Latest News Clips 2017.06.26

                  

1.      Saudi King Rewrites Succession, Replacing Heir With Son, 31

The New York Times      JUNE 21, 2017

Mohammed bin Salman last year in France. CreditStephanie De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Even two steps away from the Saudi throne, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 31-year-old son of the king, had already pushed the titanic state oil company toward a public offering, loosened some social restrictions that rankled young people and waded into a costly war in Yemen with no plans for how to end it.

Now, Prince Mohammed stands to inherit a kingdom he has already shaken, after King Salman of Saudi Arabia named him crown prince on Wednesday. In doing so, the king swept aside his son’s older rival, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 57, upending decades of royal custom and profoundly reordering the kingdom’s inner power structure.

The move further empowers a young and ambitious leader while Saudi Arabia, a close American ally, is grappling with huge challenges, including low oil prices and intensifying hostilities both with Iran and in its own circle of Sunni Arab states.

In favoring his son over Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is respected for his security acumen, the king, who is 81, also marginalized a large cadre of older princes, many with foreign educations and decades of government experience that the younger prince lacks. If Prince Mohammed bin Salman does succeed his father, he could give Saudi Arabia what it has not seen in more than a half-century: a young king with the potential to rule for decades.

Prince Mohammed’s swift rise and growing influence had already rankled other princes who accused him of undermining Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. But such complaints are likely to remain private in a ruling family that prizes stability above all else.

“A lot of people are happy that a younger generation is coming to power, but those who are upset are the older generation,” who are not used to such dramatic change, said Joseph A. Kechichian, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, who has extensive contacts inside the family. “Even if people are uncomfortable, at the end of the day this is a monarchical decision, and people will either have to accept the new arrangement or they will essentially have to keep their mouths shut.”

The young prince, known as M.B.S., emerged from obscurity after his father ascended to the throne in January 2015. He has since accumulated vast powers, serving as defense minister, overseeing the state oil monopoly, working to overhaul the Saudi economy and building ties with foreign leaders, particularly President Trump.

His supporters praise him as working hard to fulfill a hopeful vision for the kingdom’s future, especially for its large population of young people. His critics call him power hungry and fear that his inexperience has embroiled Saudi Arabia in costly problems with no clear exits, like the war in neighboring Yemen.

2.      Qatar given 10 days to meet 13 sweeping demands by Saudi Arabia

Gulf dispute deepens as allies issue ultimatum for ending blockade that includes closing al-Jazeera and cutting back ties with Iran.

The Saudi-led alliance considers al-Jazeera to be a propaganda tool for Islamists.

The Guardian   Friday 23 June 2017

Saudi Arabia and its allies have issued a threatening 13-point ultimatum to Qatar as the price for lifting a two-week trade and diplomatic embargo of the country, in a marked escalation of the Gulf’s worst diplomatic dispute in decades.

The onerous list of demands includes stipulations that Doha close the broadcaster al-Jazeera, drastically scale back cooperation with Iran, remove Turkish troops from Qatar’s soil, end contact with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and submit to monthly external compliance checks. Qatar has been given 10 days to comply with the demands or face unspecified consequences.

Saudi Arabia and the other nations leading the blockade – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt – launched an economic and diplomatic blockade on the energy-rich country a fortnight ago, initially claiming the Qatari royal family had licensed the funding of terrorism across the Middle East for decades. Since then, the allies appear to be pushing for the isolation of Iran and the suppression of dissenting media in the region.

The list of demands, relayed to Qatar via mediators from Kuwait, represents the first time Saudi Arabia has been prepared to put the bloc’s previously amorphous grievances in writing. Their sweeping nature would, if accepted, represent an effective end to Qatar’s independent foreign policy. According to one of the points, Qatar would have to “align itself with other Arabs and the Gulf, militarily, politically, socially and economically, as well as in financial matters”.

The UAE’s foreign secretary, Anwar Gargash, insisted the anti-Qatar alliance is not seeking to impose regime change. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Qatar will see the demands as the basis for serious negotiations.

Qatar has become reliant on Turkey and Iran for food imports since the embargo was imposed on 5 June and insists with its huge wealth it can survive the embargo for an indefinite period.

Gargash blamed Qatar for the “childish” leak of its 13 demands and called it either an “attempt to undermine serious mediation or yet another sign of callous policy.

“It would be wiser that [Qatar] deal seriously with the demands and concerns of the neighbours or a divorce will take place,” he said.

Qatar faces a choice of either stability and prosperity or isolation, he said, adding: “Perhaps the solution is in parting ways.”

In a sign that the UK does not regard the demands as reasonable, foreign secretary Boris Johnson said on Friday: “Gulf unity can only be restored when all countries involved are willing to discuss terms that are measured and realistic. 

