i on this page * Narco-censorship - how drug traffickers silence the Mexican media * Blood diamonds & Charles Taylor * Zimbabwe's street children * G20 * Nigeria's agony * The dig dividing Jerusalem * A Playground for seniors * Famine is a result of a failing food system * China puts eco back in economy * Death to the Death Sentence * Millions of Chinese rural migrants denied education * Chinese student's diary of despair * Important Report from China Daily + Comment * How to relieve students burden of Education * Improving Opportunities for Students in Rural Areas -* Harmful 'key schools' system must end * The Countryside * The Gypsy & New Age Travellers* Beijing 2008 * A Walk in the Country * Take My Advice *
i
At some time or another, we often find that we have a strong opinion on a particular issue, situation or news feature. Comment is an outlet for people anywhere to express their feelings about anything. Under the terms and conditions that this website was established, I am afraid that we are unble to promote issues of a political or religious nature. Visitor's most recent comments are posted at the top of the column. E-mail: enjoyingenglishinchina@yahoo.co.uk and insert 'Viewpoint' in the subject box.
Narco-censorship - how drug traffickers silence the Mexican media
Los Angeles Times reporter Tracy Wilkinson introduces us to a new journalistic expression: narco-censorship.
It's the description specific to the media's coverage of the drug war in Mexico
where reporters and editors, out of fear or caution, are being forced
to write either what the drug lords demand, or to remain silent by not
writing anything at all.
In a country where journalists have been intimidated, kidnapped and killed, Wilkinson writes:
"One of the devastating by-products of the carnage is the drug
traffickers' chilling ability to co-opt underpaid and under-protected
journalists — who are haunted by the knowledge that they are failing in
their journalistic mission of informing society.
She quotes an editor in Reynosa, in the border state of
Tamaulipas, who tells her: "You love journalism, you love the pursuit
of truth, you love to perform a civic service and inform your
community. But you love your life more... We don't like the silence.
But it's survival."
An estimated 30 reporters have been killed or have disappeared since President Felipe Calderon
launched a military-led offensive against the drug cartels in December
2006, making Mexico one of the deadliest countries for journalists in
the world.
Ten days ago the UN belatedly sent its first such mission to Mexico to examine the resulting dangers to freedom of expression.
Few killings are ever investigated, and the climate of impunity
leads to more bloodshed, says an upcoming report from the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "It is not a lack of valour on the part of the journalists. It is a lack of backing," says broadcaster Jaime Aguirre. "If they kill me, nothing happens."
When a large drug gang attacked an army garrison in Reynosa in
April, trapping soldiers inside, it was front- page news in the Los
Angeles Times. It went unreported in Reynosa.
Reporters and editors say they routinely receive telephoned
warnings when they publish something the traffickers don't like. More
often, knowing their publications are being watched and their newsrooms
infiltrated, they avoid publishing anything considered risky.
Social media networks, such as Twitter, have
filled some of the breach, with residents frantically sending danger
alerts. And a secretive "narco blog" has started posting numerous
videos of henchmen and their victims. But traffickers also use social
media to spread rumours and stoke panic.
In Durango, where more newsmen were killed in 2009 than in any other state, broadcast reporter Ruben Cardenas says journalists can no longer do their job.
Blood diamonds and Charles Taylor: the inside story
The 'blood diamonds' trade, which is at the heart of
the war-crimes trial of Charles Taylor, ex-president of Liberia - in
which Naomi Campbell has become embroiled - was partly run by his
brother-in-law, Cindor Reeves. In this exclusive interview he tells
Colin Freeman about his role
The now infamous dinner with Naomi Campbell, Charles Taylor and Mia FarrowPhoto: REX
Naomi Campbell giving evdience to the war crimes trial of Charles TaylorPhoto: AP
Should Naomi Campbell ever wish for some more dodgy diamonds to
grace her supermodel limbs, Cindor Reeves knows the right people to
call. It is a long way from his new home in Canada to the war-ravaged
gem fields of his native West Africa, and a long time since the trade
in "blood diamonds" was officially banned, but as long as Ms Campbell
sticks to her habit of not asking where they came from, he says a deal
could probably be done.
"I tell you, I could get on the phone to people out there
tomorrow, and they will fly them to wherever you want," he says,
shaking his head. "They are supposed to have brought this trade under
control, but it still goes on, and as long as it does, we will have
wars in Africa."
On the subject of illegal gemstones, it is fair to say that Mr
Reeves is uniquely well connected, even if many of his best contacts
are now either dead, on the run, or in jail.
The tall, quietly spoken 38-year-old is the brother-in-law, no
less, of Charles Taylor, the Liberian dictator who gave Ms Campbell a
gift of uncut diamonds in 1997, according to her recent testimony at
his war crimes trial in the Hague. For four turbulent years, he was at
the centre of the blood diamonds trade, acting as Taylor's personal
envoy in his infamous arms-for-gems deals with the rebels in next door
Sierra Leone, whose drug-crazed recruits raped, maimed and slaughtered
their way through a war that claimed some 150,000 lives.
As such, he also knows about the appalling price in human misery
that was paid so that "the chief", as his brother-in-law was known,
could flatter pretty girls at parties. The gifts Taylor used to hand
out to the likes of Ms Campbell were the proceeds of dozens of
clandestine trips that Mr Reeves made into the Sierra Leone bush, where
he would swap truckloads of weapons for tiny but highly valuable
packages of stones, many from rebel-held mines being run as virtual
slave camps.
Today, though, Mr Reeves' diamond smuggling days are over.
Appalled by the slaughter that the trade was fuelling, in 2001 he
turned against his own family and secretly approached the UN-backed
Special Court for Sierra Leone, providing inside information that
helped build much of the prosecution case against the former president
and his cronies. He claims Taylor tried to have a hit squad kill him
before he left Africa, and after an attempted kidnapping in Paris in
2004, allegedly conducted by a notorious Ukrainian arms dealer, he fled
to Canada.
Today, rather like the Mafioso-turned-informant Henry Hill, whose life was depicted in the film Goodfellas, he lives in suburban anonymity, although even here his mobile phone still rings with death threats.
"Taylor still has a lot of supporters," he told me, looking out
over a street lined with station wagons, neatly kept lawns and garages
with basketball hoops. "Nobody has done anything yet, but they tell me
they know where my kids go to school."
Last week, though, on condition that his location was not disclosed, Mr Reeves agreed to an interview with The
Sunday Telegraph, shedding first-hand light on the violent, sordid
world that Ms Campbell became the chance beneficiary of during her
meeting with Taylor at a party at Nelson Mandela's house in 1997.
While the supermodel professed almost complete ignorance of the
blood gems trade, describing Taylor's gift only as "dirty pebbles", Mr
Reeves saw its every facet: the psychotic rebel commanders who ran the
mines, the traumatised civilians forced to work in them, and the
networks of shady middlemen who connected the trade with the outside
world, including arms dealers and alleged agents of both al-Qaeda and
Hezbollah.
His story begins at a more innocent time, however, back in the
early 1980s, when Taylor, then a senior figure in Liberia's military
government, married Mr Reeves's elder sister Agnes. Then, as now, Mr
Reeves recalls his brother-in-law as someone who was generous with
gifts but ruthless if crossed: the uniformed figure who would buy him
ice cream and sweets once beat up one of Agnes's other suitors in front
of him.
After being sacked for embezzlement and banished to the US, where
he served time in jail, Taylor returned to Liberia to fight his way to
power with a guerrilla army. During the 1990s he also backed the
Revolutionary United Front rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone, whose
troops were notorious for recruiting child soldiers into their ranks
and mutilating civilians.
One reason for his support for such a brutal movement was that
Taylor was a pal of the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, who had trained with
him in Libya as part of Colonel Gaddafi's now defunct programme for
grooming foreign revolutionaries.
Another, though, was that the RUF had seized control of some of
the richest diamond fields in the world, Sierra Leone being one of the
rare spots on the planet where they practically spring up out of the
ground. "A rough diamond looks a bit like a sugar lump, it's only
when you wash it and the sunlight hits it that you see the gemstone
beneath," said Mr Reeves, his eyes gleaming a little. "The diamonds
from Sierra Leone are like no others. They are much less rough than
those from Angola, South Africa or Australia – all they need is a
little cutting."
While diamonds in other countries are mostly accessible only by
mining firms, in Sierra Leone they can be dug by anyone with a spade
and panning set. The result, in such a poor, weakly-governed country,
has for decades been an anarchic free-for-all, from which criminal
gangs and armed groups have grown powerful.
Ironically, it was to inject a little honesty and transparency
into the business that Taylor first recruited his brother-in-law. The
Liberian leader was already thought to be earning millions from the
trade, funding a lifestyle that included designer suits, Mercedes cars,
his own personal throne and at least 30 children by different women.
However, he grew exasperated at the way his diamond packages were
often pilfered in transit, and turned to his relative as one of the few
people he felt he could trust. From 1998 onwards, Mr Reeves would
accompany a heavily armed convoy that would drive along the sunbaked
tracks into Sierra Leone's RUF strongholds, trade weapons and
ammunition for diamonds, and then ensure that every stone came home
accounted for.
None of the parties involved in these deals were the kind of
people whom it was wise to double-cross. On Mr Reeves's side was
Taylor's diamond-buyer, a Senegalese-born jihadist who had fought the
Soviets in Afghanistan and trained with Hezbollah, plus members of the
president's feared "special security service". On the RUF side was
commander Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie, a former disco-dancer and
hairdresser known for his fondness for hacking off the limbs, ears and
lips of his victims. His footsoldiers, meanwhile, had a fondness for
drink and marijuana.
"Commanders would come in with parcels of diamonds wrapped in
paper and tied with Scotch tape," said Mr Reeves. "We would meet in
Bockarie's house and then stick a chair in the middle of the room for
the diamonds to be counted on, with a white sheet draped underneath so
that if any got dropped we could see them. Then I would declare how
many we had received, and Bockarie would tell the commanders, 'Look,
President Taylor's brother-in-law is here in person, so nothing is
going to go missing'."
As Taylor's own emissary, Mr Reeves had little fear of being
robbed en route: in his possession was a special ID card identifying
him as a member of the First Family, which guaranteed him passage
through any militia checkpoint, and warned that he should not be
"molested" in any way.
Even so, he would never let the diamonds out of his sight. "At
night, I would put them in my front pocket and sleep face down so that
nobody could get at them, although any robber would have been crazy to
try. The guards would have shot them if they saw so much as a movement
in the bushes."
Back in the crumbling Liberian capital, Monrovia, Mr Reeves would
deliver the packages to Taylor: in similar fashion to the delivery to
Naomi Campbell, the president preferred the hand-over to be done in the
small hours. The stones duly checked by an expert, Taylor would then
call the international dealers he retained, who included members of the
Lebanese diaspora that has long operated all over Africa, and Europeans
connected to the diamond market in Antwerp.
All had a remarkable ability to summon millions of dollars in cash
at short notice, although if they ran short, Taylor was always happy to
help. On one occasion, when a buyer turned up with $240,000 in
travellers' cheques, his security men forced a bank in Monrovia to cash
the lot on the spot. "They didn't normally take travellers' cheques,
but were told that this particular 'tourist' was special," Mr Reeves
recalled.
On one occasion in 1999, Mr Reeves even accompanied a dealer to Antwerp, where a dozen local diamantaires
were invited to submit sealed bids for a pile of stones laid out in the
middle of a hotel room. The dealer pocketed $2.35 million that
afternoon, with no questions asked. "It was long before anybody knew
about blood diamonds," said Mr Reeve. "As far as they were concerned,
there was nothing wrong at all."
He knew otherwise, having visited the RUF-controlled mines, where
men, women and children were being conscripted to work in appalling
conditions. "It was horrific – at one point I saw three or four guards
beating a guy with their rifle butts just because he had stopped for a
drink of water. They thought he was trying to steal a diamond, and at
one point they were going to force-feed him laxative so that it would
come out. When I saw that with my own eyes, I began to realise just how
bad it all was."
