Andy Roberts

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  At The Bastille In Paris for Guitar Strings

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2012/05/08/bastille-paris-guitar-strings

  Seeing pictures of young Socialist Party supporters celebrating their Presidential Election victory in Paris at the Bastille, reminded me of the few occasions I visited the  Bastille myself. Paul Beuscher la librairie musicale de Paris When I lived in Paris the only time I ever came out of the Metro at Bastille would have been to go to the big music shop, Paul Beuscher. It’s still there today, not covering quite so many shop fronts, and specialising more in pianos than guitars, but still there. The first time I went on the advice of somebody who had told me it was the best place to buy replacement guitar strings, because you could buy singles instead of having to buy a new set every time one broke. Breaking strings was an occupational hazard, we didn’t have portable amplifiers in those days, played purely acoustically, so there was a tendency in noisy corridors or streets to get maximum volume by hitting the strings hard. You know that if you go just a little bit too far a string will break, but every so often you get carried away and it happens. I was asked very recently why I don’t cut off the ends of the strings like most guitar players do when restringing, and it’s for that very reason. If a string breaks near the bridge, which is the most likely place, you can sometimes put the same string back on again, by retrieving the little nipple end that’s fallen inside the hollow guitar body, threading the end of the string through the ring,  tying a knot in it and then tightening the string back up to playing tension again. But you can only do that if there is enough leftover string beyond the machine head to pull back through a couple of inches at least. If it works, then that’s great – you can carry on playing the same pitch without having to go away and find a replacement. Of course you could always carry a set of spares around all the time, but that would have required a certain organised resourceful lifestyle which just wasn’t possible in the 1970s!  I had more than most, though, which meant that other guitarists often asked me if I could lend them a spare D string or more likely a top E in passing. I couldn’t afford to do that very often at all of course, otherwise it would have just been me all the time having to make the trek to  Paul Beuscher’s music shop at Bastille to replenish everybody else’s supplies. The Mazet Paris One occasion was a more sever emergency than just a string break. I had a guitar stolen from underneath the pinball machine in the cafe Mazet. Having the means of earning a living suddenly disappear is quite a scary position to be in. As luck would have it, the music shop had a big sale on which included a bin full of broken guitars at next to nothing prices.  After rummaging around I was able to find an Epiphone six string guitar that was only damaged by a large split on the side of the body.  So it was perfectly playable and the sound quality seemed oddly unaffected by the broken wood too. A snip at 150 French francs, equivalent to about £15 then and maybe about £150 in today’s money. Musical instruments and most other thing were generally more expensive in France than in England, particularly so in Paris. Still are. Mid range guitars are probably quite a bit cheaper now than they were then, you could probably buy a playable guitar brand new and undamaged for the same amount, it wouldn’t be as good as my old Japanese built Epiphone though. A few years later Epiphone moved production of their guitars from Japan to Korea and the build quality suffered. Now they make cheap guitars in China, nothing to do with the original Epiphone. I kept and played that old broken Japanese Epiphone for many years afterwards, until the fixed bridge broke and I didn’t get around to having it fixed, what with the broken side as well. Then somebody persuaded me to sell it to them, which I should never have agreed to. Nearly all the guitars I’ve ever sold, I wish I still had. That’s life. Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAt The Bastille In Paris for Guitar Strings

  

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  May 8 2012, 7:00am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/best-in-dough-french-bakers-best-baguette-paris

  Paris bakers competition. With a punishing criteria and several entries stakes are high at a Parisian contest seeking to identify best stick of bread

  This article titled “Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty” was written by Agnes Poirier in Paris, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 21.00 UTC They are hot, golden and crispy. Their makers hold them like saints’ relics and the judges in charge of inspecting them wear white gloves. These are the prized entries competing to be named Paris’s best baguette. At the head office of the bakers and pâtissiers’ union in the heart of Paris, young and old bakers queue up to enter the competition, first held in 1994. Pascal Guenard, a baker and pâtissier for more than 20 years is entering a baguette in the contest for the first time. He wears his white uniform and has flour in his hair; his pair of baguettes smell divine. “It’s the first time I’ve competed for best baguette but I came fourth once in the best croissant competition,” he said. “This award is very important for us and for our clients. I want them to be proud and be able to say that their baker makes the best baguette in Paris. It’s also a way for us artisans to fight the big supermarkets which sell crap baguettes for 50 cents. At €1.10, our baguette had better be good.” On the second floor, white-gloved ladies give a number to each pair of baguettes, register every baker’s name and address, and wish them “bonne chance”. Each baguette is then measured and weighed. This is the guillotine moment. Baguettes must measure between 55 and 70cm and weigh between 240g and 310g, criteria that were established 20 years ago. “We had to set up rules,” said Jacques Mabille, president of the bakers union. “During the war, baguette’s crumb was grey. The French grew to hate it. “So after the war, the whiter the crumb, the happier the people were. However, to get a very white crumb, you must compromise on the overall quality of the bread and on its taste. So we chose to return to a more balanced baguette and set up a few rules. … Today, a good baguette has a creamy-looking crumb, a crispy crust, a distinctive flavour and a delicious smell of wheat. And it shouldn’t have more than 18g of salt.” Each year, a third of baguettes are disqualified, usually because they are too heavy and too long. At the end of the queue stands Lahoussaine Damer, 26, a baker and pâtissier since the age of 18. “It’s the third time I’ve competed but I’ve never got into the top 10. This time, I have tried to perfect the cooking. Also, I was careful with the measurement and weight. They are ruthless. My baguette was disqualified last year for one centimetre.” Which French baker does he admire most? “Djibril Bodian.” Bodian, a member of the jury this year, was the winner of last year’s competition. He came to France from Senegal at the age of six, and fell in love with bread through his father, who set up a boulangerie in the Paris suburb of Pantin. After he won, Bodian became the French president’s personal baker, delivering his baguettes every day to the Elysée Palace. “We were never complimented by the Elysée Palace but were told that if nothing was said then it was a good sign, that they liked it” he says. “We have today a whole new generation of bakers in Paris, of African origin, from the Maghreb but also many Japanese and Cambodians,” said Mabille. “Baguettes have universal appeal. Besides, bakers are usually trained in French schools with traditional recipes and savoir faire.” A total of 174 baguettes were entered for the prize, with 38 disqualified. Among the 15 judges was a fromager, a teacher at the boulangerie school of Paris, and a food critic, as well as six Parisians chosen randomly after they entered a lottery. They touched, stroked, chewed, smelled, and even listened to the baguettes, inspecting their backs and bellies. Their colour and holes were closely inspected and intensely debated. Some judges spat out their samples . Three hours later, the verdict was given: after competing for the eighth time, Pascal Barillon, from Montmartre has won the best baguette accolade. As of Wednesday, he will be Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s official supplier.