“The UK calls upon the Gulf states to find a way of de-escalating the situation and lifting the current embargo and restrictions which are having an impact on the everyday lives of people in the region.”

US policy towards Qatar so far has been marked by confusion. President Donald Trump has appeared to take credit for the Saudi embargo and described Qatar as a haven for terrorism. By contrast, the State Department under Rex Tillerson has twice upbraided Saudi Arabia’s approach to Qatar and questioned its true motives in sparking the diplomatic crisis.

3.      You Don’t Want to Buy Groceries From a Robot

The New York Times  JUNE 23, 2017

The next time you check out at Whole Foods, you might meet my friend Esther at the register. In a few years, you might meet a robot. Or no one at all.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods is expected to revolutionize the grocery business, accelerating a trend toward increasing automation and the elimination of cashiers and other human workers. The Amazon Go store in Seattle, devoid of sales clerks and checkout lines, offers a glimpse of what this “just walk out” grocery shopping experience might look like.

I’m not looking forward to it. While interactions with cashiers may seem insignificant, or at times even a nuisance, they also foster sociability between strangers.

I first met Esther 10 years ago when she worked as a cashier at a mom-and-pop bakery in Manhattan, where I’d come to study how adults over 65 used neighborhood spaces to develop social connections that helped them avoid social isolation and live independently.

Esther provided care along with pastries to the older people who congregated at the bakery. She knew exactly how her patrons took their coffees and brought orders to the table for people struggling with canes and walkers. She shared her homemade soup with an octogenarian who came each evening, patiently listened to customers’ long-winded stories, and admired pictures of grandchildren.

A computer could have done many of Esther’s tasks, perhaps more efficiently. But for anyone who’s ever experienced an alarmed electronic voice at self-checkout blaring that you have an “unauthorized item in the bagging area” when you just don’t see the point of bagging Tic Tacs, technology also has its shortcomings. Besides, while a robot might be able to learn that you take your coffee black with two sugars, how special does that make you feel?

Ephemeral contact with cashiers and other service workers can be especially important to people at risk of isolation, such as older people who live alone, those with chronic illnesses and the unemployed.

My sister, who suffers from schizophrenia, values her interactions with employees at the CVS where she picks up her medications. “It makes me happy,” she said about the cashier’s friendly hello. She mentioned a pharmacist who rings up her monthly refills: “She always asks how I am, says, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen you in a while, where have you been?’ It really helped when I got out of the hospital.”

Six years ago, she spent three months in Bellevue Hospital because of a psychotic break, and at first didn’t want to take medication or attend treatment sessions, worried that the people around her had weapons. Despite that initial resistance, she has faithfully taken the drugs that control her delusions and has not returned to the hospital since. Her exchanges with the pharmacy staff served as informal check-ins that gave her a little extra help adhering to an unfamiliar medication regimen.

Services like Walgreens’ express pharmacy kiosks, which allow customers to reduce the interaction required to refill a prescription in person, mean encounters like these may already be dwindling.

Fleeting retail interactions can also help people during major life transitions. I learned this when I ended a 13-year relationship and moved to San Francisco, a city where I knew almost no one. I worked from home and could have gone days without speaking to another human being. But I discovered how quickly I could become a regular at the coffee shops, eateries and bars I frequented. Service workers often filled in important connective social tissue before I worked up enough nerve to chat with other customers. A few friendly words with the servers and bartenders made me feel less alone. Eventually some became friends.

At the same time, San Francisco was a pioneer in automation. At Eatsa, a quinoa bowl joint, you don’t have to interact with any other humans. You just order on your phone, and a “personalized cubby” spits out your food. Robots make coffee at Cafe X, and self-driving food delivery robots roam the streets of the Mission District.

We seem to have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with people, especially those outside of our usual social circles, of different races, classes or nationalities. In our polarized political climate, we cannot afford to squander them. That’s one reason I choose to ride the bus to work as a college professor, side-by-side with Walmart employees and other retail workers at the mall where the bus route terminates. Most people who can afford a car would rather drive to the mall, reducing the chances of serendipitous conversation with strangers. Will they soon be able to avoid them in the mall, too?

What’s good for business is not always good for people. We need to consider the trade-offs of increasing automation and use our dollars to push for the kind of shopping experience we want and the kind of communities we want to live in. Next time you’re at the store and have the opportunity to bypass the register, spare a few moments to chat with the cashier instead. You can always shop on Amazon at home.