Despite the danger it put him in, Mr Reeves quietly turned
supergrass, working with prosecutors from the special court, and,
allegedly, with Britain's M16. He handed them records of every
transaction he had done, and during field trips began to gather
evidence of the atrocities carried out by militia commanders. While he
is not expected to give direct evidence to the Hague court, owing
partly to a falling-out over the way court officials handled his
witness protection provision, he is one of the key sources of
information for a trial in which very few people have been brave enough
to tell the truth. Among those who have been afraid to do so, he
reckons, is Ms Campbell, who denied in court knowing that the stones
she got were actually from Mr Taylor. "You could see the fear in her
eyes, because she knows who Taylor is now," he said.
Mr Reeves was surprised to hear testimony that he told bodyguards
to give her the diamonds in the middle of the night. "For one thing,
she is a supermodel – strangers wouldn't be allowed to come knocking on
her bedroom door just like that. And Taylor is a flamboyant character –
he would want to give her the diamonds in person, because he liked
impressing people.
If fact, if she hadn't been there, he would have probably given them to Nelson Mandela."
Zimbabwe's street-children challenge the illusion of change
Child scavengers in Harare bear tragic witness to how little has changed in a society brutalised by Robert Mugabe's cynical rule
Kudzai Mupereki, 19, a homeless woman in Harare, is eight-months pregnant. Photograph: Tracy McVeigh
Rotting food scraps picked out of the dirt and the bins of the
backstreets of Harare are piled together in a slimy heap on the ground
with torn cardboard as a serving plate.
Elias, 15, squats and pushes both hands into the pile, scooping
out a chunk of something pink. He gnaws on it, then shouts: "Dinner!
Come and eat."
The other boys shush him. "The police will come," says Lloyd, "and
we will have to run." There are more than 20 of them, gathered on a
small piece of waste ground around a thin fire. The youngest is 8, the
eldest 18. Lloyd used to have a blanket, but the police took it last
time he was rounded up. He is among the older children who have been
living on the streets since President Robert Mugabe's
infamous Operation Murambatsvina, the slum clearances that began in
2005 and left hundreds homeless. But now they are seeing new, younger
kids drifting in day after day from the countryside, looking for
protection and a share of whatever has been scavenged or stolen or
begged.
"Zimbabwean society is splintering, breaking, the family is not
working the way it used to," said an official at the ministry of
health. "The gap is increasing between the rich and the poor, the
middle classes are moving out into the high-density suburbs where the
poor used to live, and the poor are ending up on the streets."
At the Makumbi children's home, half an hour's drive from the
city, Sister Alois is upset to report she has had to turn away three
abandoned babies brought in by social workers in the last week.
"More and more children abandoned, it's not the African way. There
are so many now. They are being left in the bush, some are eaten by the
ants," said the nun, who has always been strict on taking in a
manageable number of orphans to give each child the best possible
chance: 10 children to each of her "house mothers". She says "poverty,
and poverty leading to girls being abused", is the cause.
But after years of financial mismanagement at the hands of an ageing
dictator and his corrupt cronies that saw this country decline into
chaos amid food and energy shortages, sky-high inflation and political
violence, Zimbabwe
is entering a new era. In the two years since the election that nearly
tore the country apart before resulting in a national unity government
between Mugabe and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, there have been dramatic changes.
There is food on the shelves now, and the trillion-dollar
banknotes are gone. Since 2009 citizens have been free to use the South
African rand or the US dollar, and all do. A human rights commission
has been sworn in. A media commission has licensed newspapers
independent of government control and one, Newsday, began
publishing this month. There are more cars on the road, some traffic
lights work and the big four-wheeled drives no longer mainly have white
faces behind the wheel. Vast diamond fields discovered at Marange have
the potential to bring prosperity, and work on a new constitution is
under way.
But what has really changed? Zimbabweans still top the world list
of asylum-seekers. On Monday, Mugabe was ranked the world's
second-worst dictator behind Kim Jong-il of North Korea, and Zimbabwe
rated in the top 10 failed states.
The report by the US-based Fund for Peace stated: "Mugabe has
arrested and tortured the opposition, squeezed his economy into
astounding negative growth and billion-percent inflation, and funnelled
off a juicy cut for himself using currency manipulation and offshore
accounts."
On Thursday, the international watchdog, the Kimberley Process,
failed to reach agreement on Zimbabwe's diamonds, concerned at human
rights abuses and corruption. So the ban on the country exporting
diamonds remains in place. And Mugabe's government remains disdainful
of international opinion.
The mines minister, Obert Mpofu, responded by saying Zimbabwe would
sell them anyway. "Those of you who dream of regime change," he told
his critics, "there will never be regime change in Zimbabwe. We fought
for our liberation and we are ready to fight again."
Tsvangirai has been accused of ineffectual leadership, of doing
the "Mugabe shuffle" – making small changes that mean nothing for the
people. As one businessman told the Observer: "There is a
saying in Shona, 'It's best to take an enemy inside your hut and there
kill him'. That is what Mugabe has done to Tsvangirai. We are betrayed."
The government is in another paralysis of disagreement, with
reports that Tsvangirai and Mugabe are not speaking. The state
newspaper last week ran a front-page picture of the recently widowed
Tsvangirai sitting near a woman it alleged was his new girlfriend.
Rumours abound of MDC officials accepting farms from Mugabe just as he
rewards the loyalty of his own Zanu-PF officials. The suggestion is
denied vehemently, but worn-out Zimbabweans believe it.
The controversies and rumours are helping to raise the profile of
a new player on the field. Zapu, the party of the late liberation hero
Joshua Nkomo, has officially extricated itself from Zanu-PF and is
showing signs of winning support outside its Matabeleland stronghold.
"Their pockets and their necks are getting fatter, there is no
difference between the MDC and Zanu any more," Dr Dumiso Dabengwa,
interim chairman of Zapu, said, insisting that cross-tribal support was
already coming their way.
And while the political leaders are failing to fix a broken
Zimbabwe, those who try to help on the streets are overwhelmed by the
scale of the country's problems. A charity operating to help the
growing bands of homeless children, Streets Ahead, is a drop-in day
centre where kids can come and wash, attend art and drama classes, have
a meal. Staff used to do night outreach work to find kids newly arrived
on the city streets before the pimps and the abusers got to them, but
donations are drying up. "So many kids we could take back home now, but
we don't have the money or the truck to take them," said outreach
worker Pauline Manigo, close to tears.
Duduzile Moyo, executive director of the centre, said: "We are
soldiering on. The donations are scaling back big time, economic
pressures everywhere. But it is the same pressures that are causing the
problems that mean we cannot fix them." A census in August found 705
children living in Harare's city centre. "Poverty is the underlying
cause and the economic downturn is making everything worse. We are
seeing new kids arriving all the time now. The gap between the rich and
the poor is getting very wide now."
A 34-year-old woman, in a retail management job, told of her
despair that she was about to give up her small flat to move to the
sprawling townships around the city where electricity and running water
are seen as a luxury, not a necessity.
"I have always worked hard, always. But now I just don't know how
I can manage any more, so I am going to have to move out. My wages have
been cut and cut and now my rent is $300 a month and my income is $320.
"I am middle-class, my parents had a nice house, but if I want my
kids to go to school then they're not going to have a nice house."
But her two children are still luckier than some. A few streets
away, at a bus stop, a row of bodies are huddled under thin sheets.
Connie Tatianashe is four months pregnant. Her three-year-old son
sleeps by her side. They lost their home because her husband had to
take a pay cut while the rents just kept on rising. Beside her, a
shivering girl called Memory Muringai looks younger than the 13 she
claims to be and has been here only a few days. So far none of the
older boys has claimed her as a "girlfriend".
"I asked the bus driver and he brought me here, to Harare," she
says. "My father died and my stepmother poured hot water on my back, so
I ran away to find my aunt, but I can't find her. The shop owners gave
me something to eat, but the boys chase me away. I am cold and I am
scared."
The UK-based charity Street Invest supports Streets Ahead and other similar projects worldwide.
G20 summit: A moment missed The Guardian, 29.06.2010
It is not yet 15 months since the G20
economic powers met in London to co-ordinate global action against the
financial crisis and the recession. But it feels more like 15 years.
When the London summit ended, Gordon Brown invoked a shared sense of
historic crisis and spoke grandly of the world coming together to deal
with it. He promised long-lasting plans, with shining new global
financial architecture supported by committed alliances.
Prosperity was indivisible, he intoned. Global problems had to be
addressed by global solutions. We were witnessing a new consensus among
the nations, a common approach, and even the birth of a new world order
laying the foundations of a progressive era of international
co-operation.
How terribly 2009 all that now seems. Reading the Toronto G20 summit declaration and, even more, listening to David Cameron's
report to MPs about the summit yesterday, it was difficult to accept
that the new prime minister has just attended a meeting of the same
group of nations.
The G20, once so unified and mighty in Mr Brown's vision, seemed to
have shrunk in Mr Cameron's into a dull working seminar in which the
participants gave their reports but let one another get on with their
own national business. It was still the right forum for discussing
vital economic issues, the prime minister allowed. But all the weekend
summitry – which included a G8 meeting and a series of leaders'
get-togethers in the margins – added up not so much to a new world
order as to "a good opportunity to build Britain's bilateral
relationships" – marred only by watching the football in the company of
Chancellor Merkel. It says a lot about the new government's approach
that MPs spent more of their time after listening to Mr Cameron's
report talking about Afghanistan than they did about the world economy.
Mr Brown's inability to participate in any summit without boasting
that it had all jumped to his masterly tune grew extremely wearisome.
But Mr Cameron's general insouciance about the G20, while refreshing in
a way and authentically Tory, risks going too far in the opposite
direction. It is certainly no bad thing to jettison some of the
excessive claims about the G20 process.
There is also a need, as the government is hinting, to scale down the
cost and disruption of summitry generally. Yet there is little doubt
that if the G20 did not exist it would have to be invented. It was born
out of twin necessities – first to widen the share of responsibility
for international financial decision-making from the industrial powers
that made up the increasingly ineffective G8 and, second, to confront
the collapse of the banking system and of world trade. Neither of these
problems has gone away. Nor has the importance of an institution that
can deal with the world's chronic economic imbalances on something more
than a crisis management basis.
Mr Cameron's attempt to claim that the main outcome of the G20 was
that the other 19 gave their blessing to British and European deficit
reduction programmes is misleading. The Toronto text certainly signs
off in a general sense on the fiscal consolidation in last week's
budget. Yet the text also insists that such measures must be
growth-friendly and repeats that the G20's highest priorities are to
boost demand and rebalance growth. This is certainly not the impression
that Mr Cameron, with his deficit cutting preoccupation, either gave or
wished to give.
It all adds to the concern that the G20 has flunked too many big
issues. Philosophical and practical divides about fiscal strategy are
deeper than before. Other divisions continue between countries whose
banks are healthy and those whose banks are not. It is hard not to feel
that the Toronto G20 missed its moment. In the past the G20 aimed too
high and promised too much. In 2010 the risk is the reverse, that it
has aimed too low and promised too little for a still fragile and
volatile global economy.
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
The Deepwater Horizon
disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in
the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for
decades
A ruptured pipeline
burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at
least 100 people. Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of
Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay
swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming,
cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long
before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting
vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we
were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in
the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that
cris-cross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several
months.
Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil.
Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew
how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,"
said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is
where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of
the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to
Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have
acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has
been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of
terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than
has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological
catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the
explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made
headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged
about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction
there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have
to pay for drilling oil today.
On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of
Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven
days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the
company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community
leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss
of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the
meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were
spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by
rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on
Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced
with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in
Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die.
In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen
can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude
the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution.
Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access
to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past
two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can
scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US
government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the
Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria,
neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention,"
said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of
spill happens all the time in the delta."
"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and
people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than
it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that
are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double
standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different."
"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US,"
said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International.
"But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them
up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can
be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of
Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
"This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend
completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and
fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making
speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a
whimper," he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger
delta each year because the companies and the government keep that
secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past
four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on
land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and
representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian
Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil
– 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster
in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century.
Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels
of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights
outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more
than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official
major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of
smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill
cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in
2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents –
one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its
Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos
pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in
the delta, says that 98% of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism,
theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by
deteriorating infrastructure. "We had 132 spills last year, as against
175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal
taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do
not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more
money from compensation," said a spokesman.
"We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we
replaced 197 miles of pipeline and are using every known way to clean
up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any
spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they
occur."
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental
watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of
rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict
pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels
cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's
national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that
between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the
environment. "Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been
extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation.
These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and
enforcement measures within the existing political regime," said a
spokesman for Nosdra.
The sense of outrage is widespread. "There are more than 300
spills, major and minor, a year," said Bassey. "It happens all the year
round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations
highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In
Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an
extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm."
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which
works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies'
activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States
should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in
Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked
the scale of the environmental impact. Activist Ben Amunwa, of the
London-based oil watch group Platform, said: "Deepwater Horizon may
have exceed Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore
spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez
disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger
delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude
oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue
to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret."
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be
named, said: "Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years
as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and
difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder
to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond."
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude,
a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and
deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and
very few people seem to care."
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as
if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: "What we conclude from the
Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of
control.
"It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation,
both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the
law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this
happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the
international court of justice."
The dig dividing Jerusalem
The search for the City
of David may offer tourists a reminder of Jerusalem's ancient past. But
for the Palestinians whose homes are threatened by the excavations,
archaeology is merely the latest weapon being used against them
Excavations in Silwan in the middle of Palestinian housing. Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton
If you walk out of Jerusalem Old City through its south-eastern
gate and on to the perimeter road encircling it, you will most likely
see several large coaches with elderly western tourists climbing out of
them. You will see them stand at the low wall at the edge of the road
and peer down into the lush valley with its pretty houses that nudge
and lean against each other. The tourists may notice the woman marking
exercise books on her sunny terrace, they may smile to see the
bright-haired four-year-old riding her tricycle round the yard. Some of
them will think of a favoured grandchild back in Kansas or Ottawa.
Now, if this were a scene in Italy, Spain, or even Turkey, we
might have left it there: the tourists come, stare, spend money and go.
But here their effect is devastating – and most of them don't even know
it. For the town that nestles here, in this valley on the southern
flank of Jerusalem, is Silwan, home to some 55,000 Palestinians,
annexed by Israel
along with east Jerusalem in 1967, and currently one of the hottest
spots in the contest between the rights of the Palestinian townspeople
and the plans that Israel has for the area – plans put into effect
through a series of administrative measures, clandestine coalitions,
and progressive-sounding projects. None of which could work without the
funding that floods into Israel from the west.
What do the tourists know of this? These gentle, grey-haired folk
have come here, on their Jewish National Fund coaches, to visit the
archaeological dig for Ir David, the City of David,
which, it is claimed, lies below the Wadi Helweh neighbourhood in
Silwan and justifies the digging, the shafts and the tunnelling going
on in the belly of the hill and under the homes of the people who live
here.
Maryam puts aside the exercise books: "This road, from Jerusalem
all the way down the valley, was a main road. People did good business
here, if you had an ice-cream shop, a cafe, a barber, food shops,
souvenirs. Then Elad came, the City of David Organisation; they take
the people into their centre and they never see us."
Silwan, and particularly the beautiful Wadi Helweh – the Valley of
Sweet [Water] – has always welcomed strangers. Traditionally, it has
been the last resting spot for travellers approaching Jerusalem from
the south and a favourite recreation area for Jerusalem's residents.
People would come here for picnics, and in summer the cool caves of Ein
Silwan spring were a much-loved playing space for children. Even now
people ask if I am visiting Silwan for a shammet hawa, a breath of air, though there is hardly air to breathe with the dust and the noise Elad is generating.
Elad is an acronym in Hebrew meaning "To the City of David".
Dedicated to "strengthening Israel's current and historic connection to
Jerusalem", it was founded in 1986 by David Be'eri, who, "inspired by
the longing of the Jewish people to return to Zion", left his elite
army unit to set it up. For a long time Elad refused to reveal the
names of its funders; eventually they submitted the names but
successfully requested they be kept under privilege. Lev Leviev and
Roman Abramovich have been present at Elad events.
Elad set up a two-pronged strategy: to strengthen Israel's
"connection to Jerusalem" they started to dig – under Silwan and into
the land under the al-Aqsa mosque – for the biblical City of David and
to create the Ir David tourist site. They called it "salvage
excavation" to avoid getting official permits. The "salvage" has lasted
for more than 10 years and Wadi Helweh's houses have started to sink
into the hill.
To help "the Jewish people to return to Zion", in 1991 Be'eri
started to acquire Palestinian property (supported by Ariel Sharon,
then minister of construction and housing). His target was principally
two Silwan neighbourhoods: Wadi Helweh and al-Bustan (the Garden).
The Abbasi family's home, with its nine apartments and two
warehouses, was Be'eri's first target. Be'eri's wife, Michal, has
described how he acquired it: "Davida'leh took a tour guide card and
put in his picture, and for a long time he would take bogus tourists on
a tour . . . and slowly he befriended Abbasi . . . Of course, it was
all staged." In 1987, Elad pressured the government to declare the
Abbasi house "absentee property" and in October 1991, Be'eri led a
settler invasion of the house with the intruders singing and dancing
and waving the Israeli flag on the roof at daybreak. The Abbasi family
went to court and the Jerusalem district judge found "no factual or
legal basis" for the takeover; indeed, he found it characterised by "an
extreme lack of good faith". Yet still the property continues to be
caught up in legal proceedings and Elad people continue to live in it –
and to acquire more Palestinian property: to date Elad has gained
control of a quarter of Wadi Helweh.
What is happening in Silwan is not unique; it is part and parcel of what is happening across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Only the specific tactics are different. Before I came to Silwan, I had
been travelling in the West Bank for a week, noting how every
Palestinian community has its appointed settlement, its stalking
"other". There is hardly anywhere you can look up and not see a
settlement lowering at you: bristling with barbed wire and flags and
antennae and cameras and floodlights and – although you can't see them
– arms.
Most scholars agree that, to this day, no evidence of the presence
of Kings David or Solomon has been found at the site. But our group of
elderly American tourists are spellbound by the stories they are
hearing from Elad's guides, stories which are conjecture, projection
and myth .
"I found a Byzantine water pit," Professor Ronny Reich of the
Israel Antiquities Authority says. "They [Elad] said it was Jeremiah's
pit. I told them that was nonsense." But for a long time the guides
would tell the tourists that this was the hole Jeremiah was thrown
into. Close to half a million visitors come here each year and are
treated to the Elad version of history. Professor Binyamin Ze'ev Kedar,
chair of the Israel Antiquities Authority Council, wrote in 2008: "The
Israel Antiquities Authority is aware that Elad, an organisation with a
declared ideological agenda, presents the history of the City of David
in a biased manner."
None of this activity would have been possible without the support
of the Israeli state. An Israeli activist tells me: "If you ask the
Israeli government what is happening in Silwan, they say it's not a
government matter; these are private people buying and moving in
legally. But now [the east Jerusalem settlement of] Nof Zion is being
built. The Zoning laws permit building there only on 37.5% of a piece
of land. But Nof Zion has permission to build on 125% of the land! And
inside Ras el-Amoud, above Silwan, they are building five-storey
apartment blocks for settlers. But they refuse to allow Palestinian
families to build a third floor on their house. A settler organisation
buys a police station from the government. A bus line in Ma'ale Zeitim
is diverted to serve a settlement. In Silwan, the City of David
Organisation is telling the archaeologists where to dig and what to
look for. So one has to ask the question with regard to the City of
David Organisation and the state of Israel: which is the tail and which
is the dog?"
A critically important study by the independent monitoring
organisation, Ir Amim, reaches the same conclusion: "Elad, which is
officially a private organisation, serves as a direct executive arm of
the government of Israel, and enjoys comprehensive and deep backing by
the Israeli administration." More chillingly, Doron Spillman, Elad's
director of development, has said: ". . . We are almost a branch of the
government of Israel, but without getting buried under government
bureaucracy."
The main government project right now is for Jerusalem. And in
Silwan and Jerusalem, on 12 May, Jerusalem Day, the day I visit, you
can see it clearly. This morning, Silwan is blockaded by the police,
and it's on alert. The settler, security, police and army vehicles
racing up and down the roads are quietly monitored by the neighbourhood
watch people. In the cafe at the bottom of the valley, three young men
wipe tables and stock the fridge while keeping an eye on the jumpy
young security guard who patrols in front of them.
"These are private security for the settlers. They don't go
anywhere without them. They cost around 50m shekels a year. And they're
paid for by the government. Out of taxes," says one of the young men.
"And the security are protected by the police, and the army's always round the corner. Just think what it's costing."
On the eve of Jerusalem Day celebrations, prime minister Binyamin
Netanyahu said: "Jerusalem is our city and we never compromised on
that, not after the destruction of the First Holy Temple, nor after the
destruction of the Second . . . There is no other nation that feels
this deeply about a city."
Now, in the pleasant afternoon, I stand in the Solidarity Tent in
al-Bustan with two men whose homes are among the 88 threatened with
demolition to make way for an "archaeological garden in the spirit of
the Second Temple".
"So they distribute bits of paper that say that since King David
used to go for walks here, it's wrong that our houses should be here
and it must just be a park. You notice that for them he is King David
but for us he is el-Nabi Daoud: David the Prophet. So who holds him in
higher esteem? Plus there's no evidence he ever walked here," says one.
"And what if he did? It was empty. You know, there's one thing
we've held against our parents, our grandparents: that they left their
land. They thought they'd be back in a couple of weeks. We don't have
the excuse of ignorance. We are not leaving. And my children will not
wash the dishes in their national park," says his friend.
In Silwan and Jerusalem, the conflation between settler rightwing
ideology, government policy, big money, real estate interests and bad
taste produces its unique blend of kitsch and nightmare. Under cover of
excavation, massive infrastructure work is done in Wadi Helweh in
preparation for the construction of a 115,000 sq m commercial centre,
without a town plan scheme and without permits. The work stops only
when it comes up against the foundations of Palestinian homes.
"The streets cave in," says one of the men. "You see that darker
stretch of tarmac? We had to patch up the road. And the school: the
floor of the classroom collapsed under the girls. Fourteen girls fell
2m into the tunnel they'd dug below the school. And we had to hush it
up because they would have said the school was unsafe and closed it
down." The Israeli military barricade continues to block Silwan's high
street.
In Jerusalem earlier, I had seen thousands of young people who had
been bused in from the settlements stream through the streets. Military
police with guns and flack-jackets guard them. The Old City is closed –
except to them. Women trying to take their children home are turned
away from the gates of the city. Men carrying briefcases sit on raised
pavements. More soldiers watch from the ramparts of the old city walls.
From time to time the police come up to us: "You speak Hebrew?" No.
"You speak English?" Yes. "Back! Move back!" A man standing next to us
says maybe they want us to back off all the way to Spain. "Where are
you from?" he asks me. Egypt. "Cairo?" Cairo. "May God forgive Cairo,"
he says.
Darkness settles. The Palestinian residents of Silwan feed their
kids and hush them. They visit each other, chat, watch the news. In the
cafe at the bottom of the hill the young men are courteous but not
chatty. On their TV screen Alan Curbishley talks about the match that's
about to start: the final of the Europa Cup. The young men keep one eye
on the screen, the other, vigilant, is on their town. On the ledge
above their heads, but hidden from their view, is the stage set up by
Elad, with its "Lion of Zion" banners. And we can hear the amplified
voices celebrating the three Israelis each being awarded the $50,000
"Lion of Zion" Moskowitz award for deeds that "deal with the challenges
facing Israel in the fields of education, research, settlement,
culture, security and more".