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  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBest in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty

  Related posts:What is French for a vegan? French high-speed rail on track but progress too slow on commuter lines Wisconsin is making the battle lines clear in America’s hidden class war

  

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  May 3 2011, 5:06pm | Comments »

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  China’s insatiable thirst for fine wine threatens to burst Bordeaux bubble

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/01/chinas-insatiable-thirst-for-fine-wine-threatens-to-burst-bordeaux-bubble

  Bordeaux prices are soaring as buyers in Hong Kong develop a taste for the famed French wine, and this is why you can’t find a reasonably priced real claret in England any more, amongst all the new world wines that fill up the majority of shelf space

  This article titled “China’s insatiable thirst for fine wine threatens to burst Bordeaux bubble” was written by Jamie Doward, for The Observer on Saturday 30th April 2011 23.05 UTC It is one of the most hotly debated topics in the world of wine: is the Bordeaux bubble about to burst? The price of one of France’s most celebrated wines has soared over the last 12 months as British buyers compete with an increasing number of Chinese oenophiles to snap up the all too precious cases of claret. With the likes of Chris de Burgh and Sir David Frost recently selling their Bordeaux collections for six-figure sums, attention has focused on the top-tier wines such as Château Lafite, cases of which are going for as much as £15,000. At the start of the year, Lord Lloyd-Webber sold off a large part of his cellar, including a 12-bottle lot of Château Pétrus 1982 for $77,564 (around £48,500). Berry Brothers recently sold three cases of the same vintage for £58,000 a case. A dozen bottles of a typical second-tier Bordeaux was selling for around £600 a year ago, according to Berry Brothers, the wine merchants, but is now going for anything up to £2,000. But experts say the demand for Bordeaux is now so great that even wines from less well known producers have seen prices rocket. A decision by the Hong Kong government to abolish wine and beer duties has fuelled the demand. Berry Brothers estimates that last year, of the £110m of Bordeaux it sold “en primeur” – while still in the barrel – some £30m worth went through Hong Kong, compared with just £10m the year before. With en primeur sales of the 2010 vintage, which was apparently a fantastic year, soon to take place, the company is anticipating substantial demand from Chinese buyers. “We’ve got fewer than 100 customers in China, so you can imagine what happens if more Chinese people get a thirst for Bordeaux,” said Simon Staples, sales and marketing director at Berry Brothers. Intriguingly, the demand among Chinese buyers is only for red wine and only for Bordeaux. “Burgundy is much more complicated, the knowledge among Chinese buyers isn’t there yet, whereas Bordeaux is much easier to understand,” Staples said. “They want red wine; it’s a male thing, it’s good for the heart, good for the libido.” Staples has remortgaged his home three times in the last 10 years (in 2000, 2005 and 2009) to buy Bordeaux. Last year he recommended that his mother-in-law buy five cases of a particular Bordeaux at £2,400. These are now selling for £7,800. Chateaux producing the wine have responded to the surge in interest, investing in sophisticated machinery and a more rigorous selection policy for their grapes. A taste among a new generation of drinkers to consume Bordeaux much earlier than their predecessors has been driven by an earlier ripening of the grapes, in part down to longer, hotter summers in France. Vineyards have also started to strip leaves to give grapes more sun while leaving them longer on the vine so they are softer and sweeter. “It’s coincided with a new style of Bordeaux,” said Adam Lechmere, the news editor at Decanter magazine. “The vintages are drinkable much younger. You used to have to lay them down for 15 years or so, but now they’re softer and don’t have such harsh tannins.” Staples is confident heightened global demand means Bordeaux prices will not fall even if the UK economy enters a double dip. But others are wary. “People who work in the City tell me this has all the hallmarks of a Bordeaux bubble,” Lechmere said.

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  Related posts:Bordeaux uncorked Are social photo apps trapped in a Silicon Valley bubble? Firstbuy could lock young homebuyers into falling property market

  

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  May 1 2011, 1:17pm | Comments »

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  Isles of Scilly turn heat on Jersey over ‘warmest place in Britain’ claim

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/10/isles-of-scilly-turn-heat-on-jersey-over-warmest-place-in-britain-claim

  Where’s the warmest place in Britain? The Isles of Scilly near Cornwall or Jersey in the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy, France. NB: UK,  ’Britain’ and ‘The British Isles’ are not exactly the same places.

