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Tác giả sưu tập những bài báo tiếng Anh về những chủ đề về kinh tế, khoa học, xã hôi, thể thao ở trên những trang web báo nước ngoài (ví dụ: www.economist.com, www.asiasentinel.com, www.wired.com, www.foreignpolicy.com). Các bài báo là những sự kiện cập nhập nhất theo thời gian, ngoài ra cũng có một số bài là những phát biểu của người nổi tiếng trên mạng xã hội (ví dụ: Facebook) bằng tiếng Anh.Mục đích sưu tầm là để có thể luyện đọc tiếng Anh để chuẩn bị cho các kì thi tiếng Anh quan trọng. Chú ý là đề thi IELTS thường lấy các bài báo ở trên trang economist làm đề thi của mình. Thời gian sưu tầm các bài báo từ tháng 11 năm 2013 đến tháng 8 năm 2014.

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LỜI GIỚI THIỆU

Tác giả sưu tập những bài báo tiếng Anh về những chủ đề về kinh tế, khoa học, xã hôi, thể thao ởtrên những trang web báo nước ngoài (ví dụ: www.economist.com, www.asiasentinel.com,www.wired.com, www.foreignpolicy.com)

Các bài báo là những sự kiện cập nhập nhất theo thời gian, ngoài ra cũng có một số bài là nhữngphát biểu của người nổi tiếng trên mạng xã hội (ví dụ: Facebook) bằng tiếng Anh

Mục đích sưu tầm là để có thể luyện đọc tiếng Anh để chuẩn bị cho các kì thi tiếng Anh quantrọng Chú ý là đề thi IELTS thường lấy các bài báo ở trên trang economist làm đề thi của mình Thời gian sưu tầm các bài báo từ tháng 11 năm 2013 đến tháng 8 năm 2014

Tác giả

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Gift-giving in rural areas has got out of hand, further impoverishing China’s poor 4

A giant passes 6

Very good on paper 8

Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume 11

By all means question climate policies But facts are facts 12

Who really owns the Senkaku islands? 14

A surprise appointment by Angela Merkel hints at who may succeed her one day 15

China’s new air-defence zone suggests a worrying new approach in the region 17

How does Colorado's marijuana market work? 20

Let’s unite as Team Humanity to revive degraded land: A conversation with TED Books author Allan Savory and rancher Gail Steiger 21

The surprising resilience of a minority language Romani 28

Cable news is less to blame for polarised politics than people thinkLexington 29

The language of power 32

Football wealth 32

Romanian cinema 33

The plunging currency club 37

It's like 1997 all over again 37

Emerging markets 37

The house wins 40

Readers' comments 41

Mark Zuckerberg 42

Nick Schrock 43

10 Years Later, the Hacker Way Still Rules at Facebook 44

Why Sochi is, ironically, the perfect place for the winter Olympics 46

As Dong Nguyen Removes His Game, Who Is The True Winner Of Flappy Bird? 47

How divorce and marriage compare internationally 49

Game over / The value of Flappy Bird 50

The science of love at first sight 51

The Economist explains 51

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More nations are heading into space 53

Some countries excel at summer sports while slipping up on snow 54

Edging closer to war 55

How will the West read Putin’s playbook? 59

Cost of Living Index 61

Despite a recent tragedy, air flights are getting safer 63

Readers' comments 64

The Flight of the Birdman: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out 65

Does having choice make us happy? 6 studies that suggest it doesn’t always 70

Foreign students are going off English universities 73

Fears of another surge 74

Modern slavery 76

The waters drowning Bosnia have unearthed thousands of land mines 77

Why shrinking populations may be no bad thing 80

Flight MH370 lost and will it ever be found? 82

Meet 3 people who might just save the world 82

U.S Sway in Asia Is Imperiled as China Challenges Alliances 86

How far will each team travel during the group stage of the World Cup? 89

The politicisation of Iraq’s security forces undermined their fighting ability 91

China’s ‘New’ Language of Diplomacy 94

Gaza, in numbers 96

How the first world war changed the world 98

Can Nathan Wolfe thwart the next AIDS before it spreads? 99

The readers’ quick guide for understanding a medical crisis 111

Once a laggard, the economy of the Philippines is starting to catch up 115

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Gift-giving in rural areas has got out of hand, further impoverishing China’s poor

Nov 30th 2013 | POPU VILLAGE, GUIZHOU PROVINCE

IT WAS a big week for Wang Wei On a recent Wednesday she had two weddings to attend,then on Saturday, two funerals Each involved a banquet, and by custom she was obliged /batbuoc, cuong bach/ to bring cash gifts That was no hardship a decade ago, when the going ratefor four banquets was the equivalent of $5-10 And a decade before that, she would have justbrought rice or corn from the family plot

It is a hardship now The cost of gift-giving in rural China has gone up much faster than incomes.This week Ms Wang’s outlays added up to 350 yuan, or close to $60—about a month’s income

A pleasant, open-faced woman of 41, she says it is money she could have used to buy basicappliances A water heater would be nice, she says, so her husband, in-laws and two teenagechildren wouldn’t have to boil water to bathe A fridge would be splendid But these areextravagances/hang dat do/ Giving gifts for big occasions is an inescapable, and increasinglyonerous, obligation for hundreds of millions of China’s farmers

Much attention has been paid recently to gift-giving in urban China In the past year theCommunist Party under Xi Jinping has cracked down on excessive official banqueting Suchunseemly displays of consumption are well-known opportunities for bribery/su dut lot/ But thebanqueting culture in rural and small-town China is a more vexing problem If officials’ lavishparties are a symbol of social inequality, they are not a significant cause of it The gift-givingpractices of everyday weddings (such as the one pictured above), funerals and milestonebirthdays are doing much more to deepen actual inequality

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Exchanging gifts at such occasions has been a part of village life in China for centuries Thepractice survived Mao’s political campaigns and indeed took on more importance YunxiangYan, an anthropologist at UCLA, observes that Mao’s attacks on clans as bases of power

broadened the network of gift-giving to friends and, in the post-Mao reform era, to guanxi, or

connections, outside the village As Chinese incomes rose, the widening networks for givinggifts—and the obligation never to give less than you last received—have fed a sharp upwardspiral in gift amounts, a ruinous development for the poor

An academic study of gift-giving in Guizhou, a poor south-western province, found that from

2005 to 2009 average gift amounts in three rural villages grew by 18-45% annually, comparedwith 10% annual income growth The average share of income spent on gifts more than doubled

—from 8% to 17%—while the share of income spent on food dropped, from 48% to 42% One

of the study’s authors, Xi Chen of the Yale School of Public Health, concluded that this had adetrimental/co hai/ impact on antenatal health, as poor pregnant mothers cut back on food tokeep pace with gift-giving

The root of the problem is that the social model of rural gift-giving ignores income, andconforming is not simply a matter of saving face /du the dien/ The rural poor continue to give

even when they cannot afford it, says Mr Yan, because of a powerful imperative of renqing, or

personal feelings Failure to fulfil the obligation of reciprocity, or to show consideration forothers’ feelings and emotional responses, is regarded as “an immoral act and thus a violation of

renqing ethics,” he says.

The burden /trach nhiem/imposed by renqing is a painfully public one, since the giving is done

publicly At a typical banquet guests line up to give cash at a reception table, where someonerecords the amount and the name of the guest in the family’s gift ledger No matter how little you

earn, you are expected to give the prevailing /chiem chu yeu/ amount And if your guanxi with

the host is close, you must give more, regardless /khong quan tam/of income

The careful record-keeping system also puts pressure on people to match previous gifts, adynamic that ensures the prevailing standard will only keep rising Any factor that channels moreincome to some in a village but not all—migrant workers’ remittances, a windfall fromgovernment compensation for using local land, or, as with some of Ms Wang’s neighbours, fromfarming a cash crop like tobacco—increases the obligations for everyone In Popu village, wherethe average annual income is less than $1,000, close friends and relatives must give at least 100yuan ($16), compared with 10 or 20 yuan a decade ago

There is not necessarily a benefit for those who host banquets either: the study on which MrChen worked found that banquet expenses have increased too They can cost the hosts severaltimes as much as they collect in gifts Still, some banquets can be moneymakers, and in biggertowns there are more of them, with many more guests, than in the past: 80th birthdays, one-month birthdays for babies, parties for children going to college, housewarmings (In themountains of Hubei province, some farmers hold banquets when their pigs give birth.)

If Ms Wang wants to try earning her money back, she is out of luck for now, lacking anoccasion Her oldest son is 17, and sons are costly to marry off anyway: the bride’s family

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expects a house in the bargain /khe uoc, keo uoc/ She has not held a banquet since 2005—whenher family moved into its new house—and the take was a pittance, a few hundred dollars beforeexpenses.

