The Great Debate UK

from FaithWorld:

“Burqa bans”: First France, then the Netherlands – who’s next?

First the French banned Muslim face veils, now the Dutch have decided to follow suit. With debates about outlawing burqas and niqabs spreading across Europe, a third ban -- perhaps even more -- may not be far behind.

Only a small minority of Muslim women in Europe cover their faces, but their veils have become ominous symbols for Europeans troubled by problems such as the economic crisis, immigration and Muslim integration.

With Europe's political mood moving to the right, low-cost, high-symbolism measures such as veil bans have become a rallying cry for far-right parties knocking at the door of power. Their appeal also resonates with those worried by possible security threats from masked people or offended by the blow to gender equality they see when a covered woman walks by.

Raffaele Simone, whose book "The Meek Monster: why the West is not going left" has aroused debate in Italy and France, said the rightward drift fits an individualistic and globalized consumer society that Europe's left-wing failed to understand. "In aging European populations, modernity has generated a worrying and chaotic jumble of threats and fears only the right and the far right seem able to respond to now," Simone, a Rome university linguistics professor, told the Paris newspaper Le Monde.

Calls for a "burqa ban" are now heard across Europe, with local politics influencing how close it gets to becoming law.  Read the full story here.

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“Dutch dialogue” aids New Orleans restoration

-Han Meyer is Professor of Urban Design at Delft University of Technology.  He has been a principal organiser of the ‘Dutch Dialogues’ with New Orleans since 2005 and is Editor of ‘New Orleans-Netherlands:  Common Challenges in Urbanised Deltas’. The opinions expressed are his own.-

In August 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated large swathes of the U.S. Gulf Coast and overwhelmed New Orleans causing what then-U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff described as “probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes” in U.S. history.

Katrina’s punishing storm surge, strong winds and massive rainfall weakened flood protection infrastructure which then failed, flooding coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, including 80 percent of New Orleans:

• Tragically, at least 1,836 people lost their lives, while a massive 1.3 million residents were evacuated, some never to return.
• The scale of the carnage is underlined by the fact that U.S. federal disaster declarations covered some 90,000 square miles, an area almost as large as the United Kingdom.
• The U.S. Geological survey has estimated that some 217 square miles of land was transformed to water by Katrina and Rita.
• The economic impact of the crisis has been estimated at some 150 billion pounds, with around 81 billion dollars in property damage alone.

The disaster was not only the costliest in U.S. history, but also served as a major warning for all urbanised deltas across the world of the need to maintain sufficient and efficient flood defences and water management systems.  As such, one of the biggest questions raised in New Orleans itself since 2005 has been how, and indeed whether, the city should be reconstructed and redeveloped given the threat it will continue to face from future hurricanes and catastrophic flooding.

This debate has not only prompted major interest from U.S. planners, engineers and designers, but also public authorities and politicians too, including Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, about international best practice, especially the pioneering ‘Dutch tradition’ of combining water management with urban development.

from FaithWorld:

Strong support to outlaw face veils as France prepares to vote ban

France's plan to ban full face veils, which comes up for a vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday, enjoys 82% popular support in the country, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Its neighbours also approve -- 71% of those polled in Germany, 62% in Britain and 59% in Spain agreed that there should be laws prohibiting the Muslim veils known as niqabs and burqas in public.

The poll, conducted from April 7 to May 8, did not range further afield, but reports from other countries show support there as well. The lower house of the Belgian parliament has voted for a ban, which should be approved by the Senate after the summer. In the Netherlands, several bills to ban full veils in certain sectors such as schools and public service are in preparation. Switzerland's justice minister has suggested the cantons there should pass partial bans but make exceptions for visiting Muslim tourists (the wives of rich sheikhs visiting their bankers in Zurich or Geneva?)

The big exception in the Pew poll is the United States, where 65% of those polled disapprove of a ban and only 28% support the idea. The poll did not investigate the reasons for this difference, so we can only assume it has to do with the more widespread acceptance of religion in public life in the U.S. and a more open approach to immigration.

The brief analysis that Pew published showed that support for a "burqa ban" seems pretty strong across the pollsters' demographic categories. It said:

"Opinions about banning Muslim women from wearing a full veil do not vary along gender lines in any of the five countries where the question was asked. In France, Britain and the U.S., views on this matter are also similar across education and income groups. However, in Spain and Germany, those in higher income groups are more likely than the less affluent to approve of such a ban; for example, a slim majority (51%) of low-income respondents in Spain favor a ban on full veils, compared with 62% of those in the middle-income range and 68% of those with high incomes.