  This article titled “Isles of Scilly turn heat on Jersey over ‘warmest place in Britain’ claim” was written by Leo Hickman, for The Guardian on Sunday 10th April 2011 16.33 UTC Tourism officials on the Isles of Scilly are to lodge a complaint over a claim made by Jersey’s tourism office in a £1m TV advertising campaign that the largest of the Channel Islands is “the warmest place in the British Isles”. Met Office temperature records for Scilly obtained by the Guardian also appear to undermine Jersey’s claim. The Met Office officially recognises Scilly as the warmest place in the UK. A Met Office spokesman said that Jersey – 50 miles further south – does not fall under its auspices because “it is not part of the UK”, although “it had no reason to doubt” Jersey’s claims to be warmer. The small print on Jersey’s advert says it bases its claim on “minimum temperatures supplied by the Jersey Meteorological Department“. Tony Pallot, Jersey’s principal meteorological officer, said Jersey’s “mean minimum” for 1971-2000 – the period used by the Met Office to calculate all its mean temperatures – was 8.9C (32F). However, Met Office data for Scilly seen by the Guardian says the “mean minimum” for St Mary’s, Scilly’s largest island, was 9.4C over the period. On other measures such as hours of sunshine and maximum mean temperatures, Jersey performs marginally better. The council of the Isles of Scilly is also contesting the use of the term “Britain” in Jersey’s advert, arguing that the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British crown dependency but not part of the UK. It also argues that, geographically, Jersey is not part of the British Isles archipelago. Julian Pearce, the council’s economic development officer, said: “We shall be writing to Jersey to remind them of both our geographical position and our ranking as the warmest place in the UK.” He also said he was investigating whether the council had grounds to make a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Jennifer Ellenger of Jersey Tourism said: “We stand 100% behind our advert and we have the data to prove we are the warmest place. We are politically part of the British Isles, even if not strictly geographically.” She confirmed the advert’s claim is based on the mean minimum temperature, but also on two further measures – average hours of sunshine per year and “mean annual” temperature. She added that another aim is to suggest the people of Jersey are the warmest in the British Isles, too. Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency for “Great Britain” – namely, England, Scotland and Wales – said it defines the “British Isles” as being “all the main and offshore islands of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands”. Malcolm Bell, head of tourism at VisitCornwall, which works closely with Council of the Isles of Scilly to attract 4.5 million tourists to the far south-west of England each year – 100,000 ofwhom visit Scilly – said he would be writing to Jersey Tourism in support of Scilly. He said: “When I first saw the advert I just laughed. It seems a bit desperate to base an advert on warmth alone when people who are only interested in that would just go to somewhere such as Dubai instead. “But the advert’s claim is also a bit cheeky. People want honesty in advertising. “Jersey might just about be technically correct in what they say, but it is bordering on unethical to stretch the truth like this when promoting your destination. We are in economically challenging times and we want to fight fairly for every customer.” Jersey, which received 685,000 visitors in 2010, has been challenged before over its tourism campaigns. In 1990, the ASA upheld a complaint against Jersey after it failed to substantiate a claim that it had more sunshine that anywhere else in the British Isles. In 1993, the ASA criticised Jersey for making exaggerated claims after it ran a newspaper campaign boasting that “our sandy beaches are always spotless and all of our golden beaches are scrubbed and rinsed twice by clear blue water”. The ASA noted that “on seven recent occasions large quantities of untreated sewage had poured onto bathing beaches”. Last year, Jersey Tourism accused the Met Office and the BBC of discrimination because it felt the Channel Islands were routinely left out of national weather forecasts. As a result, it said it was missing out on millions of pounds worth of revenue from prospective visitors. “Many people don’t have any idea just how lovely the weather is a short hop away from the mainland – meaning we lose out on valuable income,” David de Carteret, director of Jersey Tourism, said then. It was this grievance, says Jersey Tourism, that led it to base this year’s campaign around the “warmest place in the British Isles” slogan. Scilly v Jersey Number of islands Scilly: 145 (five inhabited) Jersey: 1 Population Scilly: 2,100 Jersey: 91,626 VAT Scilly: 20% Jersey: 0% Economy Scilly: tourism, daffodil farming Jersey: banking, tourism, Jersey Royal potatoes, Jersey cattle History Scilly: site of hundreds of shipwrecks, including five German U-boats during second world war Jersey: occupied by the Nazis from 1940-45 Sport Scilly: smallest football league in the world with just two teams, Woolpack Wanderers and Garrison Gunners Jersey: fields its own team at the Commonwealth Games TV highlights Scilly: An Island Parish Jersey: Bergerac Famous visitors Scilly: former prime minister Harold Wilson regularly holidayed on Scilly and is buried at St Mary’s Old Church Jersey: Alan Whicker lives on the island Languages Scilly: English, Cornish Jersey: English, French and Jèrriais Local food and drink Scilly: pasty; “scuppered” ale Jersey: “bean crock” with cabbage bread; cider

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  “We are politically part of the British Isles” is a nonsense since the archepelago is a geographical entity and not a political one. Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogIsles of Scilly turn heat on Jersey over ‘warmest place in Britain’ claim

  Related posts:Ireland, Portugal … Britain? George Osborne only has Plan A David Cameron is uniting Britain. Against him Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  

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  April 10 2011, 12:27pm | Comments »

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  Alcohol to blame for 13,000 cancer cases a year in UK

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/08/alcohol-to-blame-for-13000-cancer-cases-a-year-in-uk

  Here it is, the research results that could well launch the beginning of drinking being regarded in much the same way as smoking. Are you going to stop drinking or greatly cut back now, or will you carry on enjoying alcohol in whatever passes for moderation and blissful denial?

  This article titled “Alcohol to blame for 13,000 cancer cases a year in UK” was written by Sarah Boseley, health editor, for The Guardian on Thursday 7th April 2011 23.01 UTC At least 13,000 cancers in the UK every year are the result of people’s drinking habits, according to one of the largest studies ever carried out into diet and cancer. The research, carried out across eight European countries including the UK, has found that thousands of cancers could be prevented if men had the equivalent of no more than two drinks a day and women had no more than one. Nearly half of the alcohol-related cancers in the UK – nearly 6,000 – were related to the mouth and throat. Alcohol is a key cause of cancer of the mouth, oesophagus, voicebox and pharynx. But alcohol also causes more than 3,000 colorectal cancers and about 2,500 breast cancers every year, according to Cancer Research UK, which cofunded the study. The full extent of the damage is revealed by the Epic study (European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition), which is monitoring the links between diet and cancer in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Germany and Denmark. It finds that 10% of men’s cancers and 3% of women’s cancers in western Europe are caused by drinking. Doctors and health groups are already concerned about the rise in liver disease. The British Liver Trust said the study should trigger a Europe-wide effort at preventing alcohol-related harm. “Once again we are seeing the impact alcohol can have in all areas of health,” said the trust’s campaigns manager, Sarah Matthews. “While alcohol damage is often linked to the liver, this study highlights the impact alcohol has on the rest of the organs in the body. “The results are not a surprise as we feel we haven’t touched the tip of the iceberg in preventing alcohol health harms in the UK. Substantive measures, such as setting a minimum pricing at an effective level, have been ignored and we continue to employ a half-hearted attempt in protecting the health of society. This study should form the basis of EU action to tackle the four Ps of alcohol marketing – price, promotion, placement and product. Only then will we see a change in how alcohol is viewed and consumed.” The study looked at the past and present drinking habits of nearly 364,000 men and women, mostly aged between 35 and 70 at the time of recruitment in the mid-1990s. They completed a detailed questionnaire on diet and lifestyle when they joined the study. Alcohol consumption was measured by specific questions on the amount, frequency and type of drink. The study, published by the British Medical Journal, found that thousands of cancers could have been avoided if people had consumed no more than one drink a day for women or two for men. In 2008, current and former alcohol consumption by men was responsible for about 57,600 cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, colorectum and liver in Denmark, Greece, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Britain. More than half of these cases (33,000) were caused by drinking more than two alcoholic drinks per day. There were about 21,500 cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, liver, colorectum and breast in women in the eight countries in 2008, the study found. Most – 17,400 cases, or 80% – were due to consumption of more than one drink of beer, wine or spirits a day, the researchers say. Madlen Schütze, first author of the study and epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke, said: “Many cancer cases could have been avoided if alcohol consumption is limited to two drinks per day in men and one drink per day in women, which are the recommendations of many health organisations. And even more cancer cases would be prevented if people reduced their alcohol intake to below recommended guidelines or stopped drinking alcohol at all.” Naomi Allen, a Cancer Research UK-funded epidemiologist based at Oxford University, who was involved with the Epic study, said: “This research supports existing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and that the risk increases even with drinking moderate amounts.” She added that alcohol was probably causing even more cancers than the research suggests. “The results from this study reflect the impact of people’s drinking habits about 10 years ago,” she said.

