questionable", while another senior supporter, Manuel Valls, said the vote should be held again next Thursday.

Aubry's camp did not appear ready to relinquish victory.

"No one can deny the situation is complicated but no one can deny that Martine Aubry is the new first secretary of the Socialist Party," said her close adviser, Francois Lamy.

Marco Mayeux, 42, the bartender of Le Relais, a Paris cafe in the 18th Arrondissement, said the ban alone had cut his coffee and bar business by 20 percent.

"A place like mine doesn't appeal to everyone; it's very working-stiff," he said. "There is a coffee-at-the-counter feel that isn't attractive anymore."

Before, clients would go inside a cafe, have a coffee, a cigarette and another coffee. But now they go out to smoke, and sometimes they do not come back, many cafe owners said.

Gérard Renaud, 57, owner of the Restaurant de L'Église in Marsannay-la-Côte, said that business was down at least 30 percent. "Now people don't eat," he said. "They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing."

Ms. Guérin is trying to sell her cafe, but has had only one nibble in this lovely town of some 3,000 people, much visited by tourists, where the renowned hotel-restaurant Relais Bernard Loiseau is just down the street.

The Crisis & What to Do About It - by George Soros - The New York Review of Books

The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil or a particular country or financial institution defaulting. The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact--that the defect was inherent in the system --contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it. To understand what has happened, and what should be done to avoid such a catastrophic crisis in the future, will require a new way of thinking about how markets work.

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government may step in to rescue Citigroup Inc. after a crisis in confidence erased half the bank's stock-market value in three days, according to investors and analysts.

Citigroup's $2 trillion of assets dwarfs companies such as American International Group Inc. that got support from the U.S. government this year. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may favor a rescue to avoid the chaotic aftermath of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy in September.

"Citi is in the category of `too big to fail,'" said Michael Holland, chairman and founder of Holland & Co. in New York, which oversees $4 billion. "There is a commitment from this administration and the next to do what it takes to save Citi."

One option is for the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury to create a special vehicle to purchase bad assets from Citi. The Fed has already erected several such funds, such as the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, to provide liquidity to the financial system. Typically, the Treasury would provide some first-loss equity or insurance fee, such as $50 billion provided to the CPFF, to protect the central bank and give the fiscal authority a stake.

The Government is using the threat of a wholesale nationalisation of banks in an attempt to force institutions to lend billions to small companies struggling to survive as Britain slips into recession.

Downing Street yesterday made plain its fury over high street banks which refuse to use the massive injection of taxpayers' money they have received to come to the rescue of businesses hit by the credit crisis. Lenders have also faced criticism over interest rates charged to homeowners and for stepping up repossessions.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown dismissed suggestions that he should take advantage of his reviving popularity by calling a June general election, insisting he was fully focused on steering Britain out of the downturn, starting with Monday's pre-Budget report.

It will spell out plans for tax cuts and assistance for the country's 4.7 million small firms. The aid will be funded by increases in government borrowing, which is on course to exceed £100bn next year. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will also announce that taxes will have to rise in the medium term to reduce the national debt. The financial stimulus package is designed to breathe new life into the economy but Mr Darling fears the behaviour of the banks could undermine the moves.

Two paragraphs in particular jumped out at me, excerpted by Pettis from a response he wrote to an Op Ed by Niall Ferguson:

Today it is China who is exporting overcapacity and it is the US who is consuming too much, fed by Chinese financing.   With the collapse of bank intermediation US households and businesses are cutting consumption and raising savings.  This is a necessary adjustment.  Calling on the US government to engage in massive fiscal expansion to replace lost private demand is crazy.  It means that we should continue the current game that has led us into so much trouble, but instead of having US over-consumption and rising debt at the private level we must have it at the public level.

If Keynes were around today he would probably make the same point he did over 60 years ago.  Demand must be created by the current account surplus countries, which have, to date, relied on net exports to protect themselves from the consequence of their overcapacity.  They must force demand up quickly in order to close the gap, and since expecting private consumption to rise quickly enough is unrealistic, it has to be public consumption - a large fiscal deficit.

Is that true?  Would Keynes have objected to the US government's trying to engage in massive fiscal expansion to replace lost private demand?

As for the second paragraph, as Pettis must surely know already, China is following the Keynesian prescription exactly.  I don't quite understand why Pettis does not acknowledge that China is already doing what he recommends it should do, or at least the first half of his recommendation:

China needs to resolve this problem by expanding fiscally, not by stimulating exports.

His complaint about stimulating exports and restricting imports is well taken, though, and I will be paying more attention to that issue especially in light of headlines like "'China, US should fight protectionism'".

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Worst of financial crisis yet to come: IMF chief economist

Adam Dupont (From The Raw Story)
Published: Saturday November 22, 2008

ZURICH, Switzerland (AFP) -- The IMF's chief economist has warned that the global financial crisis is set to worsen and that the situation will not improve until 2010, a report said Saturday.  Olivier Blanchard also warned that the institution does not have the funds to solve every economic problem.