From the al-Aqsa mosque further above comes first the call for
evening prayer, and then, for good measure, the Chapter of the
Merciful: "Which then of our Lord's signs do you deny?" The lights in
the Palestinian houses dot the hillside and the trees around the small
cafe where I sit are also strung with fairy lights. In a layby 20m away
an Israeli army personnel carrier stands poised, its blue lights
flashing.
The Palestinians sense that Israel has moved from ihtilal to ihlal;
from occupation to replacement, and that making life unlivable for
Palestine's Palestinians is the prelude to transforming Palestine
itself. This is what the money coming from the west will achieve. To
see the future projected for Jerusalem, you need only visit the
spanking new Jewish Quarter. Go into the Temple Shop and buy teatowels
and doilies and puzzles featuring the Third Temple rising out of
al-Haram al-Sharif in place of the Dome of the Rock. In this
approaching future it will be impossible to look out at the landscape
and think of continuity, or eternity.
In place of the old, mellow stone, of the interdependent
structures, softened and polished by time, there will be the jagged and
the new and the fake. In place of trodden paths along the valleys and
children playing freely, there will be chairlifts and viewing points
and fast food outlets and always, always the iron gates and the
security checks and the ticket kiosks and the merchandising. In place
of the thousands of stories laid down over the ages above, below and
around each other, there will be one story – and it won't, actually, be
the Jewish story, because the Jewish story in Jerusalem is indivisible
from the Roman, the Byzantine, the Arab, the Muslim, the Christian. It
will be a fake. Like the fake inscribed prayers or mezzuzas the
settlers carve into the Arab houses when they take them over. Soon, in
Jerusalem, if the world does not wake up, there will be one voice: the
crash of the cash register.
Michael Winner is
a respected writer, film-maker and food critic. In his mid-70's, he
is often provocative, creating an instant reaction from readers,
tongue-in-cheek and self-opinionated, he makes me laugh. His thoughts
below on exercise machines for seniors in Hyde Park (London), amuse me
and are shared for your enjoyment.
A playground for seniors? They must have a death wish!
Feeling the strain: Michael Winner at the new Pensioners' Playground at Hyde Park in central London
My gymnasium at home is next to the whirlpool bath and the
swimming pool. It’s not very grand, just a treadmill and a rowing
machine. ‘You should put in a cycling machine,’ Arnold Schwarzenegger
said, when I showed him round.
What with Arnold, on one side, advocating strenuous exercise and
my adorable fiance Geraldine, on the other, admonishing me for being
lazy, I fall back on the words of the American lawyer Robert Hutchins,
who said: ‘Whenever-I feel like exercise I lie down until the feeling
passes.’
Nevertheless, I decided to visit the Senior Playground in Hyde Park, which opened this week.
It’s the opposite of a children’s playground: instead of seesaws
and climbing frames it is full of fancy exercise equipment for
pensioners to keep their joints from creaking. Walking towards the
area I saw two old men in a café. I asked where the Senior Playground
was. They had no idea they could have been exercising. I don’t think they wanted to.
‘You’ll like the chocolate cake here, don’t drink the coffee,’ said one. ‘Why aren’t you exercising in the senior citizens’ playground?’ I asked. ‘I’m not old,’ replied the man. ‘Dream on,’ I said, ‘you haven’t got any hair.’ ‘Lost it in 1992 in India when I took the malaria tablets,’ the man explained. ‘I took malaria tablets, I’ve got hair,’ I said as I sailed by.
By now I could see it. Shangri-La shimmering on the gravel. But it
was tiny. The exercise machines looked like small silver-coloured oil
rigs.
‘Too awful if there’s an oil leak all over the busy lizzies,’ I said to my assistant Dinah.
She was there in case I got over excited and fell off one of the mini-monsters.
They’ve got six machines and three benches, which seat four people
each. So you can have twice as many people resting as you can get on
the machines. The place was deserted.
‘It was very busy this morning when the Mayor of Westminster opened it,’ said a gardener.
‘He didn’t stay to do any exercise, did he?’ I asked. not. I inspected the machines. They swayed. They whirred.
‘This could kill more pensioners than eating at Heston Blumenthal’s establishment,’ I remarked.
Only a joke, Heston. I know that food poisoning scare at the Fat
Duck restaurant wasn’t your fault. I noticed all the machines were
labelled for people aged ‘15 plus’. Maybe things have changed a bit
since my youth. In the old days being 15 did not catapult you into the
senior citizen’s bracket.
The shiny equipment in the park all comes from Denmark. Heaven
knows why — are the pensioners very fat there? More in need of
exercise?
The machines are designed to keep things gentle, nothing too
strenuous, and the movements are meant to simulate twisting, walking
and cycling. It didn’t look much like that to me.
I saw a very uncomfortable-looking ‘sit-up’ apparatus and another
contraption where you lie on your back, adopt a crab position and push
up with your stomach. At my age? Very undignified. I gave them both a
wide berth.
As my left leg is considerably debilitated, having had three key
balancing tendons removed, I reckoned these machines could have done me
in like lightning. Maybe the label should have read ‘not for over 70s’.
‘No, no,’ said the gardener, ‘a lady came this morning who lives
in Vermont, she told me it had the second largest population of elderly
people in the United States.
‘She was planning to take the idea home and put up Senior
Playgrounds all over the place. She said “Where Hyde Park leads, the
world goes tomorrow.”’
These machines looked lethal. There wasn’t even a lifeguard
standing by. That’d get a few old dears in. Have a David Hasselhoff
lookalike watching to see no one kicks the bucket. Ready with
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
I cautiously tried the cycling machine. Then I took the steering
wheel on another machine, turning it to and fro. What benefit this had,
I do not know.
To bring a climax to this non-event I stood on a metal plate,
which swayed me from left to right. After a while I felt a bit
seasick, so I got off. At last, I was joined in the playground by two
chubby ladies with shopping bags. They were on their way to an L. S.
Lowry exhibition in Mayfair.
‘You need a bit of this,’ I suggested.
‘Are you making assertions?’ asked Lady One. They tried a couple of the machines, then fled.
With health and safety as a major issue these days I’m surprised
this oasis of strange machinery is promoted by Westminster Council as a
suitable place for senior citizens.
At least the benches will be useful for adventurous oldies to rest
on as they recoup, nurse their twisted ligaments and wait for the
ambulance to arrive.
Of course I believe in exercise (just), having written a diet book
and been forced into activity by my fiance, who is a Pilates expert.
But the best way to keep trim is to eat less, take a gentle stroll and
enjoy the occasional cuppa tea and a bun.
Is this really a good way for Westminster Council to be spending
its money? I can just see the council meeting. ‘never mind the clogged
streets, lack of parking facilities or traffic lights at the end of the
Mall, which are on red for 55 seconds and green for eight seconds.
‘What this borough needs is six strange machines for the old folk. They’ll be flocking in.’
Maybe in days to come the queue of balding, white-haired men and
women, Zimmer frames rampant, will stretch from Hyde Park to Battersea.
I wouldn’t bet on it.
They’re much happier pushing their trolleys slowly round Tesco,
easing themselves into stair lifts or sitting recumbent in front of the
telly.
As car maker Henry Ford observed: ‘exercise is bunk. If you are
healthy you don’t need it. If you are sick you shouldn’t take it.’
What’s that I hear? The honeyed tones of my beautiful fiance,
Geraldine, calling me to my one-hour evening walk in Holland Park.
‘Coming dear.’
If she gets to hear about the Senior Playground it could be the
end of me. She’ll march me up the smog-filled High Street and place
me on a whirly-machine offering advice on how to get the greatest
benefit from it.
I do hope she’d let me take a taxi back home.
If my own council, Kensington and Chelsea, starts on this nonsense
I’ll chain myself to the railings in protest. At least, chained to
railings, I won’t be free to do exercise.
Famine is result of a failing food system
The root cause of hunger and famine is rarely crop failure. It is about who controls and benefits from land and its resources
Felicity Lawrence joins several hundred
people for the annual Famine Walk in Ireland's County Mayo. Film music:
Irish Flute by Emer Mayock performing at the Irish Famine Walk Link to this video
Growing population, dependence on monoculture, a food economy geared
to exports and concentrated in the hands of a few players, neoliberal
economics meeting climate shock ending in catastrophic failure of food
supply – we could be talking about common concerns over food security
in the coming decades. But now tweak the language: big families, single
staple potato crop, land controlled by absentee landlords and their
agents producing meat and butter not for the locals but to ship to
England, laissez-faire economics, then blight, leading to mass
starvation. The conditions that create hunger and famine around the
world have followed a pattern for centuries – and still do today.
Last weekend, I joined several hundred people gathered under a
blazing sky in Ireland's County Mayo for the annual Famine Walk from
Doolough Lake to the tiny town of Louisburgh organised by the Irish
campaign group Afri.
The breathtaking beauty of the mountain scenery belies the tragedy that
it had witnessed back in 1849. The walk retraces the path taken by
hundreds of starving Irish tenant farmers who had struggled into
Louisburgh to be inspected by the English commissioners in the hope of
being granted emergency rations, only to be told to walk 10 miles up to
the grand house by Doolough lake instead.
Already enfeebled by hunger, many died en route and in the months immediately after. During the great hunger
around 1 million Irish people died and a further 1 million were forced
into emigration for want of food. Yet, throughout the period, 1845-52,
Ireland exported large amounts of food to England. Even had it not, the
almost destitute peasantry created by large English landholdings,
rent-collecting middlemen and increasing population, had no money to
buy the food. They planted lumper potatoes because that high-yielding
but disease-prone variety was the only crop capable of producing
sufficient calories for their families on endlessly divided plots of
land.
The root cause of hunger and famine is rarely crop failure
alone. It is about who controls and benefits from the land and its
resources. About 1 billion people, or one in six of the global
population, go hungry today, even though more food is being produced
than ever. And yet, around the same number of people are overweight or
obese and likely to have their lives cut short by diet-related disease.
We have, in other words, a food system that is failing.
It
delivers an excess of food that is unhealthy for the affluent and yet
is incapable of producing enough calories for the poor. And it is a
system in which the value of the food chain has been captured at each
point, from seed to field to factory to shop, by powerful transnational
corporations. (Rich countries don't like to do empire these days so
they have privatised it.)
Three giant corporates dominate global
seed sales and have turned the raw material of food into patents; six
corporates dominate agrochemical production; three companies control the bulk of global grain trade; in
most European countries a handful of processors now dominate the supply
in key food sectors such as meat and milk; and, in many countries, just
three or four retailers are now the gatekeepers for access to
consumers. Meanwhile, all but the most intensive and large-scale
farmers are being driven off the land, many of the poorest forced into
migration.
It is a system of extraordinary sophistication and yet
also of startling fragility, vulnerable to climate shocks and energy
price spikes. But it has not been created by accident. US and European
government policies postwar have fostered it – with agricultural
subsidies that have encouraged surplus of their own commodity crops,
and with trade agreements and loans through international financial
institutions that have forced markets in poorer countries open to take
those crops and the processed junk diets their manufacturers like to
make of them.
The hundreds walking through the Mayo valley last
weekend were not just engaged in an act of remembrance. They were
voting with their feet for change.
China puts the eco back in economy
As biodiversity declines, China recalculates the value of its forests and other natural resources
Covering an area of 600 square kilometers in Hubei
Province, Shennongjia Nature Reserve is famed for its high and elegant
mountain peaks, limpid spring water and rare animals and plants.
Photograph: Xinhua/Corbis
Amid all the doom and gloom during the past week about the global loss of biodiversity, there have been a couple of potentially positive steps forward by the usual villain of the piece: China.
For the first time, the government in Beijing has put a hefty
value on its forest ecosystems and began drafting new regulations that
would oblige rich urban coastal regions to pay compensation fees to
unspoiled inland areas that provide carbon sequestration and other
environmental services.
These steps suggest China is moving in tandem with United Nation recommendations that environmental costs should be factored into the global economy.
A degree of scepticism is warranted. China has some of the
world's most enlightened environmental laws and policies, but all too
often they are ignored by local officials and businessmen who won't let
anything get in the way of making a fast yuan.