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  Related posts:New drink code shunned by six key health bodies When is a leap year not a leap year? Pub of the year award goes to a London local for first time

  

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  April 8 2011, 7:32am | Comments »

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  Portugal admits it needs EU bailout

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/07/portugal-admits-it-needs-eu-bailout

  Finance minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos says Portugal has ‘to resort to the financing mechanisms’ of the EU. That means a bailout.

  This article titled “Portugal admits it needs EU bailout” was written by Larry Elliott, Heather Stewart and Simon Goodley, for The Guardian on Wednesday 6th April 2011 19.36 UTC Portugal admitted tonight that it will need aid from the European Union to overcome its financial troubles, as the country’s crisis intensified. Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, the finance minister, said: “In this difficult situation, which could have been avoided, I understand that it is necessary to resort to the financing mechanisms available within the European framework.” It was not clear from the comment whether he was referring to a short-term loan until the country’s 5 June snap general election or a fully-fledged bailout such as the ones received by Greece and Ireland – and which markets widely expect Lisbon to need next. The comments came as fears grew of a fresh debt crisis for weak countries on the fringes of the single currency zone as the European Central Bank prepared to start raising interest rates from the emergency level plumbed during the financial crisis. The euro rose on the foreign exchanges today in expectation that the European Central Bank would raise borrowing costs from 1% and signal further policy tightening in the months ahead. But City economists warned that the move would add to debt servicing costs and prove more problematic for countries such as Portugal and Ireland than for the core single country nations of Germany and France. Ben May, of Capital Economics, said: “If interest rates were to rise in line with market expectations, their impact would be greatest in the periphery and may prompt a further escalation of the region’s fiscal crisis. “Higher official interest rates will not only lower economic growth in the periphery, but will also prompt the average interest rate that governments pay on their debts to rise. Other things equal, then, higher interest rates will increase the chance of peripheral government debt spiralling out of control.” Along with other central banks, the ECB slashed interest rates during the financial crisis in an attempt to pull Europe out of recession, but it has responded to rising inflation in recent months with clear signals that borrowing costs will rise. The euro’s strength coincided with a rise in the price of gold to $1,454.84 an ounce. Marchel Alexandrovich, of Jeffries International, said a 1% increase in ECB rates would mean that mortgage debt interest payments of euro area households would rise by around 7% on average, but there would be a 30% jump in debt services payments for households in Portugal and Finland, a 15% increase in Ireland and around a 10% rise in Spain and Italy. “In aggregate, debt interest payments for the euro area households and non-financial corporations would rise by around 0.3% of GDP if ECB rates are one percentage point higher,” he said. “But Germany and France would see a rise of just around 0.1% of GDP, while Portugal, Spain and Ireland would see increases equivalent to 0.8% of GDP. “The countries which least welcome higher interest rates on economic fundamentals are likely to be the ones most affected by them. One more reason why the ECB would be wise to tread very carefully in the months ahead.” Several of Portugal’s banks have been calling on the government to accept help from its eurozone partners, warning that they can no longer continue to buy up Portuguese debt. Lisbon needs to find almost €5bn in repayments this month and another €27bn in June. The rising interest rate on Portuguese borrowing has added to the sense of crisis in the eurozone, amid reports that Greece is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund to default on its borrowing. The Irish government is understood to be concerned about weaker-than-expected tax revenues and the vulnerability of its banking sector. An informal meeting of European finance ministers is planned for Friday

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  Related posts:Portugal bailout fears rise as credit rating cut Portugal teeters on brink of bailout Ireland forced into new £21bn bailout by debt crisis

  

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  April 7 2011, 2:35am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Zapatero says Spain safe from bailout

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/zapatero-says-spain-safe-from-bailout

  ‘Socialist‘ prime minister Zapatero of Spain defends the deficit reduction programme as unemployment rate remains at 20%

