newspapers: tháng 9 2011

Thứ Sáu, 30 tháng 9, 2011

Manchester City line up Robin van Persie to replace Carlos Tevez

Robin van Persie a target for Roberto Mancini
• Manchester City manager lays down law to players

Happy Birthday Silvio! His Circus-Like Reign Crumbling, Berlusconi Hits 75

Op-Ed: Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has built an empire and survived repeated scandal. But this birthday, one message is clear: as the economy tanks, Italy has finally grown tired of his antics.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (EPP)

By Andrea Bachstein
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG/Worldcrunch

ROME - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is 75 years old today. But rather than counting his birthday surprises, he’s staring at a mountain of troubles. The Cavaliere may still be putting on a happy face, but nearly the whole country, his own party included, is against him now.

"One thing is for sure, and that is that I’m having a shitty birthday.” That’s what Silvio Berlusconi is supposed to have said to an Italian Parliament member on Sept. 29 last year. It’s unlikely that he’s finding this one much better. The prime minister, who likes to flaunt a youthful image, turns 75 on Thursday.

But advancing years are the least of his worries: if he had a bad public image a year ago, it’s just that much worse now. He and his government are in it up to their necks. The endless sex scandals, the court cases, and conflict within the coalition are all part of toxic brew.

But mainly it is the uproar caused by the debt crisis that has shredded the veil of words that Berlusconi has used for the past three years to hide his ineffective politics. He has become an additional risk factor for both the euro and Europe, and the words to his birthday song include thinly disguised and outright calls for him to step down. They are coming from everywhere, not just from left-of-center opponents, but also from his own party and business leaders as well.

Berlusconi is no longer perceived as competent to do his job, and yet he has said only that he will soldier on. One voice stood out particularly this week – that of the Church. Without naming Berlusconi outright, the head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, spoke of "lifestyles that are difficult to reconcile with the dignity of persons, institutions and public life.”

Cardinal Bagnasco also said: "Dissolute behavior and inappropriate relationships are in themselves negative, and they also damage the social fabric." He said there was a need to “purify the air” so that future generations were not poisoned. Many in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party were said to have been rendered speechless by the blistering words, before rallying and saying publicly that the Cardinal was not referring to anyone in particular -- just political leaders, and citizens in general.

But it is just those citizens who have finally lost all patience for the Berlusconi circus. His macho routine has worn thin. Many feel ashamed and repulsed by the revelations about his affairs. The droves of women he had delivered to his homes were supposed to wear low-cut necklines but no stilettos because “we are short” – that apparently being a royal we. He bragged of having 11 women lined up for sex on one occasion, but of only being able to “do” eight of them before tiring. The scenarios range from the bunga bunga parties in the western island of Sardinia to an escort ring run out of the eastern city of Bari.

Investigations are showing ever more clearly that Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man, worth an estimated 7.8 billion euros, didn’t pay for all of this out of his own pocket, and wove a web of corruption around himself.

Burned out

And it was all caution to the wind where sex was concerned. First, investigators thought he was being blackmailed by one of the people who pimped women for him. Now Berlusconi is suspected of blackmailing the blackmailer into making false statements. So his birthday card from Bari is the news that the state prosecutor is opening an investigation into the matter.

Berlusconi wants to stay in power until his mandate expires in 2013 – but his country is tired of him now. He himself is looking burned out, and much older, even if he does have more dyed hair on his head now than he did a decade ago. He’s hanging on to power by his nails.

He knows he’s lost one of the main ingredients for his success – the instinct of knowing what the Italian people want. That, together with a complete absence of scruples, was his big talent both as an entrepreneur and a politician.

When he started out in politics, he was perceived as modern, and -- as someone who was not from the political establishment -- he promised new beginnings after the breakdown of the corrupt party system. His populist palaver and off-the-cuff humor appealed to many Italians, particularly less educated ones. He promised reforms and action, his success as an entrepreneur being the supposed guarantee of his ability to deliver.

Seeing the potential of private TV before others, Berlusconi was able to build up an international media empire. He flooded Italy with frivolous, low-brow programs apparently tailored to his own tastes: the likes of which the country had never seen before.

Berlusconi‘s media have profoundly changed people, culture and the media itself in Italy. His intuitive flair brought him not only wealth, but a great deal of sway over public opinion. Turncoat informants have repeatedly claimed that the Sicilian Mafia invested in both Berlusconi’s construction projects and his broadcasting stations. Mafia rumors also hung over his Forza Italia party (which later became the PDL) through his association with Marcello dell' Utri who has been convicted pending appeal of collusion with the Sicilian mob.

And suspicion remains that Berlusconi only entered politics to save both his business empire and himself from legal proceedings. One thing is certain: during his four terms of office, laws were created that worked to the advantage of his companies and protected him. But such gifts to himself – even on his birthday – may have reached their expiration date.