"Ideologically, those on the right in France, Britain and Germany are more likely than those on the left to approve of a ban on women wearing the full Islamic veil in public places, but majorities across the political spectrum in these countries endorse such a ban. In France, 87% of those on the right support prohibiting women from wearing full veils in public, and 75% of those on the political left agree. Spain is the only Western European country surveyed where those on both ends of the ideology scale express nearly identical views; 59% of those on the right and 57% of those on the left approve of a ban on Muslim women wearing veils that cover the whole face. Ideological differences are also insignificant in the U.S."

In the latest twist to this story in France, businessman Rachid Nekkaz is offering to sell properties to set up a one million euro fund to help Muslim women pay the 150 euro fine they may receive for wearing the full veil in public if the ban becomes law.

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

Losing team’s national stock markets at risk

By Ross Kerber

Two national market indexes that may not shine on Monday are those of Spain and the Netherlands, whose soccer teams are scheduled to meet in the World Cup's championship game on Sunday.

Whichever country's team loses can expect a drag on its market index of 49 basis points, said Wharton business school professor Alex Edmans. That is the amount that national stock indexes tend to be held back on average on the day after their country is eliminated from the World Cup, according to a paper he published in 2007 with two co-authors, Diego Garcia of the University of North Carolina and Oyvind Norli of the Norwegian School of Management.

In an interview with Reuters, Edmans said his predictions seem to be playing out this year as well, based at least on anecdotal observations. For instance, as an English citizen, Edmans noted ruefully that the FTSE 100 index fell in late June as England's team played below expectations before being tossed out of the tournament by Germany on June 27 by a score of 4-1.

"As an England fan and an English shareholder I've been suffering both ways!" Edmans said.

Edmans' paper made a splash when an early version was circulated before the 2006 World Cup tournament. It is part of a growing body of academic literature in the field of ‘behavioral economics”. Begun partly in reaction to the extremely theoretical research that had dominated much academic discussion, its practitioners aim for a greater understanding of how human psychology affects their economic decisions.

In the soccer case, for instance, one of Edmans’ conclusions is that sour investor sentiment tied to a team's misfortune spills over into general negativity about their economic outlook.

from FaithWorld:

Focus turns to pope as German, Dutch sex abuse scandals unfold

Pope Benedict XVI in the Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 2 Feb 2010/Max Rossi

The more the scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing boys in Germany spreads, the more the focus turns to Rome to see how Pope Benedict reacts. The story is getting ever closer to the German-born pope, even though he has been quite outspoken denouncing these scandals and had just met all Irish bishops to discuss the scandals shaking their country. Nobody's saying he had any role in the abuse cases now coming to light in Germany. But the fact that some took place in Regensburg while he was a prominent theologian there, that his brother Georg has admitted to smacking lazy members of his choir there and that Benedict was archbishop in Munich from 1977 to 1982 lead to the classic cover-up question: what did he know and when did he know it?

This is only the start of what can be a long, drawn out and possibly damaging story for Benedict's PR-deficient papacy. His crises to date have been linked to his statements or decisions, such as the controversial Regensburg speech that offended Muslims or several run-ins with Jews over restoring old prayers they consider anti-Semitic or rehabilitating an ultra-traditionalist priest who is also a Holocaust denier. But now it's about what he did or didn't do in the past and how he moves to avoid further scandals in the future.

Stimmen der Zeit, March 2010 edition

As my analysis today put it:

from Commentaries:

Aegon raises money to repay the taxpayer

LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - As stock markets rally, a chief executive's thoughts turn to getting the government off the shareholder register.

The strongest U.S. banks have already shrugged off the TARP, with its tiresome restrictions on executive pay. In Britain, Lloyds Banking Group has toyed with a jumbo capital raising as a way off the hook of the British government's fiendishly complex asset protection scheme.

In the Netherlands too, the financial sector is looking to shrug off the bonds of state assistance. Dutch insurer Aegon is the latest with a plan to pay back government loans.

However, wriggling out altogether won't be easy. The Dutch government has structured its rescue operation so that recipients have to pay a hefty tax to get out altogether.

The Dutch state lent Aegon 3 billion euros last October during the worst part of the crisis. When Aegon repays the money it has to pay a 50 percent surcharge, turning 3 billion into 4.5 billion euros. The surcharge doesn't change whether Aegon keeps the money for one year or 20. And there is no final redemption date on the loan.

This may seem an odd structure as it seems actively to discourage recipients from repaying the money early. But there is some method in The Hague's madness. Finance is a strategic sector for the Dutch government. It wanted to ensure that financial firms requiring assistance took it for long enough genuinely to repair their balance sheets.

Why is Aegon so keen to repay this perpetual zero coupon capital, one might ask? Well, it is only zero coupon so long as Aegon doesn't pay its shareholders a dividend. If it does the loan bears interest at 8.5 percent.