  This article titled “Zapatero says Spain safe from bailout” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.00 UTC Spain’s beleaguered economy is out of the woods and will not need a Greek or Irish-style bailout despite the risk of contagion from troubled neighbour Portugal, according to its Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In an exclusive interview with the partner publications from the Guardian’s New Europe project, the continent’s most powerful leftwing prime minister insisted that reforms and an austerity programme designed to reverse a runaway deficit were bearing fruit. He refused to be drawn on his own plans, amid rumours that he will announce tomorrow that he will not stand for a third term at elections due early next year. His Socialist party currently trails the opposition conservative People’s party by 16 points in opinion polls. The comments, from a prime minister whom Spaniards describe as “anthropologically optimistic”, came as market pressure on the country’s sovereign debt showed signs of relaxing, despite growing problems in both Portugal and Ireland. “We now have economic growth. The debt risk has stabilised and is out of danger. And now we are close to creating jobs,” Zapatero said. Zapatero sees no conflict between being a deficit warrior and a socialist, but points to key differences between his cuts package and that of Britain’s coalition government. “There is a deep, deep difference between what our government has done on education during the crisis and what Cameron’s government has done,” he said, pointing to education spending that has risen to 15% of Spain’s GDP for the first time. “The fundamental difference between right and left is the capacity to redistribute spending and remove obstacles to equal opportunities,” he insisted. “We haven’t reduced spending on health. We’ve increased spending on unemployment. We’ve maintained spending on social care of the dependent. Why do we do it? To maintain social cohesion.” Instead Spain’s government had brought down its deficit by, among other things, cutting civil service pay and freezing pensions. Zapatero said that, having met last year’s deficit reduction target, Spain would also hit this year’s 6% goal. “Our priority measure is the strict meeting of the deficit target,” he said. Although he claimed jobs would be created soon, the timid growth that some critics blame precisely on spending cuts has had no impact on a startling 20% unemployment rate. “My main anguish is about those people who lose benefit payments but have trouble finding work,” he said. Reforms in the pipeline should bring more flexible collective bargaining, improved competitiveness and a law to limit deficit spending, he said. “It’s true that some reforms mean cuts, but others are simply changes,” he said. “No project can call itself leftwing unless it commits to a competitive economy … we are going to renew Spain’s economic structure.” He warned Portugal that if it wanted to escape a bailout it had no option but to adopt the austerity package that its parliament rejected last week, bringing down José Sócrates’ Socialist government and triggering a June election. “Carrying out the Sócrates austerity plan presented to parliament is fundamental,” Zapatero said. His comments came even before Portugal admitted that its 2010 deficit was €3bn (£2.6bn) higher than originally estimated. Zapatero, speaking before Ireland revealed that it needed a further €24bn to deal with its banks, said he favoured more aid to Greece and Ireland. “We should be ready to increase the aid if they need it,” he said. Like most Spanish politicians, he is an avowed pro-European and saw greater economic integration within the EU as an unexpected but welcome side-effect of the crisis. “Economic integration is being speeded up. That much is clear,” he said. “Integration in politics and security is going more slowly, but it will come. It may take five or 10 years, but the process is inevitable.” He admits that, like everyone else, he would have liked Europe to react faster to the economic crisis. “But it is obvious that, amongst democratic countries, there is something called a decision-making process,” he said. “The Spanish government is lucky because parliament is always very pro-European … but there are other parliaments in Europe that debate every last cent.” Even the Libya crisis was an example of Europe in action, he said. “Who brought a historic resolution to the [UN] security council to intervene in Libya? Two European countries: France and Britain,” he said. “It is Europe that has taken the lead.” The man who pulled Spain’s troops out of Iraq when first elected in 2004 said the UN resolution was a historic step for human rights. “It is the first time we have had a resolution based on a responsibility to protect people,” he said. “A huge amount of care and restraint is being exercised,” he said of the campaign. “We have not had that thing that is so heartrending – and which discredits these operations – which is civilian victims.” But Zapatero, who has sent aircraft and warships to join the Libya campaign, insisted that military means should not be used to oust Gadaffi. “The use of arms is for protecting the population,” he said. “For regime change we have our political and economic strength.” Europe’s task did not end, there, he insisted. “The north of Africa and the Mediterranean as a whole are going to look towards the north. They will look to Europe, and Europe must not look away.” Wind power became Spain’s biggest energy source for the first time in March, but events in Japan have not changed Zapatero’s policy of using nuclear energy, while refusing to build extra capacity. “When nuclear power stations come to the end of their lifespan they will be closed,” he said. “We don’t propose building new power stations and must guarantee the production of alternative sources to cover the closure of every nuclear power station.”

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  April 2 2011, 11:31am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/marks-spencer-makes-paris-comeback-with-champs-elysees-store

  New Marks and Spencers shop to open in Paris France 10 years after controversial retreat. Items on offer will include food – by popular demand.

  This article titled “Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store” was written by Kim Willsher in Paris, Dan Milmo and Marie Winckler, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 17.54 UTC Shortbread and Earl Grey tea are heading back to the Champs Elysées later this year as Marks & Spencer returns to France, a decade after its retreat across the Channel prompted street protests in Paris. The retailer replanted a British flag in the heart of the Gallic retail industry by announcing, 10 years after it quit the capital amid stern criticism from trade unions, politicians and ardent muffin fans, that it would open a shop on Paris’s most famous boulevard before Christmas. The retailer is opening a three-storey outlet on the Champs Elysées, towards the end of this year. What is more, following a clamour by British organisations in France and threats of a boycott, it will be selling not only women’s clothing and lingerie – as first thought – but also food. Thoughts of ready meals and cheddar cheese may still appal a nation that gave the world haute cuisine. But French foodies have a grudging respect for the venerable British retailer, and Parisians were excited about the “grand retour”. Comments on French newspaper websites were overwhelmingly positive. Audrey Guttman, 23-year-old Parisienne arts consultant, said: “Special occasions in my childhood were peppered with Marks and Spencer delights such as Bugs Bunny-shaped fried chicken and Percy Pigs soft candy. I was devastated when they left, and the same items coming in from London just didn’t quite taste the same afterwards.” However, like many she was doubtful about the uncool choice of location: “Really, Marks and Spencer, the Champs-Elysées?! It’s not 1999 anymore!” French blogger Wendy Nourry Breguet, 25, added: “As a Frenchie, Marks & Spencer has always been an Ali Baba’s cave of food, fresh products, spices, foreign foods, which are absent from most French shops.” Pierre Cornette, a 28-year-old gallery owner was less convinced: “M&S plays on its super image in France for quality and tradition, but I can’t really see how it’s going to sell its English products to a Paris clientele, above all in this age of organic produce.” As well as the 1,000 sq metre Champs Elysées shop, there will also be five Simply Food stores at “transport hubs” such as railway stations in Paris and a “handful” of larger shops in and around the French capital. A website, trading in euros, will be launched and will be the group’s first to permit international purchases and deliveries across France. The original idea was for the new store to sell only clothing and home goods, in accordance with the lease on the prestigious Parisian floorspace. But a campaign persuaded executives to change their minds. British-born Pamela Lake, a Parisienne since 1963, who spearheaded the “no food, no go” campaign, said she and her British and French friends were delighted by the company’s apparent change of heart. “It would have been commercial suicide to do otherwise,” she said. “I shall be there for my double cream, bacon, sausages and Indian food.” She added: “I phoned my friends this morning and said ‘we’ve won’. Everyone was so pleased. When M&S closed here it was practically a day of national mourning for us in Paris. Now the company has admitted it was the biggest blunder they ever made.” She said French friends who joined the campaign would be looking forward to getting their Christmas crackers, mince pies and Christmas puddings. “They’ve also missed the Stilton cheese,” she said.   All M&S stores in continental Europe were closed as the company battled to turn around its British business. Last year the former boss Sir Stuart Rose said the decision to pull out of Europe was a mistake, calling it “tragic”. The company’s chief executive, Marc Bolland, said the company was “very excited” about its return: “Over the past 10 years the number of demands … from people for us to come back has been enormous.” He added: “Our company has changed in a positive way and France has moved on as well. We want to come back in an extremely positive way.” Bolland has declared he wants to speed up the group’s international expansion and said there was scope for faster growth, particularly in Asian markets. M&S has 358 stores in 42 overseas territories.