She expects she will give more in gifts this year (perhaps $1,000 in all) than she earns in incomefrom odd jobs and farming her third of an acre of corn and rice, and that she will have to borrow

to make up the difference Attending banquets without giving is not an option, she says Notattending is the only way to avoid giving That is possible in big cities, where relations are morefragmented, but not in a village, says Ms Wang The ties that bind more tightly can pinch moretightly too

A giant passes

Dec 5th 2013, 22:22 by The Economist

The greatness of Nelson Mandela challenges us all

AMONG Nelson Mandela’s many achievements, two stand out First, he was the world’s mostinspiring example of fortitude/su kien cuong/, magnanimity /hao hiep/and dignity /thai do duonghoang/in the face of oppression /su dan ap/, serving more than 27 years in prison for his beliefthat all men and women are created equal During the brutal/hung ac, tan bao/ years of hisimprisonment on Robben Island, thanks to his own patience, humour and capacity forforgiveness, he seemed freer behind bars than the men who kept him there, locked up as theywere in their own self-demeaning prejudices /y kien, thanh kien/ Indeed, his warders/cai tu/were among those who came to admire him most

Second, and little short of miraculous/huyen dieu, than dieu/, was the way in which heengineered and oversaw South Africa’s transformation from a byword for nastiness and

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narrowness into, at least in intent, a rainbow nation in which people, no matter what their colour,were entitled to be treated with respect That the country has not always lived up to his standardsgoes to show how high they were.

Exorcising/tru ta (ton giao)/ the curse /loi nguyen rua, tai uong, tai hoa/of colour

As a politician, and as a man, Mr Mandela had his contradictions/su mau thuan/ (see article) Hewas neither a genius nor, as he often said himself, a saint/vi thanh/ Some of his early writingswere banal Marxist ramblings /su ko mach lac sao rong cua chu nghia Max/, even if the sense ofanger with which they were infused /ngam/was justifiable But his charisma /me luc/was evidentfrom his youth He was a born leader who feared nobody, debased himself before no one andnever lost his sense of humour He was handsome and comfortable in his own skin In a country

in which the myth of racial superiority was enshrined in law, he never for a moment doubted hisright, and that of all his compatriots, to equal treatment Perhaps no less remarkably, once themajority of citizens were able to have their say he never for a moment denied the right of hiswhite compatriots to equality For all the humiliation/su lam nhuc, lam be mat/ he suffered at thehands of white racists before he was released in 1990, he was never animated /co vu, lam chosong/ by feelings of revenge /bao thu/ He was himself utterly without prejudice /phien dien/,which is why he became a symbol of tolerance and justice across the globe

Perhaps even more important for the future of his country was his ability to think deeply, and tochange his mind When he was set free, many of his fellow members of the African NationalCongress (ANC) remained dedicated /cong hien/ disciples /mon de/ of the dogma /tinnguong/promoted by their party’s supporter, the Soviet Union, whose own sudden /thinhlinh/implosion/am khep, su dinh huong vao trong/ helped shift the global balance of power that

in turn contributed to apartheid’s demise/su chet, ket thuc/ Many of his comrades weresimultaneously members of the ANC and the South African Communist Party who hoped todismember /chia cat/ the capitalist economy /nha kinh te tu ban/ and bring its treasure trove /vattim ra/of mines and factories into public ownership Nor was the ANC convinced that aWestminster-style parliamentary democracy/dang dan chu/—with all the checks and balances ofbourgeois institutions/thiet lap giai cap tu san/, such as an independent judiciary /tu phap/—wasworth preserving, perverted as it had been under apartheid

Mr Mandela had himself harboured /nuoi duong (y nghi xau)/such doubts But immediatelybefore and after his release from prison, he sought out a variety of opinions among those who,unlike himself, had been fortunate /tot so/ enough to roam /di choi rong, di lang thang/ the worldand compare competing systems He listened and pondered /tram tu, suy nghi, can nhac ve/—anddecided that it would be better for all his people, especially the poor black majority, if SouthAfrica’s existing economic model were drastically altered but not destroyed, and if a liberaldemocracy /dang ty do/, under a universal franchise /quyen tham chinh/, were kept too

That South Africa did, in the end, move with relatively little bloodshed to become a multiracialfree-market democracy was indeed a near-miracle for which the whole world must thank him.The country he leaves behind is a far better custodian of human dignity than the one whose firstdemocratically elected /duoc chon/ president he became in 1994 A self-confident black middleclass is emerging Democracy is well-entrenched, with regular elections, a vibrant /chan dong/

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press, generally decent /dung dan/ courts and strong institutions And South Africa still has easilysub-Saharan Africa’s biggest and most sophisticated /nguy bien ?? having a lot of experience andknowledge about the world/ economy.

But since Mr Mandela left the presidency in 1999 his beloved country/dat nuoc yeu quy cua ong/has disappointed under two sorely flawed/nhuoc diem/leaders, Thabo Mbeki and now JacobZuma While the rest of Africa’s economy has perked up, South Africa’s has stumbled Nigeria’sswelling GDP is closing in on South Africa’s Corruption and patronage within the ANC havebecome increasingly flagrant An authoritarian and populist tendency in ruling circles hasbecome more strident The racial animosity /chau han/that Mr Mandela so abhorred is infectingpublic discourse/thao luan chinh thuc/ The gap between rich and poor has remained stubbornly /kho chua, buong binh, ngoan co/wide Barely two-fifths of working-age people have jobs Only60% of school-leavers get the most basic high-school graduation certificate Shockingly for acountry so rich in resources, nearly a third of its people still live on less than $2 a day

Without the protection of Mr Mandela’s saintly aura /tinh hoa phat tiet (nguoi)/, the ANC will bemore harshly /khac nghiet, cay nghiet/judged Thanks to its corruption and inefficiency, italready faces competition in some parts of the country from the white-led Democratic Alliance.South Africa would gain if the ANC split, so there were two big black-led parties, one composed/ket hop/of communists and union leaders, the other more liberal and market-friendly

Man of Africa, hero of the world

The ANC’s failings are not Mr Mandela’s fault Perhaps he could have been more vociferous/totieng, am i/ in speaking out against Mr Mbeki’s lethal misguidedness on the subject ofHIV/AIDS, which cost thousands of lives Perhaps he should have spoken up more robustlyagainst the corruption around Mr Zuma In foreign affairs he was too loyal to past friends, such

as Fidel Castro He should have been franker /thang than, boc truc/in condemning /chitrich/Robert Mugabe for his ruination of Zimbabwe

But such shortcomings—and South Africa’s failings since his retirement from active politics—pale into insignificance when set against the magnitude of his overall achievement It is hard tothink of anyone else in the world in recent times with whom every single person, in every corner

of the Earth, can somehow /ly do chua xac dinh/ identify He was, quite simply, a wonderfulman

Very good on paper

Dec 12th 2013, 9:40 by M.I | HANOI

Education in Vietnam

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ON SATURDAY morning, December 14th, America's secretary of state, John Kerry, will travel

to Vietnam One of his talking points, according to the State Department, will be the

"empowering /tang them /role of education” But it seems like Vietnam has already taken themessage

On December 3rd, the OECD released the results from its Programme for International StudentAssessment (PISA), an exam administered every three years to 15- and 16-year-olds in dozens ofcountries Vietnam recently joined the test for the first time, and it scored remarkably well—higher in maths than America and Britain, though not as high as Shanghai or Singapore NguyenVinh Hien, a deputy minister for education, characterised Vietnam's overall 17th-place rankingout of 65 countries and economies as a pleasant “surprise.”

The PISA scores, as they are known, measured how a half-million students from randomlyselected schools answered written and multiple-choice questions in a two-hour test Mathematicswas the primary focus, but students were also evaluated on reading, science and problem-solving Coverage /viec dua tin/ of the scores by the Western news media suggested that theimpressive maths performance by Vietnam, where per-capita GDP is only about $1,600, wasperhaps a bit humbling /xau ho/ for education officials in Washington, London and other self-regarding world capitals

What explains Vietnam's good score? Christian Bodewig of the World Bank says it reflects,among other positive things, years of investment in education by the government and a "highdegree of professionalism /trinh do chuyen mon, nghiep vu/ and discipline in classrooms acrossthe country” But Mr Bodewig adds that the score may be impressive in part because so manypoor and disadvantaged Vietnamese students drop out of school The World Bank reports that in

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2010 the gross enrolment rate at upper-secondary schools in Vietnam was just 65%, comparedwith 89% and 98% in America and Britain, respectively South Korea's rate was 95%

A chorus of Vietnamese education specialists say that Vietnam's PISA score does not fullyreflect the reality of its education system, which is hamstrung by a national curriculum thatencourages rote memorisation over critical thinking and creative problem-solving "Every child

in this country learns the same thing," and nationwide tests merely reinforce the intellectualhomogeneity that results, in the lament /loi than van/of To Kim Lien, the director of the Centrefor Education and Development, a Vietnamese non-profit in Hanoi Ms Lien reckons that instead

of catalysing educational reform, the score might provide a convenient excuse for complacency

in matters of policy And the old-fashioned, inward-looking /tu dong cua/ Ministry of Educationand Training, she adds, is a past master at complacency /tu man/

Another systemic problem is a general lack of “integrity” in Vietnam's education sector, in thewords of Nguyen Thi Kieu Vien of the Global Transparency Education Network, a new initiative

of Transparency International, a watchdog based in Berlin In a recent survey the organisationfound that 49% of Vietnamese respondents perceived their education sector to be "corrupt" or