Read the original article in German

photo -europeanpeoplesparty

Why There Will Always Be Three Amanda Knoxes

In a few days, Amanda Knox will be either set free or ordered to remain in jail, from where she will most certainly file another, final appeal against her murder conviction. Whatever the Italian appellate judge and jury decide to do with her and her onetime boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, one thing will remain unchanged: people living in three different countries already have reached very different verdicts on her, and the reason for that has less to do with what really happened on the night of Nov. 1, 2007, when Meredith Kercher was murdered in Perugia, and everything to do with the media.
In the U.S., Knox is the victim of a judicial system gone awry. That is the way her family has portrayed her in countless interviews with American television outlets over the past four years. The courting of the family by American network producers involved generally favorable coverage. After all, why would Amanda's parents, her stepparents and her friends volunteer to appear on any program that painted her as an "angel-faced she-devil," to borrow a phrase from the prosecution? That long courtship is about to bear fruit. Producers are in a tense bidding war with the family for the biggest get of all, the prize upon which all have fixed their eyes since the earliest days of this tabloid tale: an interview with Knox herself. (See a who's-who in the Italian murder trial.)
But while Knox's family from suburban Seattle got sympathy from U.S. journalists, they initially failed to understand that they needed to take their message to Italy and the U.K. The Seattle p.r. firm they hired to control coverage gave rise to a myth that a massively funded American publicity campaign was under way to spring a guilty girl from jail.
That did her little good in Britain, the murdered Kercher's homeland. There, Knox is the exchange-student version of Casey Anthony. She is an all-American psychopath with a pretty face masking a liar and a killer. The U.K.'s tabloid reporters, operating in a print-media industry that is more robust than the U.S.'s, with many more tabloid newspapers and thus more competition, stoked the "Foxy Knoxy" story for all it was worth. One of them published a picture of a bathroom Knox showered in before her roommate's body was discovered. All the walls appeared to be smeared with blood. No one ever explained that the redness of the walls was the result of a crime-scene-investigation chemical, which turns pink, that Italian police had sprayed on the walls.
American and British journalists theoretically operate in similar fashion; freedom of the press is, after all, an Anglo-Saxon invention. But a chief difference between the two styles of journalism (besides the illegal hacking of phones) is that British reporters often pay for interviews, while in the U.S., paying for interviews is considered journalistic malpractice. Since the Kercher murder was so sensational and the stakes for newspaper sales in the millions, huge sums were available for interviews. Reporters didn't even broker the biggest deals themselves; high-powered London agents did it for them. (See the 25 crimes of the century.)
The U.K. tabs' biggest get was Patrick Lumumba, Knox's former boss at a Perugia bar, the man Knox originally told police was in the house where the crime took place. (The testimony was taken during a night of police interrogation that she now claims was extracted under duress.) Lumumba took a high five-figure sum for a London tabloid interview, parts of which were picked up elsewhere and became part of the narrative of the case. In that account, Knox was described as jealous of Kercher; Lumumba said his own wife had decided that Knox was untrustworthy based on one interaction with her; the accused also was said to flirt with customers at the bar; Lumumba also suggested that he might have been ready to fire Knox and put Kercher in her job. However, when Lumumba talked with me for my book — for free — he retracted nearly every word of it.
Both the American and British print media had a field day cherry-picking through a "prison diary" that the compulsively journalizing Knox filled with her rounded handwriting and blithe musings during her first month in prison and that authorities released to the media. Reporters selected bits of text in which she remarked on fan mail she was receiving from Italian men, ignoring page after page of description about a menacing jail guard repeatedly asking her if she was "good at sex" or "dreamed about sex."

Much of the coverage was driven by the Italian media, which purvey lurid crime stories like this one in a separate section called cronache nere (literally, black chronicles). If or when Knox is released from prison, the Italian response will be the most interesting of all to watch. Italians think of her as a kind of pretty witch, a beguiler of men, whose murderous spree on the night after Halloween was only to be expected as the dark side that all hypersexualized vixens are presumed to possess. That's why the prosecutor inserted witch fear into his first statements about the murder, and that's why the Italian television networks looped and relooped endlessly a piece of video of Knox and Sollecito snuggling and kissing outside the murder house as crime-scene investigators came and went around them; and that's also why a television news program voted her "woman of the year" in 2008, ahead of Carla Bruni and Angelina Jolie.
Italy is a sunny place, but free speech there is rather chilled. The nation was ranked 79th in press freedom in 2009. Journalists who criticize Silvio Berlusconi have been fired. Prosecutors have the right to throw journalists in jail on fairly flimsy grounds. Most Italian journalists assume phones are tapped. Courageous, smart journalists are on the front lines of stories about war, the Mafia and social issues, but those who do investigative work generally don't take on the government, a function left to the judiciary, which polices itself. (See more about Amanda Knox.)
Because the Italian judiciary has no public face, all journalists in Italy covering cases like the Kercher murder must rely on tips from individual lawyers. Favored reporters were handed what seemed to be everything — mountains of material that American courts would never hand off to American journalists, from audiotapes of wiretapped conversations to garish videotapes of forensic workers at the crime scene swabbing orifices — before the trial even began. Meanwhile, crucial, other potentially exculpatory information — audio or video of interrogations, for example — never emerged.
Adding to the selective information download, journalists in Italy approached the case with a casual attitude toward facts. If a lawyer said something — anything — it was broadcast or printed, subject to debate, but rarely if ever an official correction. Thus, nonexistent "evidence" — Sollecito's quest for "extreme emotions," a cherry-picked phrase from a long blog post mostly about homework and taking care of family members; his reported googling of bleach in the hours after Meredith's murder; or a parking-lot video supposedly of Amanda Knox arriving at the house around the murder hour — and scientifically incoherent memes such as "mixed blood" DNA in the bathroom Knox and Kercher shared, remained in the public record forever. (Read "Amanda Knox's Appeal: A Case of Too Little DNA?")
Almost two years after the murder, I was only the second journalist out of a pack of dozens on the story to go to Milan to follow an important thread on Rudy Guede, the third person convicted of murder in the case and now serving a 16-year sentence. I spoke to the owner of a nursery school where, the week before the Kercher murder, Guede was found with a knife and a computer stolen from a Perugia law office in his backpack. The police took the knife and computer and let him go — much to their regret, they told me, when they heard he was wanted for murder a few weeks later. No one had ever put much effort into trying to understand his deeply troubled psyche, his sleepwalking and fugue states, let alone understand how the crime scene at the house resembled other incidents involving the same man. Instead, the court heard and the journalists broadcast that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the Kercher murder. Such was the power and hold of the narrative's central figure — Knox — over global media.
With the exception of a Perugia blogger, few Italians ever really questioned the peculiar narrative of the crime. As the appeal ends, holes in the case — especially involving dubious material evidence — that were well known to all spectators during the first trial have finally entered the Italian consciousness. But no appeal verdict, guilty or innocent, will ever convince millions of people in three countries that the Amanda Knox they think they know might not be her at all.
Burleigh is the author of The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox (Broadway, 2011). More on the book and her work at www.ninaburleigh.com. Get updates on the Knox case on twitter @ninaburleigh.

Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing

By SAUL HANSELL

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. (Credit: Craig Ruttle/AP)

On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, was cheerfully unruffled.
Mr. Zuckerberg pinned his optimism on a change in behavior among Internet users: that they are ever more willing to tell others what they are doing, who their friends are, and even what they look like as they crawl home from the fraternity party.
“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before,” he said. “That means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more.”
Call it Zuckerberg’s Law.
Mr. Zuckerberg is too low-key to compare his observation to the law first articulated by Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years.
But if it turns out to be accurate, Mr. Zuckerberg’s prediction may turn out to be just as important to society.
And if Facebook is even half as good at exploiting Zuckerberg’s Law as Intel was at exploiting Moore’s Law, Mr. Zuckerberg will be a very happy man indeed.

Did Facebook Just Change Social Networking Forever?

Jesse Eisenberg may have played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a Vulcan-like cypher in The Social Network, but the real Zuck is anything but emotionally distant. When he's talking about Facebook, in fact, he's generally downright ebullient. And I've never seen him more exuberantly cheerful than he was during his keynote address at his company's f8 conference in San Francisco last week.
Zuckerberg had two major pieces of news to share. First, he announced that Facebook is replacing its Profile — the page each user gets that displays his or her status updates, Likes, photos, FarmVille triumphs and other items — with a radically revised version called Timeline, which is rolling out over the next few weeks. (Watch TIME's video on the new Facebook interface.)
Timeline is prettier than Profile: you can, for instance, add an oversize "cover" photo at the top along with your portrait. More important, it makes it a cinch to backtrack through a member's entire Facebook history, not just recent activities. It preserves every action of every member and attempts to emphasize the most memorable ones, such as marriages and job changes. You can even fill in your pre-Facebook existence by adding photos dating back to your birth.
Facebook's other big update, Open Graph, aims to change the social network even more than Timeline will. It lets third-party companies connect their apps and services to Facebook far more seamlessly than in the past — and in particular allows them to seek onetime, blanket permission from a user to share stuff with Facebook. Once permission has been granted, the apps can push out the details of everything the user does, no further human intervention required.
Previously, you had to Like a song on the music service Spotify for your friends to know you'd listened to it. Now all the songs you listen to on Spotify get shown on Facebook automatically — and your friends can listen to those tunes on Facebook if they choose.
A bevy of other companies, from TiVo to the Washington Post, have announced plans to release Open Graph apps that enable what Zuck called "frictionless" sharing. It's easy to see the day coming when just about anything that now sports Facebook's Like button instead offers Open Graph's more comprehensive form of integration. (See 10 things you shouldn't do on Facebook.)
Between them, Timeline and Open Graph have a shot at fundamentally altering the social network that Zuckerberg brought about. Old Facebook was about sharing a smattering of your current activities in a way that was usually disposable. New Facebook, once Timeline is fully available and there are more Open Graph apps, will try to come far closer to replicating your entire life — and to keep track of it all for as long as both you and Facebook exist. If it all works, and is as popular as the service has been so far, it could change the way we relate to one another in ways that few websites have.
It wasn't the least bit startling to see Zuckerberg get giddy over this prospect at f8. He's the guy who came up with "Zuckerberg's law" — the notion that the amount of stuff people share doubles every year — and he clearly wants to keep it going for as long as possible. I would joke about him thinking that the site should track users' activities when they're asleep as well as conscious, except that it's no joke: he did say that. (Presumably he was talking about an app hooked up to a Net-savvy sleep monitor like the Lark.)

What's going to be fascinating is watching 800 million Facebook users come to terms with the service's changes. Will they use Open Graph apps to let it all hang out, or will they choose to ratchet up their privacy settings? How many people will give services permission to share everything on Facebook, and then rue it months or years later when something they don't want the world to know about is instantly distributed to all their pals? Do people really want to burrow back through their friends' Timelines, investigating what they were doing in 2007 or 2008?
As the new features roll out, some members are unquestionably going to be irate over them. Whenever Facebook changes, some folks are always irate, and Facebook changes more often than any other major online service. (To riff on what Mark Twain said about the weather in New England, if you don't like Facebook, just wait a few days.) (Read about Facebook's privacy features.)
Even though using Facebook and turning on Open Graph are both optional — and it's still possible to share items selectively or not at all — Zuckerberg and company will be accused of violating users' privacy. In fact, it's already happening.
Me, I'm not so concerned about Open Graph's violating my privacy. (Useful rule of thumb: If you're doing something you want to keep secret, don't let it get anywhere near Facebook — heck, if possible, don't do it online, period.) I do, however, fret that Open Graph might make Facebook feel less personal rather than more so. The concept of Facebook logging my actions — most of them pretty mundane — in mass quantities sounds clinical, not heartwarming. Worst-case scenario, using the new Facebook could feel like living in a Skinner box.
I also like the Like button in its current form — by clicking it, our Facebook friends are editing their lives for us, calling out things that are interesting and ignoring things that aren't. As Farhad Manjoo points out at Slate, Facebook doesn't seem to want to restrict sharing to stuff that's compelling. Actually, a noisy minority of users are already up in arms over Ticker, another new feature, which scrolls through an infinite, uncurated list of your friends' updates, like Twitter on speed.
Speaking of Twitter, I worry more about the new features' potential influence on Facebook competitors than their impact on Facebook itself. I enjoy Twitter just the way it is — looser, sillier and more chaotic than Facebook. And I'm glad that Google+ still feels like it's populated by human beings rather than automatons issuing updates on behalf of humans. If either of these services reacts to Zuckerberg's grand new vision by mimicking it rather than counterpunching, it would be a shame. (See Facebook users' thoughts on the social-networking site.)
I have my concerns, but overall, I'm hopeful that Facebook will get these new features right over time. I certainly don't think that it has fundamentally misjudged what its users want. The service gets into more mini-controversies than the average tech company. Unhappy campers threaten to abandon it more or less continuously, and it sometimes has to adjust its plans on the fly. Over and over, though, most users eventually come around to Zuck's way of thinking. By the time the next f8 conference rolls around, I suspect, it'll be tough to remember what Facebook — and life online — was like before Timeline and Open Graph existed.