But a marriage of the environment and the economy might provide a
new set of financial incentives for maintaining eco-systems that would
otherwise be seen merely as obstacles to development.
Serious money is involved. The State Forestry Administration estimated last week that forest ecosystems contribute 10 trillion yuan, or about a third of China's gross domestic product.
This figure - which takes into account carbon sequestration, water
conservation, biodiversity protection and biomass production – suggests
the administration is seeking not just a new set of values, but a new
role for itself now that the nation's forests are logged out and 2,000 species reportedly threatened with extinction.
More intriguing still are reports that the government is drafting an ecological compensation scheme,
which would expand and strengthen existing measures such as payment for
wildlife reserves, environmental levies imposed on mines, compensation
from upstream river polluters to downstream users and economic
redistribution schemes that aim to close the income gap between
manufacturing hubs on the east coast and rural hinterland.
Depending on how it is written and enforced, this could be
either a boon or a menace to the environment. Set the value of
conservation high and establish an effective mechanism for compensation
transfers and this policy could help to correct the market's failure to
protect the commons and recognise the long-term value of biodiversity.
On the other hand, if the price of nature is set too low and
regulation is too weak - both currently the case – then this policy
could accelerate the unsustainable extraction of resources. The ministry of environmental protection
– arguably the most idealistic but weakest branch of the government -
has a tough task ahead in calculating regional ecological accounts.
But, at the very least, such an eco-accounting ought to stimulate a new way of thinking about environmental values.
Death to the death sentence
By Lin Wei (China Daily) Updated: 2010-04-28 07:49
The overuse of capital punishment to satisfy the public hides the measure's failure to deter non-violent crimes
With death sentences handed down recently
in corruption cases, an old issue is once again a hot topic for debate:
Should capital punishment be abolished in economic, non-violent crimes?
On one side of the debate are the jurists,
who for the most part are leaning toward abolishing capital punishment.
The majority of them believe that depriving an individual of his or her
life for a non-violent offence is near useless in preventing new
economic crimes.
On the other side is the general public,
who are overwhelmingly in support of capital punishment for corrupt
officials and infamous smugglers, according to many recent online
surveys.
According to the surveys, many people are
disgusted with corrupt officials. In the surveys, they insisted that
capital punishment be used as a tool to fight graft.
Deciding on what side to take is tricky. In
China, like in many countries, the public is extremely hostile to
corruption, but unlike many countries the public in China has an
emotional, growing voice, especially in the online realm. And the
sentiment of the public is essential for a just society.
Though it's difficult for scholars and
jurists to win the support of the public, and though there is a massive
gap on what to do about corrupt officials, capital punishment should be
limited and eventually abolished. Capital punishment is a measure that
is simply not strong enough to deter corrupt officials such as Wen
Qiang, the former deputy police chief of Chongqing municipality.
Jurists and the government, though they respect public opinion in
pursuing justice, should not be swayed by irrational public emotions
and use capital punishment without restraint.
Without a doubt, it should be carved in the
heart of every jurist that, to be really effective, the law must align
with the values of the people and reflect their opinions. Without a
majority of the public on their side, it is almost impossible for
jurists to implement the law.
Therefore jurists should no longer dwell in
their academic arguments: It's time to communicate more with the
public. Only through such discourse can the argument against capital
punishment win public support. To win more support, jurists in favour
of limiting and eventually abolishing the death sentence should explain
at least the following three points to the public:
First, corruption cases are only one of
many economic crimes. Jurists are also considering such non-violent
crimes as financial fraud, smuggling and larceny when they advocate
limiting, even abolishing, the death sentence.
Second, facts and results from
investigations have shown that the death sentence does little to
prevent economic crimes. It is the chief reason why many jurists hope
to abolish it.
Last but not least, capital punishment
should first be abolished for economic crimes, but the ultimate goal is
to abolish the sentence completely.
Convincing the public that capital
punishment is of little use will be a tough task for jurists. Many in
the public believe that the death sentence deters crimes and many
people want to see corrupt officials pay with their lives for their
grave offences.
And with the widening gap between the rich
and the poor, this longing for the death sentence is often magnified
with many people equating the death of corrupt officials with social
justice. Their hostility toward injustice in society and their lack of
confidence in the fight against corruption are demonstrated in their
celebration of the executions of corrupt officials.
The problem I want to emphasize is that the
death sentence is an illusory fulfilment of the public's sense of
justice since there is no evidence that proves that corruption cases
have fallen in number because of the threat of capital punishment.
Instead, a vicious circle has formed: The
death sentence to nonviolent corrupt officials has only disappointed
the public for being powerless in preventing more cases of corruption,
but the disappointed public expects more ramifications from the
execution of officials.
An alternative way for jurists and the
central government to win public support is by taking stricter measures
in fighting corruption, instead of simply resorting to capital
punishment. Relying on capital punishment leads to a neglect of other
important measures. Sentencing a corrupt official to death is often
taken as a giant victory in fighting corruption, but repeated death
sentences have also indicated systematic deficiencies in preventing
corruption.
Let's be reminded that allowing one
official to continue his corrupt ways instead of stopping him before it
gets too late is definitely a major failure in our efforts to prevent
corruption. What is needed are social mechanisms to effectively stop
corruption at its initial, small stages
Progress is needed in the supervision of
officials in order to be more effective and efficient in preventing
corruption. This is the root of our solution and at the core of how to
satisfy the public's expectations of justice. Only through such
progress can a bridge be established between the public and scholars.
Only then will justice be done.
The author is professor and director of the
Department of Law in China Youth University for Political Sciences. The
story first appeared in Nanfang Weekly. (China Daily 04/28/2010 page8)
Update: 20.03.2010. It's
not often that I air my political, social or moral beliefs in public,
or that I lose control of my emotions, and overflow into anger; but it
has happened twice this week, within a few days.
First was a report of the lives of children in Gaza, documenting
their increasing isolation following the destruction caused in the 2008
Israeli military operation, in 'Dispatches - Children of Gaza' on UK Channel 4 television.
Second was the report by Tania Branigan for 'The Guardian',
which appears in full below. As an experienced professional, I have
always been dedicated to creating the best opportunities for students
in my care. Our websites, privately funded, have pursued the same aims
and objectives since 2006.
With the support of a Team of professionals from various fields,
who give their time freely, we have presented the Chinese Authorities
in the UK and China, with a number of initiatives, to support students
in rural areas, which would improve their educational and career
opportunities. Our letters and presentations have largely gone
unanswered.
However well-intentioned, there is only so much a peasant
professional can achieve against The Great Wall of Bureaucracy. We
have done the preparation and research. Everything is in place for
action. The offer is still on the table - it's up to others to make
the next move, if that is what they want to do.
Alan Cooper.
Millions of Chinese rural migrants denied education for their childrenLink to this video
Parents face dilemma as hereditary registration system limits access to urban services
Hu Zhongping dreams that one day his young sons
may go to university and escape his life of casual manual labour. The
aspiration seems increasingly unrealistic. Right now, he would settle
for them going to school.
Chinese children are entitled to a state education, but not all of
them get one. And the tens of millions born to migrant workers like Hu
are among the most vulnerable, owing to a registration system that
divides the country's citizens into rural and urban dwellers, and
dictates their rights accordingly.
Despite spending more than half his life in Beijing, Hu does not
enjoy the same access to health, education and social services as his
neighbours. And because the hukou – registration – is
inherited, neither do his children. "I wish my kids could go to a
state school," says Hu. "Parents always wish their children could
receive a better education."
The contradictions of the hukou system, designed for a 1950s planned economy, become more painful with every year of China's
development. About 140 million rural migrants are now working in the
cities, where average incomes are more than three times than those of
the countryside. Migrants have fuelled the country's spectacular
growth but not reaped the benefits. And once they become parents, they
face an unpalatable choice.
Fifty-eight million children are left behind in the countryside by
parents who hope that relatives will raise them lovingly. Another 19
million remain in the cities – where they are, in effect, second-class
citizens. Both groups have poorer academic performance and more
behavioural problems than their peers.
At present, Hu's eight-year-old twins, Xiaonan and Xiaobei, are
studying in the family's cramped one-room apartment, under the guidance
of their mother, who left school at 16.
"You need connections to get your kids in [to state school] if you
are from other places, and making those connections costs too much
money," says Hu. "We can't afford it."
State schools receive no funding for migrant pupils, so often
claim to be full. Others charge illicit "donations" of as much as
6,000 yuan (£590) a term, said Zhang Zhiquan, from the Friends of
Migrant Workers group. That is more than Hu's entire income for the
period.
Many families do not qualify anyway, because they lack the right
documents. Scrap collectors and street vendors have no employment
contracts.
That leaves more than a third of migrant children in Beijing – and
far more in other cities – dependent on private schools, which usually
charge about 600 yuan a term. Until a few weeks ago, the Hu twins were
among these pupils. But their school is one of 30 facing demolition as
part of urban development plans. Up to 10,000 children in Beijing will
be affected.
The education department in Chaoyang district – where most
affected schools are based – has said it will help all pupils,
increasing capacity at nearby primaries and aiding approved private
schools to find new locations.
But hundreds have already been sent back to the countryside by
parents. Others – including Xiaonan and Xiaobei – have yet to find new
places. Activists fear that some may fall out of schooling altogether;
a study cited by the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based group
campaigning for workers' rights, said about 6% of migrant children have
never attended school.
The demolitions have highlighted the precarious, makeshift nature
of much migrant schooling. At worst, children can end up in low
quality, profit-driven institutions that are little more than holding
pens. At best, they rely on individuals such as Ma Ruigang, headmaster
of another school on the demolition list. A migrant himself, he
founded the Blue Sky primary school after friends asked him to help
educate their children.
It's a spartan site with few facilities, but the teachers are
dedicated. Neatly turned out children are chanting from their
textbooks as he pokes his head into their classroom. "What sort of
country will it be if these children are on the streets instead of in
school?" he asks, nodding at his charges. "Since the children have
come with their parents, and their parents are supporting the
development of Beijing, their education is a very big issue. It's not
only an issue for their families, but also for the government and
nation."
Authorities are not indifferent to the problem. Chaoyang
officials donate equipment to the school, and have promised
compensation so it can reopen on a site nearby. But critics say both
local and national efforts scratch the surface. "The Chinese government
has introduced a raft of policies, laws and regulations [to benefit
migrant children]," pointed out a recent report by China Labour Bulletin.
"Rural policies have lacked the human and financial resources
needed to effectively implement them, while migrant children in the
cities still face institutional discrimination based on the [hukou].
"The only long-term solution is wide-ranging and systematic reform
of the social welfare system and abolition of the hukou system."
No one expects that to happen soon, but demands for change are mounting. Thirteen newspapers recently published a rare joint appeal for wholesale reform – though they were quickly slapped down by propaganda authorities, who scrubbed the editorial from websites.
The government has promised an overhaul, but fears drastic changes
could lead to migrants flooding cities, putting an unmanageable strain
on services and housing and potentially leading to unrest.
The hukou also helps authorities to track individuals.
And extending services in cities will require massive amounts of extra
funding. Others warn that migrants could sign away their rights to
farmland too quickly, leaving them with nothing to fall back on if life
in the city proves too tough.
But many say the government's current plan – allowing rural
dwellers to register in smaller urban centres – will do nothing for
tens of millions who crossed the country to work in the biggest cities.
Another generation of their children will grow up with big ambitions, but only slender prospects.
China's top universities will rival Oxbridge, says Yale president
China is spending billions of yuan to propel its best institutions into the top 10, says visiting US academic
Yale president Richard Levin says competition from Asian universities is desirable. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
China's top universities could soon rival Oxford, Cambridge and the Ivy League, the president of Yale University has warned.
Professor Richard Levin, speaking to the Guardian on a trip to the UK, said Chinese institutions would rank in the world's top 10 universities in 25 years' time, squeezing out some of the west's elite campuses.
At the moment, British universities dominate the top 10 rankings, with Cambridge coming second to Harvard, University College London fourth and Oxford and Imperial College London joint fifth. The rest of the top 15 are US universities. China's highest-ranking institution is Tsinghua, at 49.