"highly corrupt” The percentage was higher than that found in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesiaand Cambodia Corruption is plainly evident /bang chung ro rang/ at elite Vietnamese schools,where slots for pupils are routinely sold for $3,000 each Yet it also exists on a smaller scale, insubtler forms Many Vietnamese teachers hold extra tuitions, outside of regular school hours, for

a small fee of between $2.50 and $5 per lesson Not all parents can afford to pay these fees, and

so the practice tends to exacerbate inequality /lam te hai them su khong cong bang/

education sector /cai cach giao duc/ Kim Ngoc Minh, an education researcher in Hanoi, says theresolution is the most comprehensive and ambitious /tham vong/ in a generation Other educationspecialists however wonder whether the resolution, which calls for reform in broad stokes, willtranslate into actual policy changes

Actual changes are badly needed /nhung su thay doi da khong duoc quan tam/ In 2008,researchers from Harvard reported that Vietnam's higher-education system was in "crisis", andthat it lagged far behind the systems of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, to say nothing ofthose in China, Taiwan and South Korea As a warning, they pointed to the comparative lack ofarticles published by Vietnamese researchers in peer-reviewed international journals TheHarvard memo also said the government was awarding research funding "uncompetitively”, andthat there was a vast difference between what graduates had learned and what prospectiveemployers wanted them to know

These shortcomings can be linked to others in primary and secondary schools Ms Lien of theCentre for Education and Development says that a basic reform package might begin with theyounger age group, by including parents in a decision-making process that has long beendominated by the education ministry Nearly two years ago, she was among a dozen senioreducators who submitted paperwork to the ministry requesting permission to establish a nationalparent-teacher association Their group still has not received an official response Perhaps theministry is afraid of what Vietnamese parents might say, if they had a platform

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(Picture credit: AFP)

http://www.cenedella.com/leonardo-da-vincis-resume/

Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume

On January 29, 2010 by Marc Cenedella

“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim /tuyen cao/ themselves skilled contrivers /nguoi phat minh/ of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice /phien dien/to anyone else, to explain myself to your Excellency/cac ha/, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation /n phe chuan, tan thanh/to work with effect at opportune moments /thoi gian thich hop/on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.

1 I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.

2 I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining/quan he/ to such expeditions./quan sat/

3 If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail /loi ich/oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.

4 Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment/ton hai/ and confusion/hoang loan/.

5 And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels which will resist/chong lai/ the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.

6 I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot/diem xac dinh/, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.

7 I will make covered chariots/chien xa/, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance/ton hai/.

8 In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance /phao lon/of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.

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9 Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive/thiet ke, phat minh/ catapults/may lang da/, mangonels/may ban da/, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.

10 In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.

11 I can carry out sculpture/dieu khac/ in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.

Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency –

to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility/long khiem ton cuc han/, etc.”

By all means question climate policies But facts are facts

Climate science/ Stubborn things

Oct 5th 2013 | From the print edition

IN 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of scientists, said theglaciers of the Himalayas could melt by 2035 This was complete fiction It also said globalsurface temperatures would go on rising by about 0.2°C a decade for the next 20 years They

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have been more or less flat since 1998 The IPCC has now issued its sextennial check-up on thehealth of the global climate (see article) Why would anyone believe what they say?

Because there are climate facts—and facts are stubborn things One is that the upper 75 metres ofthe oceans have warmed by 0.1°C a decade in the past 40 years and there is no sign of thisslowing down Water expands, and ice melts, as temperatures rise, so sea levels have risen 19cm

in the past century and the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about 500,000 square kilometres adecade since 1979

These facts matter because the oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface and are itsprimary heat sink (90% of the extra warming over the past 40 years has gone into the oceans)

By most measures—though not all—global warming is continuing

But what about the pause in air temperatures? Isn’t that a fact? Indeed it is But right now itmatters more to climate science than climate policy The extent of the pause is sensitive to thestarting-point chosen when defining it The recent temperature peak was 1998 The world haswarmed by 0.05°C a decade since then, only a quarter of the rise the IPCC forecast But in 1998

El Niño, an occasional warming of the Pacific Ocean which boosts temperatures around theplanet, was unusually large If you start in 2000 and compare the decade of the 2000s with the1990s, you find that the IPCC estimate was close This does not mean the pause does not exist.But it is more or less striking depending on where you view it from

More important, it is not clear yet how much weight to give to a 15-year period Half ageneration is long enough to come to a judgment on most things But climate cycles lasthundreds, or tens of thousands, of years It used to be a rule of thumb that climate scientistswanted 30 years of observations before judging that something was a trend, rather than afluctuation Partly for that reason, they were slow and reluctant in taking the temperature hiatusseriously

The decade-and-a-half to 2013 was unusual because it also saw a big rise in carbon-dioxideemissions, which, all things being equal, should have pushed up temperatures everywhere, anddidn’t And that raises important questions: why have sea temperatures risen but not airtemperatures? Is more heat going into the deep oceans? Is the climate reacting more slowly torising concentrations of CO2? But these are questions about how the climate is changing, notwhether it is They do not yet mean global warming itself has hit the pause button

Don’t shoot the messenger

Imagine an economy that has been overheating for a decade and suddenly experiences twoquarters of flat growth All other indicators—household debt, employment, the trade deficit—arestill signalling a boom How should one react? Policymakers might say the situation needswatching or that the relationship between GDP and debt or employment might be changing But

it would be reckless to declare that overheating is at an end or to abandon attempts to cool theeconomy

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Some worries about global warming are prompted by the extravagance of some climate policies.

In particular, European subsidies for solar and wind, which are hugely expensive, are doing little

to cut emissions But reservations about the policies should not be used as reasons for denyingthe facts

Who really owns the Senkaku islands?

Dec 3rd 2013, 23:50 by D.Z

The Economist explains

OVER the past year the Senkaku islands, a clutch of five uninhabited islets/nhung dao nho/ inthe East China Sea, have shown their ability to convulse /kich liet chan dong/relations betweenChina and Japan, Asia’s two biggest powers They have even raised the spectre /xung dot/ofmilitary conflict, which America fears it might be dragged into The stakes /loi ich/ are high Sowho actually owns the Senkakus?

If possession is nine-tenths of the law, the answer is simple: Japan It claims to have

“discovered” the islands, a terra nullius belonging to no one, in 1884 In early 1895 it annexed

/phu them/ them, shortly after Japan had defeated a weakened China in a brief war and seizedTaiwan, which lies just to their south, as war spoils/chien loi pham/ One Tatsushiro Koga waslicensed to develop the islands He set up a bonito-processing station /tram ca ngu/whose 200employees also killed the once-abundant short-tailedalbatross /duoi ngan cua chim hai au/ for itsfeathers The Koga family’s last employees left during the second world war Upon Japan’sdefeat in 1945 control fell to the Americans, who used the islands for bombing practice In 1972,

at the end of the American occupation, the Japanese government resumed responsibility for theSenkakus

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By then, however, oil and gas reserves had been identified under the seabed surrounding theislands China, which calls them the Diaoyu islands, asserted /tuyen bo/ its claim, as did Taiwan,which is closest to the islands (and which is also claimed by China) China’s claim is vague/hodo/, and is based on things such as a Chinese portolano from 1403 recording the islands It allspeaks to an earlier world in which China lay at the heart of an ordered East Asian system oftributary states—an order shattered /vo vun/ by Japan’s militarist rise from the late 19th century.What this history tells you is not—contrary to modern Chinese claims—that China controlled theDiaoyus, for it never did Rather, the islands were known to the Chinese because they served asnavigational waypoints for tributary missions between the great cosmopolitan/mang tinh the gioi/Chinese port of Quanzhou and Naha, capital of the Ryukyu island kingdom, China’s most loyalvassal In 1879 Japan snuffed out/ket thuc/ the ancient kingdom Naha is now the main town onthe main island of Japan’s archipelago prefecture of Okinawa/dia hat cua Okinawa/ SomeChinese nationalists call not only for the Senkakus’ return, but for Okinawa too.

In the late 1970s China and Japan agreed to kick the dispute into/dam phan, tranh luan/ the longgrass But China’s attitude has hardened, especially since September 2012, when the Japanesegovernment bought from their private owner three of the islands it did not already own It was inorder to prevent them falling into the hands of an ultranationalist/chu nghia dan toc cuc doan/,Shintaro Ishihara, then governor of Tokyo But China saw it as a provocation /tuyen chien/andsent vessels and aircraft to challenge Japan’s control of the Senkakus China’s announcement onNovember 23rd of an East China Sea “air defence identification zone” which covers theSenkakus is further evidence of its attempt to alter the status quo Much more than presumed/giadinh/ oil and gas reserves, emotion is now driving China’s actions, in particular notions ofnational honour and a desire to regain the centrality in East Asia that it for centuries enjoyed.This dispute is a microcosm of that desire, which makes it so potentially dangerous

A surprise appointment by Angela Merkel hints at who may succeed her one day

Dec 21st 2013 | BERLIN | From the print edition

Germany’s new government/A guide to future chancellors?

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TWELVE weeks after its election, followed by the longest coalition negotiations in its history,Germany has a new government at last And although there was never any doubt that AngelaMerkel would continue leading it as chancellor, the cabinet she chose contained a surprise:Germany’s new defence minister will be Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman in that job Mrsvon der Leyen (centre, above), who at 55 is four years younger than Mrs Merkel, is now the mostobvious member of Mrs Merkel’s party, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), torun for chancellor when Mrs Merkel, who is now starting her third term, steps down.