Thứ Tư, 28 tháng 9, 2011

Australia Tells Chinese Tourists: Welcome! (And Bring Your Checkbooks)

As Europe grapples with Greece and the U.S. struggles to create jobs, Australia's economy is soaring, driving the Australian dollar to historic heights against the U.S. dollar — something unthinkable a decade ago when Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics. But a strong Australian dollar has not been good for tourism. In the past 10 years, tourism revenue has shrunk from 3.4% of Australia's GDP to 2.6%. The number of people flocking to Australian shores has also dropped steadily since the Olympics; according to the most recent statistics available, international arrivals were down 2.5% in July 2011from July 2010. Tourism officials realize they have a problem. In an effort to promote the country last year, a number of government and tourism bodies spent nearly $5 million to bring Oprah Down Under to tape her show. It didn't exactly work. Evidently, even Oprah's magic touch has its limits.
But there's another possible solution a little closer to home: China. The statistics speak for themselves. The Chinese are the fastest-growing tourism group in the world, with approximately 57.4 million people traveling overseas last year. Chinese tourists are now Australia's third largest market for inbound visitors, but most importantly, its fastest growing one. Within the last year, the number of visitors from the mainland has surged by 23%, contributing $3.26 billion to the economy. Australia's main tourism board, Tourism Australia, estimates that in a decade, Chinese tourists could triple their spending, pumping up to $9 billion per year into the economy. (Read about whether Australia's economy is becoming dangerously dependent on China.)
Countries all over the world have begun courting Chinese tourists in earnest, but Australia has been especially aggressive, committing $30 million over three years to its pursuit. As part of its efforts, Tourism Australia unveiled its China 2020 Strategic Plan in June aimed at nearly doubling the number of Chinese visitors to 860,000 over the next eight years. Forget dingos and Uluru — Australia isn't promoting this side of its culture to China. No, the country is pushing itself as a high-end destination for the super-rich, a place where they can buy luxury bags and clothes, stay in five-star hotels, eat in expensive restaurants and gamble in glitzy casinos. Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia, says Chinese tourists are attracted to Australia because it has the whole package. "It's an offering that is not just the gambling with the integrated resorts — it is gambling with great shopping, branded shopping and fantastic restaurants," he says.
To make potential tourists aware of the luxe experience that awaits them, the tourism board has taken its marketing campaign to 13 cities in the mainland so far, with hopes of expanding to more than 30 cities by 2020. Tourism officials are also working with China's main airlines — China Southern and Air China — to increase the number of routes between the countries. Three years ago, there were few direct flights between China and Australia; by the end of 2011, there will be 77 direct flights each week. Four of the five airlines that offer direct routes are, in fact, Chinese airlines.
Hotels and businesses are making visible changes to woo mainland visitors, too. Some hotel chains, for instance, have rearranged the furniture in its rooms across the country according to the principles of feng shui — assuring guests will have a harmonious stay. Accor Hotels and others are contemplating adding Chinese-language television channels to their rooms, as well. In addition, billionaire gambling tycoon James Packer has spent about $2 billion to upgrade his casinos in Melbourne and Perth in an attempt to lure Asians away from the booming casinos in Macau and Singapore. Every Chinese New Year, for instance, the Crown Casino in Melbourne holds a giant street festival in the city's Southbank neighborhood, with red lanterns hanging above the streets, food hawkers and Chinese dancers. It's just like home — only warmer.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2094863,00.html#ixzz1ZIzuD2s4

One look around Sydney or Melbourne and it's clear there are changes afoot. Signs in Chinese characters direct new arrivals where to go at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport. Mandarin is heard on the streets of both cities as much as Spanish is heard in downtown Los Angeles. Tourist attractions like the Sydney Opera House now offer Mandarin-speaking guides or have Chinese signs posted to help mainland visitors find their way. These types of changes, however, are really only noticeable in Australia's main cities, where Chinese visitors spend the vast majority of their time. The Outback and the Great Barrier Reef may figure into an Australia trip eventually, but for the time being, most visitors are more interested in the thrills of discovering what the next retail shop has to offer. ''[Chinese tourists] want to return home from overseas trips with luxury goods as a symbol of their wealth," Sam Huang, a lecturer at the University of South Australia, pointed out recently in The Age.
Of course, Australia is not the only country aware of China's rising spending power. Earlier this year, Taiwan removed its travel restrictions for mainland citizens, allowing them to come to the island as individual tourists, not with tour groups. One of the main reasons is money. Since mainland groups began arriving in Taiwan in 2008, they've pumped $3.8 billion into the Taiwanese economy. In Europe, where Chinese tourists also love to shop, luxury stores are hiring more Mandarin-speaking assistants. The French department store Printemps even has a special entrance for Chinese groups and provides Mandarin-speaking personal shoppers to cater to their needs. The number of Chinese tourists is expected to surge in the U.S., too: the U.S. Department of Commerce says it could see a 232% increase over the next six years.
So forget Oprah, Australia. Next time see if Yao Ming is available.
Erica Ho is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @ericamho and Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Rape, The Invisible Crime In Colombia’s Drawn-Out Civil War

Sexual violence against women and girls has been a common, though rarely talked about, practice in Colombia’s decades-old civil war. A new report by Amnesty International highlights the problem, and urges Colombian leaders to end the impunity.