But the Chinese government now spends billions of yuan – at least 1.5% of its gross domestic product – on higher education with the aim of propelling its best institutions, such as the universities of Tsinghua and Peking, into the top slots, Levin said.
"In 25 years, only a generation's time, these universities could rival the Ivy League," said Levin, the Ivy League's longest-tenured president. He was speaking before giving a lecture on the rise of Asia's universities to the Royal Society in London on Monday evening.
Levin said: "China and India ... seek to expand the capacity of their systems of higher education ... and aspire simultaneously to create a limited number of world-class universities to take their places among the best. This is an audacious agenda, but China, in particular, has the will and resources that make it feasible. It has built the largest higher education sector in the world in merely a decade."
China has more than doubled the number of its higher education institutions in the last decade from 1,022 to 2,263. More than 5 million Chinese students enrol on degree courses now, compared to 1 million in 1997.
Chinese scholars are increasingly leaving their posts in US and UK universities to return home, Levin said. The growth of Chinese higher education comes as English university leaders fear they may not be able to maintain their world-class reputation for higher education, with savage government cuts of £950m over the next three years.
Commenting on the cuts, Levin said it would be "a shame if the British government didn't recognise the status of Oxford and Cambridge as global leaders".
He pointed out that it had taken centuries for Harvard and Yale to match Oxford and Cambridge. And while China had a large pool of talent to draw on, it was currently seen as less attractive to scholars from across the world than the US and the UK, he said. China's universities lack "multidisciplinary breadth" and "the cultivation of critical thinking".
Levin said: "I don't see the rise of Asia's universities as threatening. Competition in education is a positive sum game. Increasing the quality of education around the world translates into better informed and more productive citizens."
He said Oxford and Cambridge's esteemed tutorial system, whereby one or two students have a private class with a lecturer, was "almost unthinkably labour-intensive in an Asian context". Too many academic grants were still given to Chinese scholars because of their political affiliations, Levin hinted.
"To create world-class capacity in research, resources must not only be abundant, they must also be allocated on the basis of scholarly and scientific merit, rather than on the basis of seniority or political influence. To create world-class capacity in education, [China's] curriculum must be broadened and pedagogy transformed." But, he said, these were problems that could be solved with sufficient leadership and political will.
*This article has been corrected so that references to yen have been changed to yuan
Chinese student's diary of despair. Agencies 2009.07.25. Editors note: Students the world over are under enormous pressure in the society to work hard, find good employment, and cope with changes in traditional values and culture. This is one of the motives behind the Aims & Objectives of The Enjoying English Group. Exactly what influence we have to student's educational and career opportunities is difficult to evaluate. This is a tragic story, and should serve as a reminder that problems of personal develpment are the responsibility not just of Governments, but of every organisation and individual within those societies. AC. Related news on 'CHINA TODAY'
Unable to find a job and consumed with guilt about her parents' financial sacrifices, Chinese student Liu Wei took her own life. Her diary charts a voyage from hope to despair.
Chinese student Liu Wei who, consumed with guilt about her parents' financial sacrifices, took her own life
November 2006
"At school, I had a scholarship but now my family has to pay for me to study. I have to pay them back and I have to give money to my brother so he can build a house. My goal is to study hard, get a good job and provide for my family. If I cannot do that, then it is impossible to say that I have a good life."
September 2007
"It is not tragic that I was born in a poor family in the countryside. The tragic thing will be if I cannot get out of the countryside. I am sure I can become a city resident after my studies."
"I used to complain that God was not fair to me to let me be born into a poor farmer's family, but now I will not think that way. My background can make me stronger and more mature."
May 2008
"I cannot believe it is so difficult to find a part-time job; there were 200 students applying for one part-time job as a receptionist. I cannot imagine what will happen when I graduate."
June 2008
"Today I attended a job fair. There were 10 times more students than there were companies. After pushing through the crowds, I finally got the chance to speak to a human resources manager. But all he was looking for were sales and promotion staff, which isn't suitable for me at all. I came home feeling very stressed."
September 2, 2008
"My pride is too strong. I care too much about myself. I chose to go to college instead of becoming a migrant worker, but now my family have huge debts and I can do nothing for them. If I was working, I could send money home and bring gifts for my parents like the other children in the village. I have spent lots of money and not even learned anything useful that will get me a job. Now, I regret my choice to study."
October 9, 2008
"I am a college student but I cannot find a job. How ashamed will I be when I have to go back to the village after I graduate? I feel so tired, I want to keep sleeping and never wake up. What shall I do? Who can save me? Apart from my parents, I will not miss anything in this world."
October 18, 2008 (final diary entry)
"Why so difficult?
IMPORTANT: Report from China Daily - 2009.07.25. The Importance of Resumes & Job Hunting. ~ Read this carefully ... see our advice below.
A recent survey showed Chinese college graduates spent more money on job hunting, but higher costs have notlead to more offers, according to a human resource manager in a phone interview with Xinhua Friday.
The Central China Human Resource Market (CCHRM), a government-funded organization in central Hubei Province which held job fairs, surveyed 1,000 graduates from January to June. "We found the average cost of seeking jobs stood at about 2,000 yuan ($290) a person," said Xue Li, a CCHRM senior human resource manager in charge of the survey.
The average monthly income per capita of Wuhan, the provincial capital, was 1,617 yuan.
A survey by Peking University of 16,388 graduates from 15 provinces, including Hubei, showed the cost of seeking jobs was 1,132 yuan per person in 2007. The money was spent on resumes, interview clothing, communication and transportation. A large part went to producing pretty resumes, Xue said.
Ma Jing graduated from Beijing University of Technology four years ago and recently changed his job. "I met some new graduates this year. They invest heavily on resumes and clothes. A resume will cost about 30 yuan (4.39 dollars) and a person might need a dozen resumes," he said. "Fewer students did this when I was graduated."
However, nicer resumes and clothes did not necessarily lead to more offers. "To tell the truth, embellished resumes do little to land a job. It is just a move to make the graduates feel better about themselves," Xue said.
According to a report issued by the China Association for Employment Promotion in March, 76 percent of the resumes the researchers collected from 19,893 respondents failed the evaluation of human resource experts, but 78 percent of these respondents thought they were good.
Most of the poorly-written resumes looked the same. They did not highlight the job seekers' unique skills, experience or personality, the report said.
"Many new job seekers did not know what human resource managers look for. They might bury useful information in empty words," said Xue.
She said, employers paid the most attention to work or intern experience, but many graduates put lengthy description of academic courses.
The second major problem is that some graduates did not have clear career planning, she said.
"If they do not know what they want from a job, they will not be able to prepare themselves for the job nor impress human resource officials."
This year the country saw a record 6.11 million college graduates.
Comment:
Shanghey 2009-07-26 10:52
Many students will find jobs through guanxi, whereas the poorer ones have no such connections and will not find jobs, even though they are better qualified. Every country has this problem. Poor students from the countryside should be given cheap loans to establish businesses in economic zones, as they always make better businessmen and women, mainly because they are used to hard work, whereas those with guanxi tend to be the little emperors of today who despise hard work.
How to relieve students of the burden of education
from Tang Yingzi (China Daily(. 2009.05.25.
Zhang Min cannot relax even on weekends, for she has to rush her nine-year-old daughter to special classes.
"Almost all the kids in my daughter's class are learning Olympic math, English, or musical instruments or other skills after school," Zhang said in Beijing yesterday.
Parents like Zhang believe the more special knowledge or skills their children acquire the greater will be their chances of getting admitted to a top secondary school.
Though this is more of a social problem, such parents will get some relief once schools start following the Ministry of Education's new directive.
According to a senior official, the ministry's latest document urges primary and secondary schools across the country to ease the academic burden on students.
Education departments at all levels have been asked to strengthen supervision, too.
And hopefully, parents will no longer lament like Zhang: "We've not enjoyed a weekend in years we're under tremendous pressure ... our energy is sapped."
Steps suggested by the ministry to make life easier for students include ensuring they get enough time to sleep and rest, avoiding holding extra classes after school or during holidays, having a one-hour period for physical training every day and reducing the number of exams.
The blind emphasis on academic achievement has been plaguing the education system for years, the ministry said.
The long hours of classes held in schools in many areas leave little time for students to exercise or pursue extra-curricular activities that they like.
Students are judged only by their academic record to qualify for the make-or-break college entrance exam.
Poor management in schools, lack of qualified teachers, unequal allocation of resources and an inadequate evaluation system add to the stress of the students, the ministry said.
"These go against our principle of providing basic education," said Yu Weiyue, director of the ministry's basic education department school management.
The principle of striving to develop students' all-round abilities in areas such as morals, intelligence, physical fitness, work and aesthetics "has not changed since the founding of New China, but people seem to ignore that nowadays", Yu said.
The problem continues despite the government's efforts to ease the burden on students, said Guo Zhenyou, deputy director of Chinese Society of Education.
The load on students is not just a problem of education, but a social ill, he said. The job market and social expectations from students, combined with the education system, pose a big challenge for society.
Employers focus on the academic record of candidates, which in turn reinforces the belief that getting a seat in a good university is a ticket to a promising job.
For Chinese parents, education is still the top priority because they believe it is the only way in which their offspring can prove their abilities.
"Students' burdens will ease only when society changes its attitude toward education as a whole," Guo said.
"But we have gained some useful experience (which can) improve the quality of education so more reforms can be expected."
Want the truth about teens? Just ask one... From Zara Z, Slough. UK. 2009.05.04.
I'm 16, my GCSE's (exams) are just looming, I'm not looking forward to leaving my friends and I might not get into my chosen college or sixth form.
I walk to and from school through a park, keeping a lookout for anyone aged six to 96 earby and try to estimate how long it will take me to run for my life if they demand my phone.
I'm fed up with rebelling against those who complain that GCSE's aren't hard enough, that students are exposed too soon to sex and drugs, that 'yob' behaviour is growing and that too many kids are screaming about thire rights.
Am I just another voice, losts in the mist? No, I am a real 16 year old living in a real world. What 'rights' do I want? Just my right to dream. In the real world will my dreams come true?
Why settle for a weekend job in *****, when you could be living your dream as a journalist, telling the truth about what it's like to be a 16 year-old in 2009. I have first-hand knowledge of the subject and the passion with which to write.
Who wants to read about my life, sitting exams and looking for a job? Why hear it from a 46 year old with no idea of how the politics of schools and friendships work when you can hear it from a me, what it's like in a classroom?
I know the truth behind the yobs and the reality of a classroom where every other day is not plagued with crime. I'm chasing the dream.
IMPROVING OPPORTUNITIES for STUDENTS in RURAL AREAS.
Updated: 2009.01.08.
Editor's note: One of the reasons I came to China in 2000 was to make some contribution to the career and educational opportunities of students, however small. It is extremely difficult to make a positive impact, for exactly the reasons outlined in the article reproduced below from 'China Daily'.
It is for those reasons, I decided to concentrate my efforts on two projects: The first is the publication of a series of 'guides' -'Enjoying English'- for senior and university students, dealing with problems they face learning English as a second language. Second, is support for students through the establishment of The Student Helpline and this website. Incidentally, the profits from the publications will be re-invested for the management of this website. I have been fortunate to meet many people who think the same way and have the same aspirations for students in China.
The first project has been successful to a degree, although for budgeting reasons, we are still waiting for a publisher to commit to taking on the work. 'Enjoying English - Problems Solved' is complete and extracted on the page of the same name. It has been tried and tested with students, and their reaction has been very favourale. Part 2, 'Enjoying English - Playing With Words' is awaiting final completion and translation into Chinese.
The second of the objectives has been hugely successful, with the support of a large number of students, and other professional people. Information on this website is tailored to their suggestions and requirements. Our intentions have expanded to two further projects; the wider development of this website, originally conceived several years ago, and which has taken until 2008 to become firmly established. And the establishment of The Red Dragon International Partnership.