Mrs von der Leyen’s most likely opponent would be Sigmar Gabriel (left, above), leader of thecentre-left Social Democrats (SPD) Since the SPD’s poor showing in the election (it got only25.7% of votes, against 41.5% for Mrs Merkel’s camp), he has skilfully manoeuvred his partyinto another “grand coalition” with Mrs Merkel, wrangling concessions out of her in the processand winning a referendum of party members to approve the pact by the huge margin of 75% to25% Now he is vice-chancellor and minister with a newly combined portfolio of energy and theeconomy This puts him in charge of Germany’s biggest domestic challenge, the transition fromnuclear and coal to solar and wind

As defence minister, a challenging portfolio that includes managing a continuing reform of thearmy, Mrs von der Leyen could build up her stature for a future run against Mr Gabriel She willhave few rivals, because the most senior cabinet posts are staying in the hands of veterans fromthe preceding generation The CDU’s Wolfgang Schäuble, 71, remains as finance minister(suggesting that little change can be expected in Germany’s management of the euro crisis) TheSPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier becomes foreign minister again, the same job he held in MrsMerkel’s first term, from 2005 to 2009 Thomas de Maizière, whom Mrs von der Leyen replacesand who will now become interior minister, a job he has had before, is still damaged by aprocurement scandal from his time as defence minister

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Petite and sprightly, Mrs von der Leyen has been close to politics her whole life, as the daughter

of Ernst Albrecht, a former premier of Lower Saxony But she personally entered politics only at

42, after living in Belgium, Britain and America, learning fluent English and French, studyingand then practising gynaecology and having seven children Since Mrs Merkel becamechancellor in 2005, Mrs von der Leyen has had stints as minister of families and women, then oflabour and welfare

During these years, she has proved herself unfailingly loyal to Mrs Merkel, even after a personaldisappointment in 2010, when the chancellor did not nominate her for federal president as shehad hoped She also cultivated an image as the social conscience of her party With rare bravura,she demonstrated personally how to combine work and family but also pushed policies thatwould help other women do the same These views have made her popular with voters but attimes less appreciated by conservatives in the CDU To become a plausible candidate to succeedMrs Merkel, she will first have to shore up her support within the party’s base

Women are gaining a higher profile in Mrs Merkel’s government more generally Four of theSPD’s cabinet positions have gone to women, with some of the portfolios dearest to partymembers: labour, women and integration of foreigners In another surprise, Jörg Asmussen, aSocial Democrat who has the German seat on the board of the European Central Bank (ECB),will return to Berlin Mr Asmussen will be missed in Frankfurt, having acted as a bridge betweenthe bank and the German government and voters in the euro crisis The candidate to replace him

at the ECB is another woman, Sabine Lautenschläger-Peiter, the number two at the GermanBundesbank She belongs to no party, but is an expert on bank regulation who often talks outagainst bankers with big bonuses

Mrs Merkel has given no hints about her own career plans beyond denying some speculation thatshe might step down in mid-term, around the time of her tenth anniversary as chancellor Theprevious CDU chancellor, Helmut Kohl, served four terms but then lost the 1998 election.Thinking of him and Konrad Adenauer, Germany’s first post-war chancellor, Mrs von der Leyenhas in the past evaded questions about her ambitions by saying that in the CDU “each generationhas its chancellor,” and hers already has Angela Merkel If Mrs von der Leyen does her new jobwell, she may reconsider

China’s new air-defence zone suggests a worrying new approach in the region

Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition

China, Japan and America/Face-off

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THE announcement by a Chinese military spokesman on November 23rd sounded bureaucratic:any aircraft flying through the newly designated Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in theEast China Sea must notify Chinese authorities in advance and follow instructions from its air-traffic controllers America’s response was rapid On November 26th Barack Obama sent two B-

52 bombers to fly through the new zone without notifying China (see article) This face-offmarks the most worrying strategic escalation between the two countries since 1996, whenChina’s then president, Jiang Zemin, ordered a number of exclusion zones for missile tests in theTaiwan Strait, leading America to send two aircraft-carriers there

Plenty of countries establish zones in which they require aircraft to identify themselves, but theytend not to be over other countries’ territory The Chinese ADIZ overlaps with Japan’s own air-defence zone (see map) It also includes some specks of rock that Japan administers and calls theSenkaku islands (and which China claims and calls the Diaoyus), as well as a South Korean reef,known as Ieodo The move is clearly designed to bolster China’s claims (see article) OnNovember 28th Japan and South Korea sent aircraft into the zone

Teenage testosterone

Growing economic power is bound to go hand-in-hand with growing regional assertiveness That

is fine, so long as the behaviour of the rising power remains within international norms In thiscase, however, China’s does not; and America, which has guaranteed free navigation of the seasand skies of East Asia for 60 years, is right to make that clear

How worrying China’s move is depends partly on the thinking behind it It may be that, like ateenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated theimpact of its actions The claim that America’s bombers had skirted the edge of the ADIZ wasgawkily embarrassing But teenagers who do not realise the consequences of their actions often

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cause trouble: China has set up a casus belli with its neighbours and America for generations to

come

It would thus be much more worrying if the provocation was deliberate The “Chinese dream” of

Xi Jinping, the new president, is a mixture of economic reform and strident nationalism Theannouncement of the ADIZ came shortly after a party plenum at which Mr Xi announced a string

of commendably radical domestic reforms The new zone will appeal to the nationalist camp,which wields huge power, particularly in the armed forces It also helps defend Mr Xi againstany suggestions that he is a westernising liberal

If this is Mr Xi’s game, it is a dangerous one East Asia has never before had a strong China and

a strong Japan at the same time China dominated the region from the mists of history until the1850s, when the West’s arrival spurred Japan to modernise while China tried to resist theforeigners’ influence China is eager to re-establish dominance over the region Bitterness at thememory of the barbaric Japanese occupation in the second world war sharpens this desire It isthis possibility of a clash between a rising and an established power that lies behind the oft-usedparallel between contemporary East Asia and early 20th-century Europe, in which the Senkakusplay the role of Sarajevo

Seas of troubles

Tensions are not at that level Japan’s constitution bans it from any military aggression andChina normally goes to great lengths to stress that its rise—unlike that of Japan in the 1920s and1930s—will be peaceful But the neighbours are nervous, especially as the establishment of theADIZ appears to match Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea

Chinese maps show what is known as the “nine-dash line” encompassing all the South ChinaSea In the wake of the global financial crisis, perhaps believing its own narrative of Chinese riseand American decline, it began to overreach in its dealings with its neighbours It sent ships todisputed reefs, pressed foreign oil companies to halt exploration and harassed American andVietnamese naval vessels in the South China Sea These actions brought a swift rebuke fromAmerica’s then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and China appeared to back off and return toits regional charm offensive Some observers say that the government is using the ADIZ toestablish a nine-dash line covering the East China Sea as well They fear China’s next move will

be to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea, to assert control over both the sea and the airthroughout the region

Whether or not China has such specific ambitions, the ADIZ clearly suggests that China does notaccept the status quo in the region and wants to change it Any Chinese leader now has an excusefor going after Japanese planes Chinese ships are already ignoring Japanese demands not toenter the waters surrounding the disputed islands

What can be done? Next week Joe Biden, America’s vice-president, arrives in China The timingmay be uncomfortable, but it is fortuitous Mr Biden and Mr Xi know each other well: before Mr

Xi became president, he spent five days in America at Mr Biden’s invitation Mr Biden is alsogoing to South Korea and Japan

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America’s “pivot” towards Asia is not taken very seriously there: Mr Obama is seen as distracted

by his domestic problems Mr Biden could usefully make clear America’s commitment toguaranteeing freedom of navigation in the region Japan and South Korea, who squabble overpetty issues, need to be told to get over their differences As for China, it needs to behave like aresponsible world power, not a troublemaker willing to sacrifice 60 years of peace in north-eastAsia to score some points by grabbing a few windswept rocks It should accept Japan’ssuggestion of a military hotline, similar to the one that is already established between Beijing andWashington

The region must work harder to build some kind of architecture where regional powers candiscuss security If such a framework had existed in Europe in 1914, things might have turnedout differently

How does Colorado's marijuana market work?

Jan 6th 2014, 23:50 by T.N | DENVER

The Economist explains

ON JANUARY 1st, 420 days after the citizens of Colorado voted to legalise marijuana, around

37 pot shops across the state opened their doors to all-comers Stoners in Denver and other citiesbraved freezing temperatures and two-hour queues to be part of this historic moment, forColorado has become the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to oversee a legal, regulatedmarket for recreational marijuana (20 states plus Washington, DC, allow patients with doctors'recommendations to buy the stuff) Some customers were turned away, some shops have beenforced temporarily to close while they replenish stocks, but "Green Wednesday", as it wasinevitably dubbed, was generally considered a big success How exactly does Colorado'smarijuana market function?