The cover photo for Amnesty International's report on sexual violence in Colombia.

By Marie Delcas
LE MONDE/Worldcrunch

BOGOTA -- Carmenza’s voice cracks as she recalls her experience. “The paramilitary men raped me in front of my husband. Then they slit his throat. In front of me.” That was in 2003. Carmenaza was 37, with four children. She never registered a complaint. “What would be the point?” she asks.

Little by little the subject of sexual violence in Colombia is becoming less taboo. Human rights groups and women’s organizations are talking openly about the numerous acts of rape and other types of sexual violence committed by men from all sides of the country's decades-long armed conflict. But the state continues to sit on its hands. Impunity is still the rule of thumb.

A new report released by Amnesty International draws attention to the phenomenon. “Paramilitary fighters, guerillas, soldiers and police – they’ve all carried out, and continue to carry out violence against women and girls,” says Susan Lee, Amnesty International's director for the Americas. The report, published Sept. 21, is called “'This is what we demand, Justice!' Impunity for sexual violence against women in Colombia’s armed conflict.”

Fighters use sexual abuse to keep women quiet, to make them flee, to terrorize them or for vengeance, the study suggests. “In Colombia, as elsewhere, women and girls are often treated as war trophies,” says Lee. Yet for the most part, silence reigns. In order to secure reduced sentences, demobilized paramilitary fighters have admitted to tens of thousands of massacres and murders. When it comes to rape, however, they’ve confessed to only 86 instances.

In 2004, Amnesty International described sexual violence as the “most invisible crime” in Colombia’s endless conflict. Four years later, the country’s constitutional court confirmed in a ruling that “within armed conflict, sexual violence against women is a common, understood, systematic and invisible practice.”

Black and indigenous women in rural communities have suffered much of the violence, as have women displaced by the conflict and those in historically impoverished communities. “Today, women leaders, especially those involved in organizations calling for restitution of ruined lands, are particularly targeted,” says Lee.

Lacking reliable statistics

Rapes and other types of sexual violence are rarely reported. In that regard, Colombia is hardly an exception. “Women are embarrassed and afraid,” says the Amnesty International representative. The are no structures in place for victims to turn to. And in the areas where the conflict continues, death threats and other kinds of reprisals are common toward anyone who dares speak out.

A lack of reliable statistics makes it difficult to evaluate the scale of the problem. “Unlike in the conflicts in Rwanda or Yugoslavia, armed groups in Colombia apparently haven’t carried out wide scale group rapes. The fact that the cases are more spread out [in Colombia] makes them more difficult to identify,” says historian Elisa Tarnala.

The official – albeit incomplete – statistics that are available do not distinguish between cases of domestic violence and violence linked specifically to the armed conflict. And when it comes to war-related sexual violence committed against men, there are no official statistics whatsoever.

President Juan Manuel Santos – who succeeded Alvaro Uribe in August, 2010 – declares that he is very concerned about human rights. “There’s been progress in terms of the official discourse,” says Lee. “But we have yet to see real improvements in bringing to justice those responsible for human rights abuses, such as sexual violence against women."

Read the original article in French

Photo - Amnesty International

French Feminists Want To Ban The Word "Mademoiselle"

Essay: Two feminist associations want to end the differentiation between "Mademoiselle" (Ms.) and "Madame" (Mrs.) imposed on women filling out official documents. One French (female) commentator takes issue with this latest so-called battle for women's liberation.

By Natacha Polony
LE FIGARO/Worldcrunch

PARIS - French feminist associations sure know their priorities! If further evidence was needed, the "Chiennes de Garde" (Watchdogs) association and its little sister "Osez le féminisme" (Dare Feminism) have launched a campaign against the "Mademoiselle" (Ms.) box that women have to check on official documents.

Their grievances are as follows: To whom must a woman tell whether she’s married or not, while men never have to disclose their marital status? More generally, why should they ever declare themselves "Mademoiselle,"which historically suggested that the woman was a virgin?

The differenciation between "Madame" and "Mademoiselle" has nothing official about it. Already in 1972, French Justice Minister René Pleven had stated that the distinction was in no case acknowledged by the law. Yvette Roudy, France’s Minister of Women’s Rights, even called it "discriminatory" in 1983. But as it happens more often than not, force of habit led to apathy.

As a consequence, the two feminist associations –that are mainly famous for inventing female denominations for job titles, and for an advertising campaign called "Dare Clit!"– have decided to put an end to such prejudice by encouraging women to check the "Madame" box systematically on administrative forms.

In France, women hold 80 percent of low-wage jobs, and continue to be far more affected by poverty than men. There are obviously many fights to be fought. And the associations’ priorities of what matters is the latest sad sign of the current state of feminism.

Read the original article in French

Photo - Laure Gautherin

China Still Has Much To Learn From Japan

Essay: Much has been made of China moving past Japan as Asia’s leader. But a Beijing-based Japanese writer says Japan’s relative economic decline in the past 20 years hides the fact that it has built a model society for its citizens.

Scooting through Tokyo

By Daisuke Kondo*
经济观察报E.O./Worldcrunch

BEIJING - SMAP, a popular but aging Japanese boy band, recently preformed in Beijing, immersing their Chinese fans in days of ecstasy. SMAP is one of the most popular bands in Japan, and has been the guest group, for 18 straight years, on NHK Japan’s New Year Eve broadcast. The band has sold more than 20 million albums, and their best-selling single “The One and Only Flower in the World” has long been on the lips of young people all over Asia.

Early this year, Uichiro Niwa, Japan’s Ambassador to China, said that SMAP’s Beijing concert should be regarded as “the most important activity representing Japan”. Over the past six months, the Japanese Embassy fully mobilized its staff to prepare for the concert.