Red Dragon is still being developed as a long-erm project and I hope, will be launched effectively during 2009. It is designed to improve the educational and career opportunities of young people from rural areas, by improving the teaching of English in primary schools. It is an enormous project, which will take several years to establish, but I think it is attainable with support from the Chinese Government, due to the fact that students in China are keen to exploit opportunities they are offered; have ambition and are dedicated to the development of their own future prospects and their country.
As a teacher with 40 years experience, my job saisfaction has always been derived from seeing students attain their goals and ambitions, through what often appears to be a jungle of obstacles.
The first article is a summary of thoughts from my teaching experiences in China, of ways to help improve the educational opportunities, and ultimately, long-term goals of the young people who will be China's future. The second is an article from 'China Daily'.
Alan Cooper.
January, 2009.
revised from December, 2006.
I have thought many times about the problems students from rural areas and poorer urban districts have with educational opportunities. It is a problem recognised by Central Government and one which they are trying to address. Clearly, it is an enormous task, and I believe they have an unenviable road ahead.
The problem is compounded by lack of money from Central Government and within Provincial Governments. That is not so much a criticism, but it is a fact, partially brought about by China's astonishing rate of growth - around 9% year on year since I arrived in China in 2000. There is a need and commitment to make improvements in other areas such as Health, Social Security, as well as coping with the problems of migrant workers and an aging population. These are problems all developing nations have to face.
In the UK our social, agricultural and industrial revolutions or developments have taken place slowly since about 1750. Education for all was not available until the 1948 Education Act, yet it is still beset with problems.
In the mid 1990's, the UK Government replaced grants for college and university students with a system of low cost loans. It had a major impact in two areas:
- thousands of students have graduated, carrying with them, hugh debts. That is a situation which I and many others, found unacceptable.
- many gifted and talented students chose not to take up further education due to the expense, resullting in the fact that those qualities were lost to society and the nation. That is an even more unacceptable waste of human resourses.
The UK Government in it's 'yo-yo' administation, has since reversed their decision, and talented young people from financially restricted backgrounds are now able to fulfil their potential in terms of further study and career goals with the help of grants.
Central Government in China has initiated two schemes to tackle educational opportunities for young people in less developed areas. The first was a two year project of voluntary work by 2,000 post graduate students in the south west -Sichuan Province amongst others. The second was initiated in 2006 in villages around Beijing. The two schemes are very similar, in that post graduate students are assigned to a village for 2 years working alongside village leaders. They receive a subsistence allowance, accommodation and food and the promise of a job in Government on the prosperous east coast, upon completion of the project. The question arises , as to whether the provision is adequate, and if it will work.
Referring to the first part, and bearing in mind the enormity of the problem China faces, clearly the provision is woefully inadequate. However, bearing in mind the economics of the situation, one can only conclude that anything is better than nothing.
As for the question, 'Will it work?' I imagine that, as the Government decided to implement the Beijing project after the south-western venture had concluded, then there must have been some degree of success. I imagine too, it depends on how successfully individual students handled their particular situation, as they would have inevitably been working at odds with traditional practices. If it works, it is likely the Government will extend the programme to other regions.*1
The British Council has beeen involved in similar schemes in the south west based on a training centre in Wuhan during the summers of 2003 - 5. The task was to train Chinese Teachers of English to go and train other CTE's in the rural areas.
Significantly important is the role played by so called 'Foreign Experts'. My views on this are very strong. The basis of the idea is for foreigners, native English speakers from abroad, to come to China to help provide and improve opportunities for Chinese students. In the vast majority of cases, it doesn't work because most students are post-graduate students, often with qualifications un-related to teaching. Most are not qualified teachers and almost all have no teaching experience whatsoever. Some can barely speak the language themselves. I know of only 2 teachers in a situation similar to mine, having been in China for a lengthy period, and only 3 others who have worked here regularly over the past 5 years.
'Foreign Experts' are usually perceived by schools and colleges as 'mascots', to enhance the position of establishments with a sound financial background. Corrupt or illegal practices are rife, especially where unlicensed schools and college attempt to engage the services of a foreigner. They show no regard for the legal position of the foreign teacher or employee. Breaking the law is serious enough in itself. For a foreigner, it can have serious consequenses regarding their visa status.
The single positive effect of a foreigner's presence is that it stimulates and motivates students. My experiences from friends and contacts in rural areas and smaller provincial towns is that students motivation to learn English is their biggest problem. The presence of a foreign teacher in a school has an impact much greater than the few days they may be present. Students and teachers are motivated, and the experience is remembered for many after the 'foreign friend' has left.
For that reason, I think it is wise to keep the 'Foreign Experts' thing going, but as it's benefits fall far below the considerable financial costs, I think schools and colleges should accept full responsibility for the engagement of 'Foreign Experts'. If they cannot afford, or are unwilling to pay, then so be it. There are hundreds of worthy schools throughout the country who aren't licensed, and couldn't afford to pay for 'an Expert' if they were.
My view is that Provincial Education Departments need to be able to recruit experienced Foreign Experts for an extended period of at least 2 or 3 years, rather than the 6 - 10 month contracts that currently exist. Perhaps even the engagement of couples, as many teachers are often married to teachers. This measure would provide stability and continuity, and assist strategic planning.
It is necessary to attract good teachers, with experience. There are few people in my position, with no family, no house to look after or pay for, and no debts on houses, credit cards or consumer goods, such as cars. However, if a foreigner can accept a position for 2 or 3 years, arrangements can be made to resolve financial issues. Agents can be employed to let and manage the family home. Banks can handle or re-schedule credit arrangements.
Foreign Experts under this system should be directly under the employment and management of the Provincial Education Department. They should be used at the department's discression, planning constructively for the future, assisting with work which is most urgent in areas, regions, and towns where it is most needed, holding lectures, seminars and short courses.
I believe that, if a Province or number of Provincial Educational Departments were in a position to set up or introduce a system such as I have suggested, it would work. It would improve educational opportunities for young people in areas which are financially limited and would improve economic and social stability at the same time, because there would be less migration of skilled workers to the cities, to be closer to shools which are perceived to be 'better'.
One thing is certain; the eyes of Central Government and every other province in the country, would be on the Provinces which took up the experimental banner, and would follow suit, if it was successful. That would provide 'The Great Leap Forward' educationally in the shortest time and at minimal expense. In the unlikely event that it failed, there would be a few red faces, but at least they could turn round and say, 'Well! We tried!'
Alan Cooper.
Marc, 2007.
Harmful ‘key school’ system must end.
from 'China Daily' - 2006.02.27.
At long last, we are close to a legislative response to one of the most glaring examples of State-sponsored inequality. If the on-going session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress endorses a revised Law on Compulsory Education, which is more likely than not, the decades-old designation of 'key schools' and 'key classes' will become a legal taboo.
The revised law includes clauses prohibiting educational authorities from distinguishing schools or classes into 'key' and 'non-key' ones.
The practice dates back to the 1950's, when the young People’s Republic was in desperate need of professional talents to rebuild the nation. 'Key schools' were set up to identify and prepare the most promising candidates for higher levels of education.
It was not bad as an efficient expedient to quench the nation’s thirst for talent. But such efficiency comes at the price of equality, an essential value our basic education should have cultivated and held dear.
There has been a lot of talk about the so-called 'Matthew Effect' in our compulsory education - namely, the rich get richer and the poor poorer.
In cities and countryside alike, educational authorities designate some schools, and in schools, some classes, as 'key' units, to either boost performance at exams, showcase government achievements in promoting education, or both.
The natural course of evolution is that schools stronger in financial conditions, teaching staff, and academic reputations are designated 'key' and become stronger with the backing of more official assistance. The 'non-key' ones, which are badly in need of a helping hand from the government, get less attention and less support, and become less competitive and less attractive.
Such a mechanism has never lacked apologists. Educational authorities are fond of convenient image polishers. Parents who count on the next generation to achieve great things and have the money, covet a place at a 'key' school or class for their children. For schools, a 'key school' sticker means a lot more - in addition to government funds, they can levy exorbitant fees on parents who are anxious to enroll their children. There are plenty of them willing to do whatever it takes to send their children to a school or class with a 'key' label.
The Ministry of Education issued a ban on 'key schools' in mid-1990s in order to address irrational distribution of public resources in compulsory education, but it was largely ignored, because it was toothless.
The designation of “key schools” and “key classes” is a major cause of a dangerously vicious cycle currently at work in our public school system. It features outright discrimination.
The goal of compulsory education is to provide equal opportunities for all citizens of school age to receive the basic education needed for fine citizenship. The government’s role in compulsory education is not to cultivate and identify the cream of the crop. Instead, it is obliged to guarantee all school-age children equal access to basic education.
The 'key school' mechanism, however, subjects our children to differentiated treatment at a very early age. It mercilessly throws the majority of our youngsters into disadvantage based on questionable judgments. Besides brewing a broad sense of deprivation, the arrangement has proved itself a hot-bed for corruption.
It is a shameful mistake that such a morally defective formula has not only been sustained, but is taken for granted.
The amendments to the Law on Compulsory Education bring hope because it may correct a historic wrong. Its promise to tilt government financing in favor of rural schools and underprivileged urban schools is a prescription of fairness in our compulsory education system.nuary, 2006.
Comments on this feature are welcome. especially from post graduate students involved in the experimental ventures in the south west and in villages around Beijing in the north. Address your comments to the Helpline address: enjoyingenglishinchina@yahoo.co.uk and write 'OPPORTUNITIES" in the subject bar.
THE COUNTRYSIDE
Spending a day or holiday in the countryside, mountains or by the sea is common in Britain . Although the islands are small, the landscape is very varied because of the different rock types.
Sandy beaches can be found in rocky coves. Green fields andfarmland cover much of the land and end abruptly on thecliff tops, that plunge into the sea below. Caves can be explored, reached by footpaths which link towns and fishing harbours along the coast.
Inland, villages nestle in the valleys where streams and rivers flow. In the north and west, hills give way to mountains. The Lake District, in the north-west of England , is particularly beautiful. Many areas are protected as areas of outstanding natural beauty. Some are National Parks.
Unlike China , there are no large mountain ranges, wide grassy plains or advancing deserts. The beauty is a different is a different kind.
THE GYPSY & NEW AGE TRAVELLER
Besides country people and farmers there are two other groups of people who lead a nomadicor wandering life in Britain . They live mainly in the south of England .
Gypsies are traditionally 'Romany people 'who came from Eastern Europe hundreds of years ago. They are fine and noble people, with their own culture. Skilled craftsmen, with narrow, pointed features, dark skin and black hair. When I was young, they traveled the country in brightly painted horse drawn wagons, visiting country fairs. They sold hand-made crafts and sold horses. Today, a few still remain but most now live in luxury caravans, offering old entertainments like funfairs and circus shows.
New Age travelers are of a younger generation; many with young families. They have given up the comforts of living in a normal house and working in the city. They have escaped to the roads and country lanes and travel in old trucks. They deal in scrap metal stopping for a few days wherever they can.
(London) Monday 25th August, 2008.
Beijing 2008
Two orphans from Sichuan Province who lost their family in the May 2008 earthquake, watch the Athletics competition in The Bird's Nest.
For more than a week, the view from the The Independent's apartment on the 14th floor at the North Star Media Village here at the Olympic Games was what you would expect in the residential suburb of a modern city – tower blocks, roads, cars and people for as far as the eye could see. On a good day you might peer through the smog for up to a mile, but on a bad one you would not even make out the roof of a high-rise building 200 yards away.
In the middle of the Games, however, we opened our curtains to a quite different sight. The skies, which had been a murky white every day, were a clear blue and there in the distance, more than 40 miles away, were the mountains that ring the western flank of Beijing. It was not long before the smog returned, but at least you knew that another world did indeed exist beyond the choking confines of this tumultuous city.
At times, the Games themselves have been similarly deceptive. For the most part – even if you have been here watching or reporting on the action rather than viewing it at home on television – we have witnessed only the beauty of modern sport, with the world's greatest athletes performing wonderful feats to a backdrop of spectacular settings. Television cameras and stills photographers have homed in on the faces of those who have strained every sinew and reacted with joy or despair to their performance, in the knowledge that four years' work has been condensed into one heart-stoppingly brief flurry of activity.