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Amendment 64, the measure approved by 55% of voters in November 2012, set certainparameters for Colorado's marijuana regime, including maximum tax rates and the rights of citiesand counties to exclude pot shops from their jurisdictions But the details were worked out byofficials and legislators over the course of 2013 Unlike many states (including Washington,which has also legalised marijuana but not yet licensed recreational outlets) Colorado's medical-marijuana system is well regulated; not only did that make full legalisation an easier sell tovoters, it provided a foundation for the recreational industry Until October only licensed medicaloutlets "in good standing" can serve recreational customers, which is why lots of the shops thatopened on January 1st have names like Citi-Med and Medicine Man Colorado's system of

"vertical integration", under which retailers must cultivate most of the stuff they sell themselves,will also remain in place until October; this makes monitoring easier for the state, even if oneirritated observer likens it to a supermarket owning apple orchards

One challenge is to set prices at what Mark Kleiman, an analyst, calls the "Goldilocks point": toolow and you encourage excessive consumption and out-of-state exports; too high and you leaveroom for illicit dealers The market has not settled in yet, but prices for recreational marijuana,currently around $250-$300 for an ounce of good weed, will be significantly higher than themedical stuff, thanks to hefty taxes: a 15% excise tax levied on "average market rate" and aspecial 10% sales tax (the state's general 2.9% sales tax will also apply) Only those aged over 21may buy, possess and use marijuana in Colorado; they may consume it only on private propertywith the consent of the property-owner, and they may not transfer it across state lines Residentsmay purchase up to an ounce at a time; out-of-staters are limited to a quarter-ounce, and, ifbuying weed rather than edibles, face the extra challenge of finding somewhere to smoke it:Amsterdam-style "coffee shops" are banned Locals can grow up to six plants at home, and giveaway (but not sell) the proceeds (The full rulebook extends to 136 pages.)

Implementing all this will be hard enough But Colorado's officials must also keep the federalgovernment happy Marijuana remains illegal under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, and thefeds have been more than willing to crack down on some medical-marijuana operators in recentyears In August James Cole, the deputy attorney-general, issued a memo suggesting that thefederal government will allow the experiments in Colorado and Washington to proceed so long

as they do not impede eight "enforcement priorities", including the diversion of marijuana tominors and to other states But that is not a foregone conclusion: Colorado-sourced medicalmarijuana has been turning up in neighbouring states The American public is beginning to rejectprohibition and its attendant injustices If Colorado and Washington manage not to screw things

up, more states will surely follow them in legalising—including California, probably in 2016.But if it all goes wrong, as it may, the whole thing could go up in smoke

Let’s unite as Team Humanity to revive degraded land: A

conversation with TED Books author Allan Savory and rancher Gail Steiger

Allan Savory is a biologist who has spent a lifetime trying to save degraded land Gail Steiger is

a rancher and filmmaker who has long followed his work Below, what happens when the twotalk Make sure to read to the end for the stab-you-in-the-heart final question

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All over the world, land is turning into desert at an alarming rate Biologist Allan Savory hasdedicated a lifetime to figuring out what’s causing this “desertification.” Finally, after decades ofwork in the field, Savory discovered a radical solution—one that went against everythingscientists had always thought He used huge herds of livestock, managed to mimic the behavior

of the natural herds that roamed grasslands centuries ago, and saw degraded land revert to robustecosystems

Here, Savory talks with rancher, performer and acclaimed filmmaker Gail Steiger about his new

TED Book The Grazing Revolution: A Radical Plan to Save the Earth, detailing his remarkable

and often difficult journey to discovery—one that ultimately ends with great hope for the future

Gail Steiger: First of all, I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for—actually, for the world I’ve been familiar with your work since your book in ’88 Lots of my friends here in Arizona attended your school, and you’ve just made a great contribution to all of

us Can I ask you for some historical information? Tell me a little bit about the most valuable experiences that informed your thinking today.

Allan Savory: Oh, gosh That goes back a long way Let me just start before I left university andjoined the Game Department, in what was then Colonial Service, in Northern Rhodesia (It’snow Zambia.) I was very passionate about wildlife, elephants in particular, but also rhino and soon— the big game of Africa And I had this new, shiny degree, and training as a botanist,zoologist and ecologist But when I went into the field, I hit reality What I’d been taught justsimply wasn’t making sense It didn’t match with what I was seeing To give you an example:

We were taught that overgrazing caused desertification More specifically, that desertificationwas due to too many livestock, and that the answer was reducing the numbers of animals andburning the grass to keep it healthy

Well, I was soon engaged in burning massive areas of land to keep the grass healthy This wasland that was to become our future national parks I couldn’t help but observe the fact that wewere baring the soil, and that the bare soil was subsequently being carried away by the rainfall.And as I mention in my TED Book, I actually took to walking in the rain so that I could see whatwas happening for myself And just found it was wrong, you know? Of course, I didn’t haveanswers, but I began very seriously looking for them

Then came one of the biggest mistakes of my life Because the land degradation was so bad, butthere wasn’t any livestock on it, I proved the problem must be that there were too manyelephants And the government, after investigating my book and approving, shot 40,000elephants But the desertification only got worse, and it’s still getting worse to this day As I lookback, one my biggest findings came from trying something, making a mistake and saying, “Well,why did it go wrong?” So actually some of the biggest findings came from the failures

Another big finding for me was when I happened to pick up a farming magazine off a coffeetable in a farmer’s house and read an article by John Acocks John was a botanist studying theextension of the Karoo Desert bushes taking over what had been grassland He had concludedthat the land was understocked—was carrying too few animals—but was overgrazed So he saidSouth Africa was deteriorating because of overgrazing and understocking This caused a furor in

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the scientific community Acocks was ridiculed, but to me it was brave new thinking I actuallydrove all the way down to the Cape to go and see him personally and was able to visit some ofthe ranchers he was working with.

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Now, I’m always looking for places where something different is happening Some people callthat “positive deviance.” I spotted one such deviance while I was visiting a ranch: A patch ofland that was visibly much better than the rest I got very excited and asked the rancher what hadhappened in that spot He told me the sheep he was using had crowded there for a short time.That was a big moment for me, the moment when I suddenly realized connection between what Iwas seeing there, and what I had first observed with large wildlife herds That’s when I realized

we could possibly use livestock to mimic the wild animals It was a big turning point

But the most difficult piece of the puzzle, the one I still believe we never could have discovered

in Africa, was that the greatest single cause resulting in desertificaion is overresting the land.And I really believe we could only have discovered that in America Because when I got here, Ifound such vast areas of land with nothing on them I mean, it was almost like being at sea.There was not a sound — not a bird chirp, nothing In Africa, India, South America, anywhereelse I’d been, it was hard to find silence There were birds, monkeys, something all around you.But when I struck national parks in America with not a sound, and still saw terribledesertification taking place, that was a big horror moment

GS: In Holistic Management, you talked a bit about your experiences trailing both humans

and wildlife, and how that enabled you to see what was actually happening I appreciate that The ranch I’m on is pretty rough country, and sometimes we just can’t find our cattle.

If you can’t trail, you’re not going to do much good out here

AS: I spent a lot of my life—20 years of it—in war, training army trackers and commanding atracker unit, and then in the Game Department, tracking lions, and elephants and poachers SoI’ve spent literally thousands of hours tracking people or animals, and training others to do it.And yes, that was an incredible opportunity; rarely do scientists have the opportunity to be trying

to solve a problem on the land, and then spend so many thousands of hours tracking I mean, wecouldn’t dictate where guerrilla gangs would penetrate the country, but wherever they came, wehad to go and track them down And so we tracked in every imaginable sort of county

Then you have the long nights where you sit and think about it: Why the hell was it easy today?Why was it so difficult yesterday? What sort of land are we on? What sort of climate are we inhere? Am I in a national park or on communal land or on a commercial ranch? You’re thinkingabout it all every night, and the next day you’re tracking again all damn day

Only many years later did I read the book by Liebenberg, where he explains pretty logically thattracking was probably the origin of science I think his argument was very good, because a goodtracker is not just following tracks A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every littlesign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry?

A good tracker is interpreting a lot

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Allan Savory gave a talk with a solution for land degradation that set TED2013 abuzz Today, hereleases the TED Book, The Grazing Revolution.

GS: It certainly led to good work! Can you tell me a little bit about your TED Book? Your earlier works have been specifically targeted to land managers But of course TED casts a much broader net, and I’m wondering what do you think urban dwellers can bring to the land-management table? What’s your intention there?

AS: Urban dwellers are the only ones that can save the situation Let me explain that: The bulk

of the populations of almost every country have moved to the cities, or are moving there That’swhere the voting power is — the mass of public opinion is Now the stuff I talked about at TED,we’ve talked about for years Now you might ask: Well, why did nothing change? At first, I toocould not understand It did not seem logical But as I grappled with it, I went back toresearching other fields to see if there was any reason for this, and I found there was

Hard systems are everything we’re using right now — computers, phones, planes, the clothesyou’re wearing, the room you’re in Everything there involves 100% use of technology andexpertise to make it, and nothing we make — including space exploration vehicles and so on —

is complex Everything we make is complicated Nothing is self-renewing If the computer ismissing a part, it doesn’t work, or the plane is missing a part, it doesn’t work It can’t self-organize

But if we look at human organizations, they are complex In other words, they do what they’redesigned to do, and can be very efficient, be they a university, a hospital, etc But they—becausethey’re complex, self-organizing, composed of hundreds of individual humans all interacting—they have what are called emergent properties, things that emerge that weren’t planned orintended And these can result in what system science calls “wicked problems.” This doesn’tmean they’re amoral — just that they’re extremely difficult to solve

There are two wicked problems of human organizations One is that they cannot—they simplycannot—accept new scientific insights ahead of society in general And so that is why my TEDTalk in 20 minutes did more than 50 years of struggle within the scientific community Because

it was seen by—as far as I can make out— over a million people And so the information is nowgetting to society And already organizations that have been aloof or blocked us or resisted arebeginning to collaborate with us and change

So it’s only the people in the cities that can begin to change public opinion or societal view.When there’s a sufficient groundswell, then our institutions can change We’re not going to beable to stop the desertification of the United States when so much of the land is federal-ownedland under government agencies that are trying to save the wildflowers or the horses or stop theterrible droughts and floods that are occurring in America We’re not going to be able to stopthose until the public opinion is deeper, until people understand that there is no option butlivestock over most of that land, and that these policies need to be developed holistically

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GS: It would seem like a holistic approach would require us to rethink the entire scientific method I mean, if you look at education in this day and age, there’s ever more pressure to specialize The higher level you attain, the more it requires you to focus on ever-narrower subjects, and it seems like we would really have to rework everything.