Today, recalling that passionate concert, I’m thinking “What remains of my motherland Japan?”

Since the beginning of 2011, talk of the “Japanese Decline” is everywhere. China’s GDP has bypassed Japan’s to become the world’s second largest. Not only has Japan lost its second position behind the US, but the gap between China and Japan is as much as $721.9 billion.

March’s devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, left more than 20,000 dead and missing. Japan’s northeastern coastal region collapsed economically.
Coupled with the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, the country, which used to be proud to be “the safest nation in the world” suddenly became the most dangerous.

In 2010, China’s foreign investment also surpassed Japan’s for the first time.

More and more, researchers in Beijing are interested in recent Japanese history. When asked what they study, many respond “Japan’s lost 20 years.” In other words, they are researching Japan’s decline in order to see how China can avoid a similar fate.

The Japanese Department in China’s Foreign Ministry used to be considered a launchpad for successful diplomatic careers. That was the path taken by Tang Jiaxuan, China’s former foreign minister. But today, China’s foreign minister is more likely to have studied in Europe or the US: Jiaxuan’s successors, Li Zhaoxing and Yang Jiechi, are experts in Europe and the US, respectively.

I have personally experienced Japan’s decline in reputation.

I have interviewed about 150 Chinese people for positions in my company’s Beijing office over the past two years -- and have had trouble finding top candidates. When I complain to the head-hunting agency, they reply that the kind of talented people we are looking for usually go to work for American, European or Chinese firms.

What is left of Japan?

When I ask candidates why they studied Japanese, the responses I get are often along the lines of “because I didn’t pass English” or “because Japanese is easier.” These answers stun me. When I was young, in the 1980s, the most outstanding students studied in Japan.

One can’t help but feel melancholy.

Just before SMAP’s Beiijng concert, I happened to have an in-depth discussion about “What remains of Japan in 2011?” with Miyauchi Yuji, the director of the University of Tokyo’s Beijing Office.

The University has compiled data across a range of indicators about how life is lived in Japan – and the trend is in fact positive nearly across the board. Over the past several decades, the murder rate and traffic deaths in Japan have steadily decreased; there have been no food poisoning or other major public health scandals since 1979, and the country’s university enrollment has risen to 50 % for college-age young adults. Inflation is stable, life expectancy up, the country’s near universal state-of-the-art sanitary conditions the envy of the world.

“Chinese people’s idea that Japan has lost two decades since 1990, declining from the rapid economic growth to economic bubbles is simply wrong”, Miyauchi’s said. “Not only has Japan not declined, it has also built a safe, secure society. In terms of standard of living increases, Japan has achieved even greater development during this period.”

In other words, says Miyauchi: “there is still a great deal that the Chinese can learn from Japan.”

After listening to Miyauchi, I feel relieved, like a stone has been lifted from my heart. Japan has become an ageing society sooner than China. One out of four of Japanese today is over 65 years old. Even one of “boy band” SMAP’s singers will turn 40 next year.

SMAP’s most active period was exactly the moment when Japan was supposed to have begun to lose its luster. However even this group, is not really in decline: their latest concert in Beijing proves it. The members of SMAP have grown from the innocent sentimental boys of 23 years ago into adult role models. And their artistic talent has not faded, it has just evolved and become more sophisticated.

Isn’t it the same for Japan?

*Kondo is the former deputy editor of “Magazine Modern” and currently the Vice General Manager of Kodansha (Beijing) Culture Co.

Read the original article in Chinese

Photo-tinou bao

Going to Harvard from your own bedroom

"In the online world you don't need to fill buildings or lecture theatres with people and you don't need to be trapped into a lecture timetable," says Peter Scott, director of the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute.

The Open University, the UK's open access university, which allows people to study from home in their own time, has been an international pioneer of degree courses online.

The university, with more than 263,000 students in 23 countries, has become a record breaker on the iTunes U service, which provides a digital library of materials for university students and staff.

Instead of music or movies, Apple's iTunes U provides a download service for lectures and resources from universities around the world.

Top universities from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the US to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK have been making their materials available, with no charge to the user.

There have been 31 million downloads of OU materials, more than any other university, representing roughly 10% of all iTunes U downloads. Nearly 90% of these users are from outside the UK.

In this online era, the OU student is also getting younger. A quarter of students are aged under-25 and only 10% are aged 50 or over. That change can only be accelerated as the cost of going to university increases in many countries.

The prospect of learning from Harvard from your own bedroom is getting closer.

Grassroots colleges

But it's not the elite universities where the idea of online study is going to make its biggest impact, suggests Anthony Salcito, Microsoft's US-based vice-president of worldwide education.

Harvard v Yale: Both universities have put free course materials online to be used by anyone

"When talking to folks in places like Dubai and China I thought that the questions and the admiration would be for institutions like Harvard and Stanford.

"However, the actual part of the US education system that is most envied, that other institutions are trying to replicate, is the community college system in the US, founded on a belief that a degree and opportunity are rights for all citizens. And we have got to enable the population of students attending higher education to scale up.

"One of the things about the community college system in the US - Miami Dade College for example - is that it is very connected to employment and the workforce.

"So community colleges typically tune their degrees and their options to the jobs and opportunities of the industries that are in those communities. And that connection between employability and education is what is driving a lot of this change."

Mr Salcito also points to African villagers using the most up-to-date expertise on irrigation from MIT as an example of the consequences of universities opening up their courses and materials.

"What I am most excited about is that the privilege of going to higher education is not something that is connected to the wealthy or to the smartest or most well-equipped students for the future. It is becoming a wider social imperative."

'Self-service degrees'

But will the arrival of online degrees change the way that people study at university?

Lord Jim Knight, former education minister in England, has had a long interest in educational technology.