Occasionally, however, you have a glimpse into another world: a view down a ramshackle side-street alongside the gleaming splendour of the new and (for the past fortnight at least) unclogged expressways that link the Olympic venues; the tears of the Chinese shooter Du Li, who crumbled under the weight of a nation expecting her to win the first medal of the Games; the armed guards and soldiers who lurk behind every fence surrounding the secure bubble that encloses each Olympic site; the photographs of the documents that seemed to prove that the host nation had lied about the age of its gold medal-winning female gymnast He Kexin.
Revelations in the days after the jaw-dropping opening ceremony had told you that everything might not be quite what it seemed. The nine-year-old who sang "Ode to the Motherland" had been miming because the real singer was not considered pretty enough, while the children supposedly representing China's 56 ethnic minorities were reported to be actors. The fireworks that lit up the skies over Beijing were real enough, but the television pictures that went around the world included pre-recorded footage from a dress rehearsal.
China wanted to host the Olympics in order to gain acceptance on the world stage, to prove that it is a modern country at ease with the monumental challenge of staging the planet's greatest sporting extravaganza. The images that have gone around the globe have mostly done that – we will forgive them a fake firework or two – though it remains to be seen whether the Games have done anything to ease the world's concerns at wider issues here, like human rights and pollution.
In the end, the images that will endure will be those of great sporting moments. For most of the world, that means the astonishing feats of superstars like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. For Britain, it will be the memories of the efforts of new heroes and heroines, like Rebecca Adlington and Victoria Pendleton; of established Olympians, like Ben Ainslie and Bradley Wiggins; or of self-effacing team players, like rower Steve Williams and cyclist Paul Manning.
Their feats, their dedication and their openness – for journalists, it has been a joy to speak to athletes who actually want to tell their stories to the world – have clearly captured the imagination of a nation that has grown tired of pampered and under-achieving footballers. London and 2012 cannot come soon enough
A Walk in the Country.
I had forgotten just how beautiful southern England is in the spring and early summer, as I have only been here during the winter for the past 8 years. During the winter, it has a beauty of it's own. Naked trees outlined in brown against sullen, grey skies. Rich, fertile soil, awaiting the first green shoots of spring.
My mother's village; not her's you understand, in case you still have the impression that everyone in the west is vastly wealthy, - it is the village in which she has lived for the past 60 years, is situated 80km south east of London, about 15km north of my hometown, Hastings. The seaside town is famed as the last place where England was successfully invaded.
In 1066 - probably the most famous date in English history, William of Normandy (northern France), sailed across the English Channel and defeated the reigning Saxon king at Battle, about 8km south of my village, Robertsbridge. However, back to the point, whilst staying with my mother, I take the opportunity to walk by the river, through woods where we used to build 'camps' as a boy, and along country paths.
Many of the houses in the village date from the 12th to 16th centuries. Very distinctive, they are brick built to the second floor, and half timbered with daub and plaster on the upper storey, topped with steep roofs of brick-red tiles. Daub and plaster is a mud covering on strips from willow trees, which in turn, is covered with a rough plaster traditionally painted white or pale yellow.
Traditionally in Britain, villages have grown up around the parish church and two or three farms. Not so, Robertsbridge. Churches were not only religious centres and the focal point of the community, they were also the bottom level of administration for local government. Robertsbridge is in the Parish of Salehurst - meaning salt wood, which is a kilo-meter to the north east of the village, across the flood plain of the River Rother, which winds it's way through green farmland to the sea at Rye, 25km to the east.
I began my walk northwards, across the valley, past the old mill which is now being re-developed into low-cost housing, shops and offices. There has been a a working water powered mill on the site, producing wheat flour for bread, for more than 800 years. It is still possible to see the water-wheel used to grind the gigantic granite stones. Well, at least it would be visible, if the developers hadn't wrapped the site in layers of barbed wire.
Why the council has made provision for ships is beyond belief. Of the 35 shops and small stores which occupied the High Street when I was a boy, only 6 have survived the passage of time. Even the Post Office, the oldest in the country in constant use since the postal service began in the 1830's, has been relocated during the past 12 months.
Little has changed, however. Children were playing in the park, which used to be called 'The Playing Fields'. Locals played cricket; a complex traditional game which, to me, is as interesting as watching grass grow. A sign for the car park and a traffic cone had been unceremoniously dumped in the stream where I used to 'tickle' minnows and stickle-backs. Both are tiny river fish, minnows being a main source of food for river trout. The other species have sharp spines down their backs.
I continued another 500km or so to the old primary school, which happily, after several years of neglect, has been renovated and converted into living accommodation. The stream which ran across the playground has dried up. One of my classmates, Maureen was pushed into the water and the headmaster caned the wrong boy in front of the whole school. A terrifying experience for all of us; nervously sweating.
I turned eastwards into Church Lane, a narrow roadway which runs from the main London to Hastings road, to the church. That's why it's called Church Lane! I deliberately chose that explanation as an example of 'idiot English' which we have to endure on CCTV 9.
Past the aptly named Rother View, a former council estate which was the envy of many villagers because the houses had bathrooms and indoor toilets. During the 1950's, most villagers used to bathe in a large tub in front of the fire once a week.
Half way along the lane is Rummery's old place, now modernised with extensions which are 3 times the size of the original cottage. What a miserable man he was! He never quite figured out that whilst diversionary activities were taking place in the lane, a small gang of 10 year olds were relieving him of a few apples from the orchard at the rear of the property.
Further along, the pig-stys had long gone, but an ancient oak tree, which may be 100 or 200 years old, had recovered and divided into two substantial trees, having been struck by lightning 45 years ago. I'm surprised that conservationists or the council haven't cut it down to determine exactly how old it is.
A few minutes later, I climbed the steps to St Mary the Virgin; the impressive and historically important parish church. King Richard the 1st gave a font to the church. A font is where people are Christened as being members of the Anglican Church of England. The gift was in response to Abbot Robert de Martin's payment of a ransom. The King of Bavaria (southern Germany), kidnapped Richard on his return from the Crusades - Holy Wars during the Holy Wars in Palestine, during the early 1200's.
On the floor in the tower, which houses a magnificent set of 8 bells, lie iron-cast tombstones of a family who once owned most of the iron industry in the area.
Rays of light shone through the beautiful stained glass windows, of which a set of 4 are very rare, showing birds which are local to the area.
In the north-east corner of the church are the decaying remains of the Wigsell Chapel; a reminder of the power of one of the wealthiest landowners in the area. It has been invaded by the intrusion of of the installation of a magnificent pipe organ, and is cluttered with disused candle-sticks and empty gas bottles. Not important, I suppose. The family died out years ago; mostly killed in wars in our attempts to rule most of the rest of the world during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The graveyard, whose up-keep is the responsibility of the Parish Council, was disappointing to say the least; overgrown with weeds, brambles and nettles. My father's memorial stone, and others were not visible. I was not able to reach the resting place of a friend who died 35 years ago in a car accident, although it was only 50 metres away. A wire fence had been strung across the surrounding gravestones, much to my annoyance and disappointment.
On the south side of the church, things were a little tidier, but contained the graves of several of my old classmates from primary school. In the warmth of a beautiful summer afternoon. I suddenly felt strangely alone. Isolated, vulnerable... and a little sad.
Walking downhill onwards the river where I used to fish, I met an elderly man from the east-end of London walking the country paths along the dis-used Kent and Sussex railway. He recalled days when he came from London to the village during hop picking time in early September. He was also crazy about old railways. We chatted for an hour in the shade of overhanging trees. I asked where he was from. He replied, Oh! The centre of the world.'
'Ah... Beijing!' I enquired. 'No Devises,' he laughed. It is a market town in the west country, close to Bristol, where I lived and worked for 30 years before coming to China. A hand full of people passed by walking their dogs, to pass the time of day, commenting on nothing in particular, except of course, the weather. Some things don't change.
Continuing across the river into Abbey Lane and Fair Lane, I headed towards the village. The public footpath beside the river was obstructed by a fence erected by a farmer. He had also ploughed one of the two protected riverside meadows, the habitat of rare species, buttercups, daises and wild orchids. Another complaint to the Parish Council, I think.
Public footpaths in Britain are legally, 'Rights of Way'. Their origins go back centuries, linking farms and local villages with each other. Ancient laws state that they should be walked at once a year by a responsible person of the parish. My father did the job for years. Such paths can only be closed or re-routed by Act of Parliament.
Meadow lands are also protected. They are free of artificial fertilisers and weed-killers. Although their intended use is for grazing, they are not suitable for grazing modern high-bred livestock, which can suffer serious indigestion, and even death. As a result, the existence of meadow land has almost disappeared.
The apple and pear orchards which used to adorn the valley have been replaced with crops of wheat and barley. Hop fields, which used to produce a kind of flower used to flovour beer in the brewing industry, have similarly, almost disappeared. It was a highly specialised type of farming. I guess it's days are severely numbered.
Fair Lane links the village High Street with Abbey Lane. A considerable favour was granted by King Henry in 1253 to Robertsbridge, making it formerly a town, with the privilidge of holding a weekly market and an annual fair for 3 days in September. The market was continued until the late 1950's when it closed, thus reverting the status of Robertsbridge to that of a village.
At the junction of Fair Lane with the High Street, stand an old public house, dating back more than 700 years. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of The Red Abbot. Whether he is dressed in red, or simply had too much to drink, I am not sure. However, there was a rumour that an ancient tunnel linked the pub with the Abbey, 2 kilometres away. The entrance to a tunnel was uncouvered some years ago.
The village has changed over the years. Gone are the small village shops and people I knew. In are wealthy, professional people who work in London and sleep in the village. They have been able afford to maintain the fabric of the old buildings which, undoubtedly have fallen into dis-repair. The lesson to be learned, I think, is that without change, there is no progress or development. A thought that certainly applies to China as well.
Alan Cooper.
Robertsbridge. England.
May, 2008.
Take My Advice.
I wonder how many times we've heard that from our parents, teachers and friends. The information and advice we present here is not merely a random collection of thoughts, they are drawn from a wide range of experiences of different people, sometimes over a long period of time.
The question arises as to whether you have to accept or act that advice, and in short, the answer is 'No, you don't!' I say this for several reasons; in today's global world, including an unprecedented amount of information available on the Internet, the choices and opportunities available are endless. You may also have an unfulfilled dream which needs to be satisfied.
An example is that one of our Team had set his mind on pursuing his chosen career upon graduation, in Beijing, although his parents were against the idea. As it turned out, the job didn't come up to expectations, he felt under financial pressure due to the expense of living in a metropolis ( a large city in a country or region), and he was lonely, being away from family and friends.
In 2003, the SARS outbreak came to his rescue, as it provided an opportunity to move back to the relative safety of his home environment and, of course, the area with which he was familiar, and with people he knew. Even if that had not been the case, it would have been better if he had said to his parents, 'I'm coming home.'
It doesn't matter what parents say in the heat of the moment, as a result of disappointment, frustration or concern, most would never turn their back on you, because usually, in their eyes, you are the most important person in their lives. Whether you are 5 years old, 20, 40 or 60, to your parents you are always 'their baby'.
As I get older, and approach the slippery slope towards senility, I sometimes think, 'I wish I was young again.', but I would like to know everything that I know now. That would spoil it, I suppose, as there would be nothing left to discover, experience or enjoy.
A friend once told me that getting older meant that hills appeared steeper and the shops were further away. That is sometimes the case. At other times, I feel invigorated and full of passion. So, enjoy your experiences; explore every opportunity that presents itself. Remember that when an opportunity passes by, it is gone forever. When it's gone, it's gone. Share the passion and, of course, take my advice!
Excavations in Silwan in the middle of Palestinian housing. Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton
Feeling the strain: Michael Winner at the new Pensioners' Playground at Hyde Park in central London
Yale president Richard Levin says competition from Asian universities is desirable. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
(London) Monday 25th August, 2008. 
Beijing 2008