"The worst is yet to come," Blanchard said in an interview with the Finanz und Wirtschaft newspaper, adding that "a lot of time is needed before the situation becomes normal."  He said economic growth would not kick in until 2010 and it will take another year before the global financial situation became normal again.

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Withdrawals of capital leading to problems of liquidity "can be so significant that the IMF alone cannot counter them," he said, adding that massive withdrawals of investments from emerging countries could represent "hundreds of billions of dollars.

"We do not have this money. We never had it," he said.

Dollar Strength Sustainability
Friday, 21 November 2008, by London Banker

Coincident with the passage of the Paulson Plan in early October, the top prime brokers (MS, GS, JPM) issued margin calls on hedge funds which raised the average margin required from about 15 percent to about 35 percent. At a time of fragility in global markets and global confidence, this was equivalent to the sudden contraction of global market liquidity by a trillion dollars or so. A huge sell off in quality assets followed as hedge fund managers struggled to meet the margin calls.

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Trillions of dollars of value were wiped off the balance sheets of the world's investors over the next few weeks as forced selling forced prices lower and lower. Adding to the selling pressure, many hedge funds were simultaneously raising cash for redemption demands of investors also squeezed by margin calls by their creditors.

I'm sure none of this was intentional (wink, wink). I'm sure there was no coordination among the prime brokers (nudge, nudge). I'm sure it would never occur to anyone in the Wall Street prime brokerage banks that manipulation of leverage could create profitable trading opportunities (cough, cough).

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At the same time, we observed a huge expansion in the monetary base as the Fed doubled its balance sheet and Paulson doled out taxpayer largesse to Wall Street. The banks began to accumulate massive reserves and Treasury yields crashed lower, especially at the short end. Treasuries gained value as the prime brokers parked the incoming margin cash in the safest, most liquid asset - the primary collateral for all interbank obligations too. These reserves and Treasuries are just sitting in the Fed and not contributing one iota to the stimulation of the economy.

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What happens to the global markets when the deleveraging stops? What happens when there are no more global margin calls on the surviving hedge funds? Will anyone want to buy dollars when they don't need them to repay dollar debt?

ADDIS ABABA, Nov 21 (IPS) - Continued violence against women is one of the focuses of a continental meeting reviewing progress made towards achieving gender equality in Africa.

Participants in the sixth African Development Forum (ADF VI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital are putting their leaders to task over their failure to implement international declarations made to end violence against women.

"There is much talk and signing of these things, and less action," Botha Mbuyiselo, of Sonke Gender Justice Network in South Africa told IPS at the sidelines of the event.

"Our politicians need to move from rhetoric to action. They need find a proactive voice and act collectively against this violence," he remarked.

Girma Wolde-Giorgis, Ethiopia's president had echoed similar sentiments in his address at the opening of the Nov 19-21 meeting. "It is time to move from talk to action. It is time we focused on implementing what we have said, and make follow-up plans to see if we are recording achievements."

MAZAR-e-SHARIF, Afghanistan, November 21, 2008 (ENS) - Residents of Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan's second -largest city, are suffering from a polluted environment caused by urban expansion on land seized by warlords.

Amad Samim, 15, was covered in dust from head to toe after his energetic football game with friends on the street of his neighborhood, Kart-e-Zahiruddin Farabi, in Mazar-e-Sharif.

"My neighbors yell at me when I play football, saying that I will smash their windows," he said, breathing heavily. "My family is also angry with me. They're afraid I'll get hit by a car."

One of his friends had his leg broken a few days ago when he was struck by a vehicle. "But where should we play football?" said Amad. "There is no playground or park. What are we supposed to do?"

A decades-old land grab has left Mazar-e-Sharif and much of the rest of Balkh province with little or no open areas or green spaces. While the government tries to cope with the nearly impossible task of reclaiming the land, residents are suffering the ill effects of living in a polluted environment devoid of trees and other vegetation.

After an intense debate on whether to begin a formal independence movement, the majority of delegates attending a conference of Tibetan exiles in northern India recommended Saturday that the Tibetan government in exile continue to adopt the Dalai Lama's conciliatory approach to China, a Tibetan spokesman said.

But in a sign of mounting frustration with fruitless negotiations with China, most delegates also advised the Tibetan government to end the dialogue until China shows real willingness to negotiate, the spokesman, Thubten Samphel, said in a telephone interview from Dharamsala, India.

The delegates made their recommendations at the end of a six-day conference called by the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetans worldwide, who has pursued a "middle way" approach in which he has called for China to grant autonomy to its six million Tibetans. The Dalai Lama has not called for Tibetan independence and prefers to deal with China without confrontation.

"The majority view is that the middle way approach is the best approach for now," Mr. Samphel said of the results of the conference.

---So, just to give you one example that I discuss in the Rolling Stone piece, there's the general contractor, the really big contracting -- it's kind of the Halliburton of Treasury contracts -- went to the bank, Bank of New York Mellon. Bank of New York Mellon, by the way, is one of the nine banks that got the equity deals, the cash injections in exchange for equity. And they are also very deep in this derivatives mess themselves, but they have been hired to handle a huge part of the bailout. So what I argue in the piece is that we actually have it backwards. It's not the banks that have been partially nationalized; it's Treasury that has been partially privatized by the very banks that created the crisis in the first place.