AS: That’s very much part of the problem John Ralston Saul points out — after studying what’shappened since Voltaire’s time, the Age of Enlightenment, where we were no longer going tohave massive blunders because organizations would be headed by professional-trained peopleand you could no longer buy or inherit your position — that following that period in history, theblunders increased He notes that no matter how brilliant the people, no matter how well-meaning and caring, if they’re in an institution or organization, because of complexity, whatemerges very often lacks common sense and humanity

So you can—as I’ve done—talk to city audiences almost anywhere and say: Does it make sensefor the United States to produce oil to grow corn to produce fuel? And people just laugh and say:

No, that’s stupid and it’s inhumane Well, thousands of scientists employed and paid salaries byorganizations signed off on that I was in Australia recently and I found it’s a greater crime withheavier penalties for a farmer to sell you fresh, clean raw milk than it is to sell drugs See, itdoesn’t make sense

Saul attributed that to the education system And quoting Saul here, he said, “The reality is thatthe division of knowledge into feudal fiefdoms of expertise has made general understanding andcoordinated action not simply impossible but despised and distrusted.”

GS: I remember back in the ‘80s, as ranchers we were under a lot of pressure from environmental groups—they really wanted to remove all livestock from public lands.

AS: Yeah, “cattle-free by ’93.”

GS: Exactly The idea that industrial agriculture could somehow save us: Could you comment on that at all?

AS: Those environmentalists, they’re trained in the same universities I understand them,because I also once believed that if we could get rid of the livestock and return to just wildlife,

we might be able to stop the degradation of the land But again, I was wrong, because thatbecame a major multi-billion dollar industry, mainly in places like Texas and South Africa Butevery single game ranch without exception that I’ve been on, the land is still deteriorating I heldthose same beliefs — that we just had to get rid of livestock — so I understand thoseenvironmentalists In my case, I just saw that I was wrong And I loved the land and wildlifemore than I hated livestock So I changed

GS: I have a personal question to ask Most of us who are involved in agriculture, who are not landowners, have kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that the rewards come in other than financial ways It seems to me like the best thing about being able to manage livestock

on a big piece of land is that every day you get a chance to appreciate just what a gift it is to get to come and live on this planet, you know? And it seems like we operate under this

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economic system that measures everything in terms of dollars and cents I mean, most economic theory would say we could measure all goods in those terms, and that doesn’t appear to be a defensible assumption And the other assumption is that all growth is good, the more the better It seems like a holistic approach would require that we rethink those things, particularly the one that equates happiness with dollars and cents

AS: You’re absolutely right But again, we will not solve this by just taking a holistic approach,

although that is necessary We’ll only solve it by actually developing policies holistically The

things you mentioned just cannot go on I mean, constant growth in a finite world is just simplynot scientific The use of fiat money — where money makes money—and wealth isaccumulating ever more in the 1% — that’s inevitable with the monetary system we have Andthen the development, or the measurement of growth on gross domestic product, is justridiculous For example, how can it possibly be holistically sound, or scientifically sound, oreven common sense to measure your economic growth where you value building jails at thesame level as you value building hospitals or schools? What we’re doing lacks humanity

GS: In a broader sense, what assumptions does our culture make that are most damaging

to our planet? It seems that more materialistic we get, and the more we do urbanize, the greater the threats are.

AS: I’ve thought about this for many, many years For me, it was best summed up at aconference my wife and I attended long ago in Sweden in an address by Gro Harlem Brundtland.She was appealing to the scientists there to see the problems as interconnected She pointed outthat international agencies that she was dealing with at the time were spending many, manymillions of dollars on many things: Droughts, floods, locust invasions, poverty, violence, weeds,etc And everywhere, it’s failing We’re not succeeding If we could see the interconnectionsbetween these—what’s in common—maybe we could be more successful

I did a lot of thinking after that, and have continued to over the years We’re blaming manythings We’re blaming politicians; we’re blaming greed, capitalism But it’s not that Because Ilooked at all the things we were blaming for the situation in Africa: Overstocking, communalland tenure, people not loving the land, the tragedy of the commons, overpopulation, inadequateaccess to capital And then I looked at the situation in West Texas and I found the opposite ofevery one of these things: Private land, people loved it, they weren’t abusing it No overstockingwith livestock, they’d been de-stocking for over a century, consistently No overpopulation, verylow and falling population Great access to capital wealth Good universities But the sameproblem

Clearly, there was something else causing all this, and I think it’s this: When you look atagriculture overall, it’s the biggest single problem facing humanity, even bigger than the oil one.Agriculture in its broader sense, you know, the production of food and fiber from the world’sland and waters Because even after we discover benign sources of energy, climate change andpoverty and drought—all these problems will continue because they’re manmade And they’recausing the climate change

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When I look at this and see that so many millions of people who are much, much brighter than I

am — far more highly trained than I am — doing their best, and it’s still going so wrong, thenyou have to, I believe, realize it’s a systemic problem

Now, when we’re managing holistically — doing holistic land grazing, trying to help thegovernment develop a policy — we begin by looking at exactly what is it that we’re managing,get that clear first, and then define the holistic context though tying people’s deepest cultural,societal values and needs to a life-supporting environment Once we have a holistic context, and

we can then look at the objectives and the actions to be taken, and see if they are in context Andthat’s the way that we are able now to insure that they’re much more likely to achieve ourobjectives, because we’re not dealing with symptoms only, but dealing with the systematicproblem and making sure our solutions don’t lead to unintended consequences

And just as soon as governments and city folks start insisting that all policies and projects bedeveloped holistically, you’ll see that the same people, the exact same people that are producingdismal results today will astound us They’ve got so much knowledge It’s just a systemicproblem And most people are good Most people are trying to do the right thing And just likewhen the Wright brothers discovered how to fly, on a certain day, we had no barriers in the wayafter that A whole new society believed in technology No government, no organization put anybarriers in the way We released human creativity, and within 70 years we were on the moon

If you look at centuries of civilizations using agricultural practices that have culminated inclimate change, it’s the same story Now that we’ve discovered how to actually develop policiesand projects holistically, if we can get the barriers out of the way, and release the creativity that’s

in our universities, our farming organizations, amongst our farmers and land managers, we’ll beastounded As I’d like to express it, the human spirit will fly

GS: So are you optimistic about the future now? Where’s the trend going since you began?

AS: The mainstream trend is going the wrong way I mean, you know that But I’m moreoptimistic now than I ever could have been at any period in history because if we’d been havingthis discussion, say in the Roman times when North Africa was turning to desert, we couldn’thave done anything about it We didn’t know what was causing it Now we do And even if we’dknown the causes, we still were lacking the ability to communicate and network around theworld It’s the social networking that is now allowing me, for instance, to spread this to millions

of people

Now there’s one other thing that’s lacking that we haven’t quite got yet The last thing we need

is something to unite all humans If we look throughout history, we unite in times of war against

a human enemy And we’ll unite for a long time, but the moment the war is over, we’re back tosquabbling So we need something to unite us as team humanity— something that is not a war.The only thing I could see doing that would be the overall acceptance of the seriousness ofclimate change Climate change is desperately serious, but we’ve still got people deliberatelycausing confusion, spending millions to do that We’ve doubters But the moment that humansaccept the seriousness of climate change, then we can unite as team humanity, whether you’reAmerican or Chinese or African or from any other part of the world We’re humans, and we’re

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not going to survive if we don’t deal with this All the talk about adapting to climate change islike telling the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water to adapt We have to actually address it.

GS: Well, thank you for doing more than your part to bring this to the attention to many folks Is there something that we haven’t touched on that you would like to address?