ONLINE DEGREES

More than 66% of higher education institutions in the US offer online or part-online courses
The University of Liverpool in the UK has more than 5,000 online students studying in 175 countries
Open Yale offers a series of free online courses which can be followed by home learners, but without any exams or qualifications
An open source project, OER Commons, includes free material from universities including Harvard and University of California, Berkeley
Medical students at the University of Leeds have their text books delivered as smartphone applications

The type of "self-service" degrees available through the internet are one model, he says, but there are other options that could emerge, such as part-online and part-campus.

"Some people tell me we should be looking at perhaps more of an American model, where you do the first year or two of your degree from home at a community college - in the UK that could be a further education college or even at school - and you only go to finish off when you really need access to the research, your senior lecturer, your director of studies face to face.

"Until that point you can do it at distance, having peer-to-peer learning and using some of the things we are used to, like social networking, for exchanges of ideas and papers," says Lord Knight.

"Why would you go along to a university and hear someone who may or may not be the best in their field when you can go on to iTunes U and hear a lecture by the very best?

"That development of choice and access to quality, and people being digital natives, will, I think, transform things. Whether universities are yet ready to make those changes is another question."

Consumer power

At the Open University, Peter Scott says they are trying to develop services that give students exactly what they want, from face-to-face learning to the fully online experience.

Pocket-sized university: Open University courses on a mobile phone

"We can produce brilliant televisual material and get it to you on YouTube, on iTunes U or even on the web. We don't need the one-to-many model.

"Conventional universities are forced into this one-to-many, someone lecturing to a timetable, because they have buildings to fill... Our materials are designed for you to work with remotely."

While the OU delivers to its students on a range of media, the greatest excitement is being stirred by its performance on iTunes U.

High-quality podcasts and video materials are now the norm, but the number of multimedia books will soon rise to 430. Open one of these on an iPad and you can click on pictures and links to move seamlessly to videos and podcasts.

"If there's music or audio it just plays," says Mr Scott. "I'm so excited, the potential is really great."

Mr Scott agrees that universities can now market their courses globally online, and arrange for support and accreditation locally if required - franchise heaven for institutions.

So does this make "Harvard in your bedroom" more likely?

"Hey, what's Harvard? Is it a brand, is it a couple of people? Think about this. What do you really want? Do you really want to learn? Because I can tell you that the best place to do it is here. It isn't in some Ivy League university. It's right here," says Mr Scott.

Anthony Salcito says online education will be a way of opening up more choice and getting beyond the big brand names of the most exclusive universities.

"As we open up education and technology, the tyranny of the education brand will change and evolve because of the choice that students have," he says.

Merlin John is an educational technology writer and founder of agent4change.net.

Manchester City's Carlos Tevez denies refusing to play

gainst Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

Tevez angered manager Roberto Mancini by seemingly not wanting to come on during the second half of the 2-0 loss.

Mancini claimed the Argentine would never play for him at City again, but Tevez has responded by saying he has "always given [his] best".

Tevez added: "There was some confusion on the bench and I believe my position may have been misunderstood."

In exchange for a contract reportedly worth £250,000 a week, the very least City should expect from Tevez is an agreement to play for the team and their supporters when requested by the manager.

TEVEZ IN ENGLAND

Jul 2009 - present Man City: 91 appearances, 53 goals
Aug 2007 - Jul 2009 Man Utd: 97 appearances, 34 goals
Aug 2006 - Aug 2007 West Ham: 29 appearances, 7 goals

He [Tevez] refuses to go in," Mancini said. "He refused to come on the pitch. What I said to Carlos is between me, him and the team [but] I am really disappointed because it is Carlos. I decide the changes.

"It's a bad situation - it's important for a player to help the team. [The situation] is impossible."

In the immediate aftermath of the match, Tevez, speaking through a translator, did not address his decision not to play.

"I think it's Mancini's decision. I've been a professional throughout," he told Sky Sports.

"I put my opinion, through, that I wanted to leave for family reasons and I still played my best."

Tevez has agitated for a move away from City twice in the past year, submitting a transfer request (which was later withdrawn) in December before, in July, asking for a move in order to be closer to his two daughters in his Argentina.

Archive: Tevez vows never to return to Manchester (June 2011)

A proposed £40m switch to Corinthians fell through in the summer as time ran out to complete the transfer before the Brazilian deadline.

In a statement explaining the deal's collapse, Sao Paulo club hinted that the deal could be revived, stating "we look forward to him being with us in the near future."

Tevez finished joint top-scorer in the Premier League last season with 20 goals, but was stripped of the City captaincy for the new campaign and appears to have slipped to fourth-choice striker at Etihad Stadium.

The former Manchester United and West Ham player was an unused substitute in Saturday's 2-0 win over Everton as Mancini opted to replace Dzeko with Mario Balotelli.

Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, told BBC Radio 5 live: "There have been mixed messages for some time. They [Mancini and Tevez] are human beings and emotions run high, but clearly things aren't right.

"They've got to get round the table and sort it out, it's unsatisfactory at the moment. It's happened before with players. The two have contrasting temperaments.

"Sometimes positions get entrenched, and that seems to be the situation here."

Battle of the knowledge superpowers

By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

Class of 2011 in Shanghai: China now has the second biggest share of the world's graduates

Knowledge is power - economic power - and there's a scramble for that power taking place around the globe.

In the United States, Europe and in rising powers such as China, there is a growth-hungry drive to invest in hi-tech research and innovation.

They are looking for the ingredients that, like Google, will turn a university project into a corporation. They are looking for the jobs that will replace those lost in the financial crash.

Not to invest would now be "unthinkable", says Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European commissioner responsible for research, innovation and science, who is trying to spur the European Union to keep pace in turning ideas into industries.

She has announced £6bn funding to kick-start projects next year - with the aim of supporting 16,000 universities, research teams and businesses. A million new research jobs will be needed to match global rivals in areas such as health, energy and the digital economy.

'Innovation emergency'

Emphasising that this is about keeping up, rather than grandstanding, she talks about Europe facing an "innovation emergency".