Latest News Clips 2017.06.19

                    

1.      The Guardian view on Grenfell Tower: Theresa May’s Hurricane Katrina

The Guardian   Editorial    15 June 2017

The 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans exposed failings in leadership and a terrible disdain for the lives of the poor. The London fire is doing the same

 

Leadership requires courage, imagination and empathy. In the two long days since the first flames licked up the newly fixed cladding on Grenfell Tower in west London, the prime minister has failed to show any of these qualities. On Wednesday, the first day, she said nothing at all until 6.30 that evening. On Thursday morning she ventured out to the scene of the disaster, where she rightly congratulated the emergency services on their inexhaustible efforts. But she made no contact with the shattered survivors, nor the faith workers and volunteers who have poured in to the area with such compassion. Less than an hour later Jeremy Corbyn arrived. He listened to people, he hugged them, he promised to find out the truth and told them he would speak for them. Theresa May could have said and done all of those things, but she did not.

The inferno at Grenfell Tower in which 17 people are now known to have died begins to look like Britain’s Hurricane Katrina.  Mrs. May is President George W Bush, off the pace, inarticulate, seemingly uncomprehending – a leader failing the great ordeal by disaster that is the ultimate test.

And, like Katrina, Grenfell Tower is proving more than a test of leadership. It is exposing, like Katrina, a terrible series of ill-judged and sometimes catastrophic human interventions that have been made over the past six or seven years by a government that every day seems more distant from the lives of ordinary people: the way the constant anxieties of the residents’ action group were ignored, the deliberate decisions by ministers to delay upgrading fire regulations, the plans that have emerged to opt out of EU building standards as a Brexit bonus. Worst of all, and closest in parallel to the warnings of inadequate flood defences in Katrina, the coroner’s recommendations after the inquest into the deaths of six residents of Lakanal House in south London in 2009. Reading these, it is very hard to understand why they were not immediately enforced around the country – in particular the advice to retrofit fire suppressant systems in older blocks. This vital recommendation was merely repeated by the then communities secretary, Eric Pickles, to local councils as advice. Not surprisingly, without the funding to make it viable, councils adopted a minimalist approach, enhancing fire protection only in the highest-risk housing.

By lunchtime on Thursday the government machine began to show signs of life. Bogged in the convenient marshes of parliamentary propriety, a Commons statement was ruled impossible, but a “briefing” for MPs was arranged in a committee room, which, when permission was given for the cameras to be turned on at about the midway point in proceedings, revealed two middle-ranking ministers, Nick Hurd from the Home Office and housing minister Alok Sharma, fielding questions from, among others, the omnipresent Mr Corbyn. Very significant concessions were made: all homeless residents will be rehoused in the area, and children will be able to continue at their schools. One of the catastrophes of Katrina was a great diaspora, and the irrecoverable disruption of children’s education. An inquiry under the 2005 act is pledged, with the powers to send for people and papers. Those are very important moves. Their implementation must be closely monitored. In particular, ministers must not use the powers they have over the inquiry to do anything that compromises its impartiality. There is another imperative: the families of victims and survivors must have legal aid so that they are on a level playing field at both the inquests and the inquiry. That must be guaranteed at once, so that they have the space to begin the process of grieving.

This is only the start of what is necessary for the survivors of Grenfell Tower. But it is too little and maybe too late for a prime minister whose approval ratings have crashed, whose government is in crisis, and whose authority seems to be draining away.

2.      A Magic Wand for France?

The Project Syndicate    JUN 14, 2017

WASHINGTON, DC – Last month, Emmanuel Macron pulled the proverbial rabbit from the electoral hat. Against the odds, the independent centrist won the French presidency by a decisive margin, beating the far-right populist Marine Le Pen – and vanquishing the old guard of the French establishment along the way. Now, for his latest trick, Macron looks set to secure a huge majority in the French National Assembly.

But whether Macron, a political newcomer, is more than an electoral wizard will depend on the success, or failure, of the economic program that his government enacts.

Friends of France, and of a united Europe, were no doubt relieved by Macron’s victory. And in the early days of his presidency, the French public is behind him, too; recent polling puts his approval rating at 62%. Yet goodwill can dissipate quickly, which is why Macron must move to capitalize on his early mandate by implementing reforms of fiscal policy, taxation, the labor market, and education, to name but a few areas where change is long overdue.

France’s most immediate problems are anemic growth and inadequate job creation. For the last 12 years, France’s GDP has increased by barely 1% a year, less than the mediocre uptick in the European Union as a whole, while unemployment currently hovers just above 10%. Only five EU countries – Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Spain, and Greece – have higher unemployment rates.

During Macron’s first five-year term, therefore, he should focus on raising France’s GDP growth to an average of at least 2% a year, and reducing unemployment to below 6%. The easiest way to achieve both goals would be to focus on where France is underperforming relative to other EU countries.