Worth a read.

Grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.

Op-Ed Columnist - Time for Him to Go - NYTimes.com

Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.
...

If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job, it's possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average. Better than Franklin Pierce! Smarter than Warren Harding! And healthier than William Henry Harrison!

Go read the whole thing. It's a hoot.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

A British militant who was a liaison to Al Qaeda and was a main suspect in the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006 was killed Saturday in a missile strike by an American aircraft in northern Pakistan, senior Pakistani and American officials said.

The militant, Rashid Rauf, was among the five people killed in the attack by a remotely piloted aircraft in North Waziristan, close to the Afghan border, the officials said. He is perhaps the best-known of the figures killed in an American airstrike campaign there that has intensified since August and has caused increased strains between the United States and Pakistan. <...>

... the Pakistani authorities have protested that the strikes are an infringement of national sovereignty and harm the government's efforts to persuade the Pakistani public that the war against the militants is in the country's interest.

Many Pakistanis argue that the American missile strikes are responsible for the suicide bomb attacks that have struck law enforcement targets, funerals and politicians in the North-West Frontier Province and in Islamabad, the capital.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican's newspaper has finally forgiven John Lennon for declaring that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, calling the remark a "boast" by a young man grappling with sudden fame.

The comment by Lennon to a London newspaper in 1966 infuriated Christians, particularly in the United States, some of whom burned Beatles' albums in huge pyres.

But time apparently heals all wounds.

"The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll," Vatican daily Osservatore Romano said.

The article, marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' "The White Album," went on to praise the pop band.

Pirates took just 16 minutes from boarding to seizing control of a 100-million-dollar-laden Saudi oil super-tanker in the Indian Ocean, a military report obtained by AFP showed Thursday.

The report also described the Sirius Star -- with woeful defences, restricted manoeuvrability and speed capacities owing to its 319,000-tonne oil cargo -- as a lumbering prey for two speedboats carrying well-armed pirates also applying the element of surprise by operating well out of their normal range.

The Somali pirates approached the tanker, the length of three football fields, at 0648 GMT Saturday and were able to climb aboard using the simplest of rope and hook techniques.

At 0704 GMT, Britain's Maritime Component Command centre in Bahrain reported that the tanker had been taken by the pirates.

Wetlands contribute to our lives in remarkable ways by providing food and water, controlling floods, protecting against storms and supporting biodiversity, yet they are experiencing loss and degradation on a massive scale.

Wetlands are areas that are covered with water for long enough periods to support plants that thrive in wet soils, so they are not all wet year-round. The areas include marshes, swamps, bogs and wet meadows.

Countering their loss requires baseline information on wetland resources and effective monitoring programmes, but because they are often made up of complex and impenetrable terrain monitoring them is very difficult.

In this context ESA carried out the GlobWetland project from 2003 to 2008 in order to demonstrate how employing satellite data can support the inventorying, monitoring and assessing of wetland ecosystems. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Ramsar Convention - an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.

... more than 100 Bits readers have added their arguments to the question of whether Google actually meets the evil-free standard it set for itself. Our readers were also quite divided, both on the morality of Google's actions and the reason for their judgment.

Some of those that see evil lurking in the heart of Mountain View object to Google's actions to limit search results in China. Others accused it of sins including bullying, hypocrisy, and invasion of privacy.

"EVIL!" declared George Burdell. "They are advertising company mining your data and flooding your eyeballs. Everything else is a trail of candy to get you into the store."

Some readers taking the view that Google should not be condemned, challenged the criticism of the as "full of holes," as Steve put it. And many praised the virtues of the company's services.

Try living in a foreign country.... (Thailand)......no libraries, minimum access to publications/books/news. Google is a savior!" wrote John Oles.

Living in America, it's easy to forget that most of the world does not speak English; and that much of the world's literature is not written in English. In order for us to read the best of what the rest of the world writes -- and in order for the rest of the world to experience our best literature -- skilled writers must work in the art of translation.

But it's not as straightforward as you might think. A good translation needs to be true to the original and able to stand on its own for a new audience.

Bea Basso, who came from Italy to the United States in 2000 to study and work in theater, has done a lot of translating from Italian to English. She says that the choice of a single word can determine the arc of an entire work.

"There is no such thing as a literal translation, by nature of choosing one word or another, you influence the next step," she says.

But word choice is just the beginning. Sound also plays an integral part in transmitting meaning, especially when it comes to translating poetry. And regional linguistic differences can factor into a work, too -- which is why Basso (who's from Venice) found it odd when she was asked to translate plays by Neapolitan author Eduardo De Filippo. ...

Brazil's Melanie Nunes Fronckowiak (R) and France's Saiba Bombote pose after they won the female and male final of the "Most Beautiful Bottom in the World" competition in Paris November 12, 2008.[Agencies]