"In China, you see children going into school at 6.30am and being there until 8 or 9pm, concentrating on science, technology and maths. And you have to ask yourself, would European children do that?

Maire Geoghegan-Quinn: "The knowledge economy is the economy that is going to create the jobs"

"That's the competition that's out there. We have to rise to that - and member states have to realise that the knowledge economy is the economy that is going to create the jobs in the future, it's the area they have to invest in."

But the challenge for Europe, she says, is to be able to commercialise ideas as successfully as the United States, in the manner of the iPhone or Facebook.

The commissioner says that she was made abruptly aware of the barriers facing would-be innovators at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony dinner.

Instead of basking in the reflected glory of a prize winner funded by European grants, she said she had to listen to a speech attacking the red-tape and bureaucracy - and "generally embarrassing the hell out of me".

Determined that this would never happen again, she is driving ahead with a plan to simplify access to research funding and to turn the idea of a single European research area into a reality by 2014.

With storm clouds dominating the economic outlook, she sees investing in research and hi-tech industries - under the banner of the "Innovation Union" - as of vital practical importance in the push towards creating jobs and growth.

"We have to be able to say to the man and woman in the street, suffering intensely because of the economic crisis: this is a dark tunnel, but there is light at the end and we're showing you where it is."

Global forum

There has been sharpening interest in this borderland between education and the economy.

This month the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) staged its inaugural Global Forum on the Knowledge Economy.

HI-TECH FUTURE TOWNS

GIANT - the Grenoble Innovation for Advanced New Technologies - is an ambitious French example of a knowledge cluster, combining academic research and commercial expertise.
The classic examples have been in southern California and Boston in the US, and around Cambridge in the UK. Purpose-built centres include Education City in Qatar, Science City in Zurich and Digital Media City in Seoul.
There will be 40,000 people living, studying and working on the GIANT campus. Centres of research excellence will be side-by-side with major companies who will develop the commercial applications. This includes nanotechnology, green energy and the European Synchotron Radiation Facility (pictured above). A business school, the Grenoble Ecole de Management, is also part on site.
This hi-tech version of a factory town will have its own transport links and a green environment designed to attract people to live and stay here.

This was a kind of brainstorming for governments living on a shoestring.

The UK's Universities Minister, David Willetts, called for a reduction in unnecessary regulation, which slowed down areas such as space research.

The French response has been to increase spending, launching a £30bn grand project to set up a series of "innovation clusters" - in which universities, major companies and research institutions are harnessed together to create new knowledge-based industries.

It's an attempt to replicate the digital launchpad of Silicon Valley in California. And in some ways these are the like mill towns of the digital age, clustered around science campuses and hi-tech employers.

But the knowledge economy does not always scatter its seed widely. When the US is talked about as an innovation powerhouse, much of this activity is based in narrow strips on the east and west coasts.

A map of Europe measuring the number of patent applications shows a similar pattern - with high concentrations in pockets of England, France, Germany and Finland.

There are also empty patches - innovation dust bowls - which will raise tough political questions if good jobs are increasingly concentrated around these hi-tech centres. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that governments must invest more in education to escape a "hollowing out" of jobs.

Speed of change

Jan Muehlfeit, chairman of Microsoft Europe, explained what was profoundly different about these new digital industries - that they expand at a speed and scale that would have been impossible in the traditional manufacturing industries.

Governments trying to respond to such quicksilver businesses needed to ensure that young people were well-educated, creative and adaptable, he said.

As an example of a success story, Mr Muehlfeit highlighted South Korea. A generation ago they deliberately invested heavily in raising education standards. Now, as a direct result of this upskilling, the West is importing South Korean cars and televisions, he said.

“Start Quote

The triangle of innovation, education and skills is of extreme importance, defining both the problem and the solution”

Jose Angel Gurria OECD secretary general

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that South Korea's government has its own dedicated knowledge economy minister.

Robert Aumann, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, attending the OECD event, also emphasised this link between the classroom and the showroom. "How do you bring about innovation? Education, education, education," he said.

But this is far from a case of replacing jobs in old rusty industries with new hi-tech versions.

Gordon Day, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the US-based professional association for technology, made the point that digital businesses might generate huge incomes but they might not employ many people. In some cases they might only have a payroll one tenth of a traditional company of a similar size.

It's an uncomfortable truth for governments looking for a recovery in the jobs market.

Degrees of employment

But standing still isn't an option.

Figures released from the OECD have shown how much the financial crisis has changed the jobs market.

US universities retain a lead in the impact of research with well-funded institutions such as Harvard

There were 11 million jobs lost, half of them in the United States, and with low-skilled workers and manufacturing the hardest hit. If those losses are to be recovered, it is going to be with higher-skilled jobs, many of them requiring degrees.

But graduate numbers show the shifting balance of power.

From a standing start, China now has 12% of graduates in the world's big economies - approaching the share of the UK, Germany and France put together. The incumbent superpower, the United States, still towers above with 26% of the graduates.

South Korea now has the sixth biggest share of the world's graduates, ahead of countries such as France and Italy.

It means that the US and European countries have to compete on skills with these rising Asian powers.

But the US university system remains a formidably well-funded generator of research. A league table, generated for the first time this month, looked at the global universities with research making the greatest impact - with US universities taking 40 out of the top 50 places.

Their wealth was emphasised this week with the announcement of financial figures from the two Boston university powerhouses, Harvard and MIT, which had a combined endowment of £27bn.

"The triangle of innovation, education and skills is of extreme importance, defining both the problem and the solution," said the OECD's secretary general, Jose Angel Gurria.

"It's a world of cut-throat competition. We lost so much wealth, we lost so many exports, we lost so much well-being, we lost jobs, job, jobs," he told delegates in Paris.

"We must re-boot our economies with a more intelligent type of growth."