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  April 1 2011, 4:36pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Bordeaux uncorked

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/bordeaux-uncorked

  The city of Bordeaux is gleaming after a makeover and the region’s conservative vineyards are casting off their haughty image and welcoming visitors for city breaks in Europe.

  This article titled “Bordeaux uncorked” was written by Oliver Thring, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 12.30 UTC The English have always liked Bordeaux. It presents them with a neat and nifty range of familiar French staples: old patissiers, echoey churches, pretty cafes with unsmiling waiters, old cobbled streets, and women who swoosh past, helmetless, on bicycles. For a couple of hundred years, this land, Aquitaine, was English, a chivalrous region roamed by troubadours and ravaged by plague and perpetual war. And it’s near the sea, of course, just a few miles over the dunes from the chilly Atlantic breakers. Or perhaps the English see something of themselves in the proud, reserved character of the Bordelais. This is a town that never bothered with tourism, that didn’t have to: it had already made its money on spices, slaves and grapes. In 1855, Napoleon III oversaw a list classifying the “best” Bordeaux estates, a census of allegedly top “growths” that still dictates the hierarchy and prices of specific wines. Twelve bottles of Chateau Lafite 2009, a “premier cru”, are yours today for around £14,000. Whatever else, the 1855 classification was a shrewd piece of marketing. It cemented Bordeaux’s entitled, Gallic haughtiness even as the town itself went to seed. A decade ago, Bordeaux’s buildings were soiled by age and neglect, the town a shabby sump of rotting docks and stagnant industry. Things are visibly changing. Modern trams now purr and whine through scrubbed boulevards; in the main square, the Corinthian columns of Victor Louis’s Grand Théâtre seem to glisten. Over at the Place de la Bourse, they’ve installed the “miroir d’eau” or water mirror, the most beautiful puddle in Europe. We stayed at the renovated Hôtel de Normandie (7 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 52 16 80, hotel-de-normandie-bordeaux.com, rooms from €95, breakfast €15pp), brilliantly placed in the city centre and near the successful, funky wine school, Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux (3 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 00 22 85, bordeaux.com, two-day course on Bordeaux wine from €218pp). The city is cleaning up the knackered old cathedral, too, which the Pope consecrated in 1096 in an early example of urban planning. Sweaty local students pedal tourists around the town in flimsy plastic rickshaws, pointing out the sights in broken, demotic English. Food But parts of Bordeaux still seem timeless. The old city is spliced by rue St Catherine, one of the longest shopping streets in Europe, flanked by boutiques and shoe shops. Near the big clock, one of the few surviving landmarks from the medieval period, a spice shop called Dock des Epices (20 rue Saint-James, +33 (0)5 56 44 41 57, dockdesepices.com) fugs the street with the smell of cumin and cassia. I bought some livid purple salt flavoured with local wine – it goes beautifully with fish. A rather grand cafe, Baillardran (55 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 56 52 92 64, other branches at baillardran.com), serves exquisite canelés, the local delicacy of tiny cakes of caramelised custard. La Tupina (6 rue Porte de la Monnaie, +33 (0)5 56 91 56 37, latupina.com, lunchtime menu from €16, evening tasting menu €60) is a stalwart side-street bistro that’s been open for almost 40 years. It was one of food writer Jonathan Meades‘s favourite restaurants, and it appeals to a very English ideal of French hospitality. Inside, a huge hearth roars and spits, roasting chickens and braising lamb, and there’s a vast board of pink, fat-studded charcuterie. The restaurant is famous for the heavy cooking of south-western France, but my starter was a huge slice of beef tomato, thick as a pack of cards, criss-crossed with padrón peppers, while a main of roast veal with vegetables was similarly light. They play birdsong in the loos, which is somehow a very French conceit. Another fabulous restaurant is Le Petit Commerce (22 rue du Parlement Saint-Pierre, + 33 (0)5 56 79 76 58, le-petit-commerce.com, two-course lunch menu €12), a bijou fish place with rickety tables, brusque service and a refreshing lack of tourists. Wine Bordeaux’s wine industry has been typically slow to welcome visitors. Max Bordeaux (14 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 57 29 23 81, maxbordeaux.com) is a wine shop with a couple of spartan black and white rooms and almost nowhere to sit down. But you can drink some of the most expensive vintages in the world here on a relative budget: they serve it in 2.5cl thimblefuls. A scant sip of Mouton Rothschild is €15, and Lynch Bages and Château Margaux’s second wine are both only €4. It’s a cracking idea – borne, perhaps, of a sudden realisation that the world is threatening to overtake Bordeaux, that lazy reliance on history and standoffish tradition might no longer do in a future of cheap long-haul and boxed Rioja. Driving through the gnarled and corrugated vineyards of the Médoc, you can feel Bordeaux’s persistent sense of entitlement or noblesse oblige. Prim, privileged chateaux sit like dowager aunts behind forbidding iron railings and old stone walls, staring with miserly joy at the writhing lucre of the vines. Billboards of the most famous names in the wine world flick past: Latour, Lafite, Margaux, Pichon Longueville. The signs could just as easily say “Keep Out: visiting these places is almost impossible for ordinary people”. So it’s exciting that a few of the younger chateau owners are beginning to open up to visitors. The “tasting room” of Château La Tour de Bessan (Route d’Arsac 33460 Cantenac, +33 (0)5 56 58 22 01, marielaurelurton.com) is a rusty old telegraph building that somehow Tardises into a sleek, elegant space. They teach people how wine is blended here, letting visitors mix tannic and complex cabernet sauvignon with hot, boozy merlot. One rather grand chateau, Gruaud-Larose (33250 St-Julien-Beychevelle, +33 (0)5 56 73 15 20, gruaud-larose.com), even holds cookery courses alongside its wine tastings, while a wing of Château Marojallia (marojallia.com) is now a comfortable hotel. Perhaps the most innovative recent development is a place called, in bolshy Franglais, La Winery (Rond-Point des Vendangeurs 33460 Arsac, +33 (0)5 56 39 04 90, winery.fr). It’s run by a family of Algerian winemakers who came to Bordeaux in the 1960s. La Winery is a gigantic greenhouse branded in Trainspotting orange, its crystal panes in stark, intentional contrast with its forbiddingly opaque neighbours. They sit you in a bright room and you answer a series of questions to determine the wines you might prefer. The quiz asks whether you prefer pizza or curry, for instance, or the smell of “honey and apricot” over “loose tobacco and undergrowth”. A person working there told me, rather unsurprisingly, that they faced scepticism and hostility from the old Bordelais winemakers. La Winery’s approach might seem dumbed-down or gimmicky, but it makes a refreshing change from the esoteric babble of much of the wine world, and its very existence signals a partial shift from the reactionary model of the established Bordeaux wine industry. Outside the ludicrous prices of its most famous wines, Bordeaux faces a difficult task: how to retain its relevance against increasing competition from the rest of the world, a currency situation making export difficult, and a perception that it’s fusty and overpriced. But most Bordelais know they can ill afford to jettison the heritage that is the source of their fame. The true winners in this debate are visitors to the region, who can both experience a newly gleaming city and inspect those few vineyards that have opened their gates. Getting there