Part of the unemployment challenge is tied to hidden costs. France has some of the highest labor costs for hourly employees in the EU, and a natural consequence is tepid hiring. With inequality also growing, many French are rightly upset that labor is taxed much more than capital gains. Indeed, France’s payroll taxes amount to 19% of GDP – far exceeding the EU average of 13%. This is a particularly pernicious tax, because only employers are affected by it. It should therefore be the first tax Macron moves to cut.

Likewise, government spending, at 57% of GDP – is the highest in the EU, where the average is 47%. This burden is excessive, and significantly hinders economic growth. The government should work to reduce these expenditures (its bloated social-protection programs in particular) by at least one percentage point a year.

Corporate taxes are another area ripe for reform. With its rate of 33%, France has one of the highest profit taxes on corporations in Europe. But its revenues from these taxes, 2.6% of GDP, are in line with the EU average. France could afford to reduce its profit tax rate to 25%, as Macron has proposed, without losing significant tax revenues.

On nearly every fiscal metric, France is an outlier (along with Finland and Belgium, which have also underperformed in recent years). And given that France, it now seems clear, has not benefited from loose policy, Macron should be able to forge a consensus on cutting taxes and expenditures. Indeed, reducing the fiscal burden on the economy will be the key to turning things around.

But France also needs more complex structural reforms, the most urgent one being liberalization and simplification of the country’s complex labor code, which makes it too difficult to hire and lay off workers. The most vulnerable are often those who are the least integrated into the economy, especially the young and immigrants. Most European countries suffer from this problem, but France’s youth unemployment rate, at 26%, is significantly higher than the EU average of 19.6%. The simplification of the labor code should be negotiated with social partners to mitigate or even avoid strikes and protests.

Finally, France’s education system needs major attention. The OECD rates French high school students as just about average among the world’s developed economies. France, like many other European countries, has much room for improvement in preparing its young people for the job market.

The situation appears even worse for French universities. According to the Times Higher Education Supplement, which ranks universities worldwide, France’s top university, the École Normale Supérieure, ranks just 66th in the world. Without reform of higher education, France cannot be remotely competitive with British and American institutions.

The French government can carry out all of these reforms unilaterally, without the EU. But the EU could help France’s economy by promoting various markets.

3.      Gulf plunged into diplomatic crisis as countries cut ties with Qatar

Qatari diplomats ejected and land, air and sea traffic routes cut off in row over terror and regional stability

The Guardian   5 June 2017 

The Gulf has been hit by its biggest diplomatic crisis in years after Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region with its support for Islamist groups.

The countries said they would halt all land, air and sea traffic with Qatar, eject its diplomats and order Qatari citizens to leave the Gulf states within 14 days. Shoppers in the Qatari capital, Doha, meanwhile packed supermarkets amid fears the country, which relies on imports from its neighbours, would face food shortages after Saudi Arabia closed its sole land border.

Social media reports from Doha showed supermarket shelves empty as nervous consumers began to worry that stocks of food and water would run out. As much as 40% of Qatar’s food comes over the Saudi border.

The small but very wealthy nation, the richest in the world per capita, was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and its perceived tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival, Iran. The dispute is the worst to hit the Gulf since the formation of the Gulf Co-operation Council in 1981.

Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry said the measures were unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions. As the Qatari stock market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of violating its sovereignty.

“The state of Qatar has been subjected to a campaign of lies that have reached the point of complete fabrication,” a statement said. “It reveals a hidden plan to undermine the state of Qatar.”

Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties owing to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Islamic State and groups supported by Iran in Saudi Arabia’s restive eastern province of Qatif.

Egypt’s foreign ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” towards the country and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed”. It gave the Qatari ambassador 48 hours to leave Egypt, and ordered its own chargé d’affaires in Qatar to return to Cairo within 48 hours.

The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed its decision on Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities, and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain”.

In a sign of Qatar’s growing isolation, Yemen’s internationally backed government – which no longer holds its capital and large portions of the country – joined the move to break relations, as did the Maldives and the government based in eastern Libya

There effect on air travel in the region was immediate. Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers, said it was suspending all flights to Saudi Arabia. Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier, said it would suspend flights to Qatar “until further notice”. Emirates, the Dubai-based carrier, announced it would suspend Qatar flights starting on Tuesday, and Dubai-based budget carrier flydubai said it would suspend flights to and from Doha from Tuesday.

Egypt announced its airspace will be closed to all Qatari airplanes from Tuesday.

Monday’s diplomatic moves came two weeks after four Arab countries blocked Qatar-based media over the appearance of comments attributed to the Qatari emir that praised Iran. Qatar said hackers had taken over the website of its state-run news agency and faked the comments.