AS: Well, I think I’ve rambled across the whole field, because this is what I live with in my mindyear in and year out I’m so worried about the future I mean, at my age, I’m in the departurelounge But young people are going to have to face this, and I’m desperate to give them achance

Read much more in the new TED Book, The Grazing Revolution: A Radical Plan to Save the

Earth, available for the Kindle or Nook, as well as through the iBookstore Or download the

TED Books app to get access to this title — and the entire TED Books archive — for the duration of your subscription

The surprising resilience of a minority language Romani

Travel talk

Jan 25th 2014 | From the print edition

EVERY two weeks a language disappears By 2100 nearly half of the 6,000 spoken today may

be gone Migration, either between countries or from the countryside to cities, is one reason:though new arrivals generally stick with their mother tongue, at least at home, their childrenrarely do The dominance of English is another But one tongue bucking the trend is Romani,spoken by 4m of the roughly 11m Roma (gypsy) people worldwide Its health attests to theimportance of language in shaping identity

Unlike most languages, Romani has no country to call home Its roots lie in India, but since the10th century its speakers have scattered and kept moving One result is that they are everywhere

a linguistic minority Another is that 150 different dialects are in use “Anglo-Romani”, spoken

in Britain, differs widely from dialects in France, Bulgaria and Latvia One Roma man in NewZealand speaks a dialect previously only heard in Wales

The 290,000 native Swedish speakers in Finland show no signs of dropping their language—but

it is their country’s second official one, compulsory in all schools and spoken by 9.5m Swedesnext door Irish hangs on partly because of government spending on translating road signs anddocuments, broadcasting, teaching and extra marks for brave students who use the tongue in theirfinal school exams

But without a government to champion it, Romani is used mostly in the home Academics andlinguists have written it down and tried to standardise it, but many of those who speak it do notread it America printed a Romani guide to its 2000 census form, but that is a rarity; it almostnever features in official documents

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The lack of texts complicates attempts to teach it formally Roma Kulturklass, a SwedishRomani-language school, is one of a handful in the world Its 35 pupils study everything exceptSwedish and English in both Romani and Swedish But with few textbooks, says AngelinaDimiterTaikon, the head teacher, staff must make do with their own translations.

All this should mean Romani is on its deathbed But its apparent weaknesses—its minority statusand scattered speakers—are now what sustains it One reason is its usefulness as a method ofprivate communication for an oppressed people It comes into its own when the police come toevict Roma from settlements, says Damian Le Bas, a British Roma and writer Around 20,000Roma migrants were evicted from camps in France last year, according to the Human RightsLeague, a charity

Despite all those dialects, Romani also allows Roma of different nationalities to communicate.Where repression was particularly fierce, immigration is even dragging it back from the edge ofextinction Fewer than 1% of the 750,000 Roma in Spain speak Romani, partly because thelanguage was banned in the 18th century But Romani speakers from eastern Europe are leading

Cable news is less to blame for polarised politics than people

thinkLexington

What does the Fox say?

Jan 25th 2014

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CHRIS CHRISTIE should be too busy to second-guess the judgments of cable-TV news Hislatest term as Republican governor of New Jersey began on January 21st Months of fund-raisinglie ahead, as chairman of a Republican committee supporting governors’ election campaigns in

36 states A darling of his party’s business-friendly Establishment wing, he is a putativecontender for the White House in 2016 If all that were not enough, he suddenly finds himselfbattling multiple allegations of petty bullying Mr Christie, a swaggering giant of centre-rightpolitics, has suffered no direct hits But just now—like King Kong swatting at biplanes—he isstruggling to keep his balance

Mr Christie denies wrongdoing His aides reject recent claims by the Democratic mayor ofHoboken, who says she was told that post-Hurricane Sandy aid might not flow to her city unlessshe backed a development scheme favoured by the governor Carl Lewis, a former Olympicathlete, says Mr Christie tried to “intimidate” him in a politico-sporting dispute The governorhas apologised for just one case, after underlings—he insists without his knowledge—ordered abridge partly closed, apparently to snarl traffic in a town deemed disloyal

Amid all this, the governor’s spokesman somehow found time to issue a long, extravagantlydetailed denunciation of MSNBC, a lefty cable news channel which has been especially tough onhis boss The statement called MSNBC’s reporting “almost gleeful”, grumbled about presenterscomparing Mr Christie to Richard Nixon and accused the channel of devoting excessive airtime

to the governor’s woes

The Left is just as irked by Fox News, a conservative outlet launched in 1996 Even BarackObama, an exceedingly self-possessed man, was rattled by coverage of his first months in office,calling Fox News a “megaphone” devoted to attacking his administration A new, hostilebiography of the channel’s head, Roger Ailes, calls him a man of almost unrivalled politicalpower, who has “divided a country”

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In part, self-interest explains the hyperbole Mr Christie has prospered in a largely Democraticstate by governing as a fiscal conservative who is moderate on some issues (gun control,immigration and—after Hurricane Sandy—working with Mr Obama) Conservative purists dulydistrust him But they hate MSNBC and the “lamestream media” still more That makes itshrewd for the governor to portray himself as the victim of an ambush by fact-twisting leftyhacks As for Gabriel Sherman, Mr Ailes’s breathless biographer, he has a book to sell.

For many, the hysteria is sincere Ask Democrats why they struggle to win support for suchpolicies as Obamacare, immigration reform or action on global warming, and they often blameFox News for misinforming voters Noting the role that Fox News played in promoting the anti-government Tea Party in 2009, many accuse the channel of helping extremists seize control ofthe Republican Party Among Republicans, it is an article of faith that America is, deep down, aconservative country, and that if elections do not always reflect that truth, it is because the Right

is denied a fair hearing by the elite media, which hides a deep liberal bias beneath pious talk ofobjectivity

Plenty of pundits fret that too many Americans inhabit partisan echo chambers, hearing onlynews that confirms their prejudices They point to evidence that the country is more divided, andthat such changes coincide with the rise of cable TV and the internet Over the past 30 years ofpresidential elections, the number of swing states has fallen sharply (just four states were reallyclose in 2012), and the number of landslide states has soared Ticket-splitting districts—whichback one party for the White House but the other for Congress—have become as rare as hen’steeth Though voters’ views of “their” party have not much changed, more say they fear or areenraged by the other one

Those same years saw cable TV spread nationwide (talk radio boomed too, notably after theReagan-era abolition of rules requiring political “balance” on air) In polls, well over half ofAmericans report watching cable news at least sometimes Those channels are growing shoutier.The Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found Fox News more negative about Mr Obama in

2012 than four years earlier, and found similar changes in MSNBC’s coverage (just 3% of itsMitt Romney stories were positive)

Sean Hannity v “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”

Yet those who blame Fox and MSNBC for dividing the country should check their sums MarkusPrior of Princeton University has dug into data, much of it unpublished, from ratings companieswho remotely track viewing habits in sample households His conclusion is that Americans fibabout what they watch, and that large majorities simply shun cable news Perhaps 10-15% of thevoting-age population watch more than 10 minutes of cable news a day, a share that risesmodestly before exciting elections For most individual news shows (including hybrids like JonStewart’s satirical “Daily Show”), 2m viewers counts as a wild success That is the equivalent of0.8% of voting-age Americans

In 1969 half of American homes tuned into the big networks’ evening newscasts (it helped thattheir cautiously high-minded, eat-your-greens reporting was all there was to watch at dinner-time) The advent of cable gave those bored by politics somewhere to flee If obsessives now

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dominate political debate, Mr Prior suggests, the real culprit is not Fox but choice Fierypartisans continue to watch lots of news, but other Americans prefer football or “The RealHousewives of Atlanta”.

The changes are not over News-lovers are greying (hence all those arthritis ads on TV) Forseveral years most young Americans have told Pew that they do not “enjoy” following news, inany medium They don’t seem to be changing their minds as they age In time, politicians may bebegging for any coverage at all

The Forum’s denizens do not merely talk of “going forward,” “drilling down,” and “circlingback”—the verbal chaff of mid-ranking sorts No, this elite club produces fresh sesquipedalianbamboozlement The following concoctions are just a modest sample gathered throughout theevent:

“We can’t play in every vertical” (though we will of course ensure that those welcome

“horizontal synergies” do not impact adversely on “core brand”)

“The future will be contribution-defined, not benefit-specific.”

And a farewell thought from Marissa Mayer, the boss of Yahoo: “Passion is a neutralising force.”

gender-At least the good old-fashioned business of buttering up the powerful continues, just with morelavish claims to greatness “This man invented a large part of the future,” schmoozed oneespecially ingratiating guest Now there is a boast to tempt an Almighty voice to boom downfrom the Swiss snow clouds, “I think not.”

Football wealth

Jan 25th 2014

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Real Madrid leads Deloitte’s European football money league for a record ninth year running.The Spanish club earned €519m ($674m) in the 2012-13 season Bayern Munich knocksManchester United out of the top three for the first time after the Bavarians secured a domesticand European treble in 2013 The biggest climber is Paris Saint-Germain, which shot fromoutside the top 30 into fifth place with turnover up by 81% from the previous season, thankslargely to the highest-ever commercial revenue for a football club, of €254.7m Manchester Citycontinues its ascent, moving ahead of both Chelsea and Arsenal into sixth place Over a third ofthe top 20 clubs are now controlled by non-Europeans.

Romanian cinema

The pearls of a new generation

Mar 14th 2013, 18:23 by L.C | BUCHAREST

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DURING Romania’s communist regime under Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian filmindustry was nationalised and film-makers were subsidised to create socialist films thatportrayed a happy working-class society Romania's citizens lived in a world where statepropaganda praised a fake economic prosperity while people were forced to queue for hours tobuy milk or meat But the film industry peddled communist ideology Since the bloodyrevolution in 1989 a new generation of directors has turned its lens on the Ceausescu era, makingfilms that show how people really lived under the regime and the post-communist traumas thatfollowed after democracy was installed.