  By plane: Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Bordeaux from Bristol, Gatwick, Liverpool and Luton; British Airways (ba.com) flies from Gatwick. By train: Eurostar (eurostar.com) from London to Bordeaux starts at £109 return.

  Further information: Bordeaux Office de Tourisme (bordeaux-tourisme.com/uk)

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  March 23 2011, 3:16pm | Comments »

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  French high-speed rail on track but progress too slow on commuter lines

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/22/french-high-speed-rail-on-track-but-progress-too-slow-on-commuter-lines

  France’s TGV connecting with Eurostar is the envy of Europe, but the country’s commuter train services are creaking after years of under-investment

  This article titled “French high-speed rail on track but progress too slow on commuter lines” was written by Dan Milmo, for The Guardian on Monday 21st March 2011 18.22 UTC If you want evidence that the French rail network isn’t all high-speed brilliance and world-class service, then pay a visit to the platforms in the bowels of Gare du Nord on a weekday morning. At only 7am commuters are vacuum-packed into carriages – it’s just like home. The most powerful person on the French railways, Guillaume Pepy, admits the system has unwanted similarities with Britain’s. Describing some of the worst pinch points around Paris, he says: “It is like Clapham Junction.” For decades France’s national rail operator, SNCF, has invested billions of euros into making its high-speed network the envy of Europe. France has 2,000km of ultra-fast track, compared with our tokenistic-looking 109km. But until recently, the country’s regional services have been neglected at the expense of their speedier cousins. Pepy, SNCF’s 52-year-old chief executive, who describes himself as an “old railway worker”, says commuters have been overlooked as a huge effort was launched to lure the long-distance traveller out of planes and cars and on to trains. “There are passenger protests every day and they are right. I would like to have mass-transit services with the same quality of service as the TGV [high-speed rail]. Let’s put all the mass transit services to the same level. If we can run 850 TGV services per day, why can we not serve millions of people at 120km per hour every day? We need more innovation, money, the best engineers. It will take five, 10 years – I don’t know. But there is no reason why we should have poor mass-transit services and brilliant TGV services.” Jean-Paul Jacquot, a vice-president at France’s rail passenger watchdog, FNAUT, tells a tale of historic under-investment that will be familiar to UK commuters. “The rail network has been neglected during the past 10 to 20 years and therefore it breaks down quite often.” Pepy talks of at least 15 “traffic jam” points around Paris – both the French and British rail networks carry more than one billion passenger journeys a year. While Pepy is turning round SNCF’s commuter arm, construction is drawing to a close on the seventh TGV line, between the eastern town of Belfort and Dijon in the centre. Despite the successful opening of the modern channel tunnel link, most of the UK’s network dates from the Victorian era. But Pepy, an alumnus of the elite École Nationale d’Administration, is too diplomatic to compare Britain’s rail network unfavourably with its continental rival. “Personally I think that sometimes you are over-criticising your own railways. You have done a lot of things. Look at what you have done in terms of rolling stock; High Speed One. It is the best [high-speed line] in terms of reliability in Europe. I have to say that it works better than in France.” Given that France and the UK are learning the same painful lesson on commuter routes – under-invest at your peril – its extensive high-speed network still makes France the example to follow in rail. Pepy takes out a “crazy but fun” map that shrinks the distance between French cities according to the speed of their TGV links. Under this form of cartography, the sprawling country resembles a clenched fist as major cities like Marseille and Strasbourg are brought within hours of the capital. “You can see that France has shrunk dramatically,” he says. “It means that the communities, business, culture, intellect, health, everything is closer than it was.” In the UK, the high-speed London-to-Birmingham route is earmarked to open in 2026 but the £17bn project has been criticised by environmentalists and business leaders as a waste of money. Pepy is sympathetic – he says France has been through the same debate “seven times” – but he is adamant that the UK will benefit from high-speed. “Everything about high-speed is related to the long-term. We build the line for 50, 70 years and the system is a long-term answer to the community’s needs. If you just consider it on a short-term basis you would not be able to find a good business case.” Looking further afield, he adds: “I am very impressed that China has the same problem. It said ten years ago are we going to develop air transportation or have a high-speed rail system? And China made the choice in favour of high-speed rail.” As agreeable as he is, surely Pepy will be drawn into a testier state by a question on fares, the great bugbear of the British rail passenger. Instead, he is sanguine. TGV fares compare favourably with airlines and up to 65% of the price of commuter fares is subsidised by local authorities. Jacquot agrees: for all the problems with non-TGV services, exorbitant cost is not one of them. Pepy adds: “It is a decision to subsidise fares instead of building new roads, which is an historical choice in France.” Recent investment in transport indicates that the UK has made the same choice, but we’re a long way from catching up with le TGV.