This new wave of Romanian cinema has been gaining international recognition over the pastdecade for its authenticity and original style Many of the first films portray daily life undercommunism, such as Cristian Mungiu’s “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” Other films, such asCorneliu Porumboiu’s “12:08 East of Bucharest” or Catalin Mitulescu’s “How I Celebrated theEnd of the World” dramatise the 1989 revolution, when the regime collapsed and Ceausescu andhis wife were executed More recently, directors are focusing on Romanian society in transition,such as in “Child’s Pose”, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, which was awarded the Golden Bearfor best film at last month’s Berlin International Film Festival

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In quasi-documentary style, “Child’s Pose” portrays a wealthy and domineering mother (played

by the powerful actress Luminita Gheorghiu, pictured above) in her struggle to cover up herson’s responsibility for an accident that would send him to jail This psychological drama offers

an insight into Romania’s new bourgeoisie as corruption spreads through the country’sdemocratic institutions Under communism, political affiliation bought influence but in the newdemocracy, money wields power The film also addresses a universal theme—the relationshipbetween children and their parents

“This is a suffocating movie”, says Mr Netzer, “most of the frames are tight and you are aspectator who is taking part in the action Unlike the majority of Romanian movies, you don’twatch it like you would admire a painting, but you get close to the characters, their actions andmoods.” The intense realism and black humour in this film are themes found across the newwave

Bogdan Dumitrache (pictured below), a 35-year-old actor who plays the role of the son,experienced both communism during his childhood and also the freedom and the economicdevelopment that followed after the revolution “I think my generation has mixed feelingstowards communism”, he says “On one hand, we feel nostalgic because those were the days ofour childhood, but on the other hand, we feel repulsion because we know our parents’ stories

We were too young to actually live those times but we feel the need to pass on the stories thataffected our close ones.”

However, passing on these stories is proving difficult due to funding problems Currently, makers can apply for 50% of production costs as a grant which must be repaid within 10 yearsfrom the National Center of Cinematography (CNC) Grants should be awarded in a twice-yearlycompetition, in accordance with Romania’s law of cinematography, but this is not always thecase Funding more often comes from the European Union or foreign investors

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film-The CNC, which has an annual budget of up to €7m ($9m), has been criticised by some in theRomanian film industry for its lack of transparency and for being overly bureaucratic It has beenaccused of favouring and financing particular directors—such as Sergiu Nicolaescu, acommunist-era favourite—even though their films turned out to be failures in terms of audienceand international recognition Nicolaescu’s last film before he died earlier this year, “The LastCorrupted Man of Romania”, was a critical and financial flop Eugen Serbanescu, the head of the

CNC, told The Economist that the institution is not responsible for the outcome of the movies

because the finance is strictly offered based on the scenarios submitted Another obstacle to thegrowth of Romania’s cinema industry is that the country has the fewest cinemas in Europe Thislack of infrastructure prevents wide distribution and determines modest commercial profits at thebox office

Ada Solomon, the producer of “Child’s Pose”, which had a €800,000 budget, believes thatpoliticians should pay more attention to the film industry because it has become an ambassadorfor the country Ms Solomon believes there are multiple solutions for the problems the system iscurrently facing: she calls for a budgetary fund that Romanian directors could access, and a stateaid scheme for potential investors in the industry But these cannot be implemented withoutpolitical will The country’s cinema infrastructure should also be addressed, she says

Alin Tasciyan, vice-president of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), claimsthat international recognition of the Romanian cinema is not a temporary trend because theindustry is built on a strong culture by film-makers who have resilient personalities “I believethis is just the beginning, only the revolt not the revolution itself, and it is only a matter of timeand money for the Romanian cinema to flourish and expose all its colours

However, if the political class will not turn its face to the Romanian cinema and establishsolutions for the most urgent problems the industry faces, the country‘s talent might migratetowards the developed film industries in the Western world This would be a great loss, not justfor Romania’s cultural legacy but also for this new wave of directors, who seem to feel happiest

at home rather than anywhere else

Update: Mr Serbanescu, head of the Romanian CNC, responds in the comments

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The plunging currency club

Jan 27th 2014, 15:44 by R.L.W and L.P

Daily chart

Many emerging-market currencies are falling against the dollar

SINCE January 22nd the Argentine peso has fallen by 14% It may be the most dramatic plungeamong emerging-market currencies in recent days, but it is hardly alone From Turkey to SouthAfrica to India, the currencies have been weakening against the American dollar Most have shedbetween 10% and 20% of their value since May, when Ben Bernanke, the outgoing Fedchairman, uttered the word "tapering", code for reducing America’s bond-buying underquantitative easing Each market has specific worries South Africa and Turkey have gapingcurrent-account deficits Ukraine and Thailand are riven by political protests Brazil is vulnerable

to China’s slowdown Argentina is running out of international reserves with which to prop upthe peso But when markets start falling, contagion is always a worry

It's like 1997 all over again

Jan 27th 2014, 9:21 by P.F | MUMBAI

Emerging markets

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“THE peso has gone to hell,” worried the Nobel-Prize winning writer V.S Naipaul in an essayfrom the 1990s about Argentina He also touched on Eva Perón’s sexual technique, beefsteak,class tensions in Buenos Aires and Jorge Luis Borges Its limp currency is an elemental part ofthat South American country And yet the news last week—that the partially pegged peso haddropped by 15%—has scared global investors.

At Davos, a gabfest for the world’s biggest egos, the talk turned from Jamie Dimon’s enormouspay packet to worries about an emerging-markets crisis Currencies in the developing world fell

to their lowest level since 2009 Along with Argentina, so Turkey, South Africa and Russia havebeen hit hard There is violence on the streets of Kiev and Bangkok The scare dragged down theS&P500 by 2% on Friday, January 24th Then Monday morning the Asian bourses fell

Emerging countries have already had a recent walk on the wild side: from May to August 2013,after the Federal Reserve made its first, botched, attempt to start winding down its bondpurchases At the prospect of an end to free money, funds were pulled from emerging countriesthat have benefited from a decade of easy inflows, and currencies and stockmarkets tanked.During the last few months of the year however things seemed to have stabilised

Crises have a habit of coming in fits and starts, though, rather than in one big bang For instanceThailand ran into trouble in July 1997 Four months later South Korea’s president warned hiscountrymen of the “bone-carving” pain to follow an IMF bail-out It took over a year for Russia

to blow up; its default didn’t happen until August 1998 The last mini-crisis took time to come to

a head, too After Argentina devalued and defaulted in 2001, many argued it was a crankyspecial case But by mid-2002 the contagion had taken Brazil to the brink

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Since the sell-off of 2013, doom-mongers may argue, two things have got worse First it hasbecome even clearer that the rich world’s central bankers do not have much of a clue how totame the beast they have created in the form of ultra-loose monetary policy Ben Bernanke, theoutgoing Fed chief, chairs his last policy meeting on January 28th and 29th The Fed is expected

to trim its bond purchases by a further $10 billion, to $65 billion a month No doubt this will beaccompanied by a torrent of elegant verbiage to show that the Fed is in command But scepticsshould look at Britain, where the newish central bank boss, Mark Carney, has abandoned theframework he put in place only half a year ago It was supposed to govern the pace at whichmonetary policy would return to an even keel The process of normalising central banks’balance-sheets is going to be mighty unpredictable and disruptive

The second change for the worse is that the emerging world’s recovery in exports looks tepid.The hope had been that as the Western world grew faster it would suck in more goods fromemerging economies, helping them to improve their current-account balances and making themless dependent on foreign capital inflows

But the latest data are mixed on this front In both Brazil and Turkey current-account deficitshave widened since the summer China’s exports grew 4% year-on-year in December, which wasslower than expected At every sign that China is in trouble investors run from emergingeconomies—it is one national economy that serves as both a proxy for Western appetite forexports and as a source of demand in its own right, particularly for commodities

To my mind the doom-mongers are too pessimistic Something other than a generalised rout istaking place As we have argued before, most emerging economies have more flexible exchangerate policies now than they did in the 1990s—falling currencies can be a healthy sign ofadjustment, provided the decline is orderly And this sell-off has been discriminating India,which was clobbered last summer, has done all right It has a new central-bank boss in place andhas narrowed its current-account deficit, largely by banning gold imports Mexico and SouthKorea are perceived to have reforming governments and they too continue to commandinvestors’ confidence The Philippines, long dismissed by investors as a land of eternal promiseand guaranteed disappointment, managed to issue ten-year sovereign bonds with an interest rate

of just 4% earlier this month—again, its government is judged to have a reformist bent

This latest panic is partly about politics Look at the list of worst-hit countries Turkey’s currencyhas collapsed due to a corruption scandal that has engulfed its prime minister Venezuela, whichalso devalued last week, is a wreck South Africa is facing a wave of industrial unrest Ukraine isbeing racked by huge protests The Thai baht has so far held up surprisingly well—but ourcorrespondent believes the country’s very unity is now at stake

What might cause the panic to spread from these troubled spots to all the emerging economies?Perhaps if more countries faced either social instability or a sense of political impasse, makingtough reforms harder This is not impossible—India and Indonesia face elections this year whichcould rouse passions or result in weak governments Brazil faced widespread unrest last year

A second trigger might be a sense that the emerging economies are fibbing about the state oftheir financial systems The 1997 crisis spiralled when it emerged that many private banks were

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