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  March 22 2011, 8:04am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Parisian store to close for safety refit

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/22/parisian-store-to-close-for-safety-refit

  The story from 2005 when the Samaritaine department store in Paris closed initially for 5 years ostensibly for a refit. Unfortunately the magnificent art deco building is still closed due to some dispute over building regs.

  This article titled “Parisian store to close for safety refit” was written by Jon Henley in Paris, for The Guardian on Saturday 11th June 2005 00.08 UTC “On trouve de tout à La Samaritaine,” the slogan used to say: you can find everything at La Samaritaine. But not, sadly, for the next five years or so, because the venerable Paris department store is to shut down for a major refit so it is no longer a danger to its customers. “I am fully aware of the enormity of this decision, but the safety of our staff and clients comes before everything,” said Philippe de Beauvoir, managing director of what was for a century the least pretentious, most chaotic and probably the most useful of Parisian department stores. Mr de Beauvoir said that over the past two decades the late 19th-century belle époque complex on the banks of the river Seine had not had “anything remotely near” the heavy investment it needed to bring it up to modern safety standards. “The experts’ report is extremely serious: the building is a danger to the public and we are obliged to close it as soon as reasonably possible,” he added. Shutting the store will cost its owner, the French luxury goods group LVMH, between €2m and €3m (£1.3m and £2m) a week, he added. Paris city council safety experts have said the steel and glass structure would withstand a serious fire for barely 15 minutes instead of the 90 required by law. Its wooden floorboards are unchanged since the building opened in the 1870s, its electrical system represents “a permanent danger” and its fire extinguishers are “wholly inadequate”. The store stocks more than 250,000 different products on its 30,000 sq metres of floorspace and can hold up to 10,000 shoppers at a time. Union representatives said the 1,600 staff had been summoned to a special meeting on June 15 at which the official closure date would be announced, quite possibly for the following day. “We’ve been promised no redundancies,” said union spokesperson Madeleine Charton. Unions want the work spread over six or seven years, allowing at least part of the store to stay open.

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  March 22 2011, 6:56am | Comments »

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  Divine decadence

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/21/divine-decadence

  Glass of absinthe in hand,  Jonathan Glancey takes the Eurostar to Paris to explore the art nouveau movement’s sinuous roots.

  This article titled “Divine decadence” was written by Jonathan Glancey, for The Guardian on Saturday 11th March 2000 17.51 UTC In 1900, curators from the Victoria & Albert Museum took themselves to Paris to shop at the great Exposition Universelle held that year in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and along the banks of the Seine. The V&A team was not alone. More than 48m came to see the show that year. It was a marvel, featuring dual-speed travelators to take the millions around the expansive site and the African villages that with their exotic peoples and artworks inspired the young Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques. Cubism was on the way. But, what the V&A team came to see and collect for their grand pantechnicon of the decorative arts back in South Kensington, that most Frenchified part of London, were examples of art nouveau design. As a result of their trip, the V&A boasts one of the finest collections of art nouveau. This, and much more drawn from other collections, is about to go on show in what promises to be a superb blockbuster, Art Nouveau 1890-1914, curated by the V&A’s Paul Greenhalgh on its own highly decorative turf from April 6. The V&A’s role was important in the development of this florid, serpentine, self-consciously “aesthetic” style. We know that, among art nouveau designers, Emile Galle, Victor Horta and Odon Lechner visited the museum in search of inspiration. Art nouveau is loosely associated in British minds with Paris Metro entrances, the Biba fashion stores of 1970s London, and perhaps something to do with Oscar Wilde, absinthe, Aubrey Beardsley, lilies, sexy ladies writhing around lampstands and poor Ernest Dowson, the “decadent” poet whom everyone loved but of whom W B Yeats said he could imagine no world at any time in history in which Dowson would have been a success. In fact, art nouveau was an international phenomenon that raised its serpentine head in many of the great and, if not great, then industrious towns and cities of Europe, from Paris and Brussels, via Lille and Nancy, to Barcelona and then across to Turin, Venice and Vienna, back up through the Low Countries to Scandinavia and Finland. In Italy, the style was known as Stilo Liberty, in Austria and Germany as Jugendstijl, in Barcelona as Modernista. We can also include the styles known variously as National Romanticism in Scandinavia and, to a limited extent, Arts & Crafts in Britain. There is, though, very little full-blooded indigenous art nouveau in Britain. Did I hear you sigh with relief? But, if you are inspired by the V&A exhibition, where might you travel to see more? How can you pick from such a wide range of places? Let’s make it easy(ish). Sit down for a glass of absinthe or ask for a weak hock and seltzer at the Black Friar, the delightfully unspoilt art & crafts pub (H Fuller Clark, 1905) at 174 Queen Victoria Street near Blackfriars Station in the City of London. Suitably fortified, a bracing walk across the Thames will have you on board a Eurostar train bound for Paris and Brussels (and Nancy too) and on a long weekend’s tour of art nouveau architecture. You will have seen the objets d’art at the V&A. Now for the buildings. Don’t worry. This tour doesn’t have to be a marathon. It can be gently decadent. There is not a building coming up in the next few paragraphs that isn’t within a louche slouch from a café or bar. In fact you couldn’t do better than taking coffee at the Café Falstaff (E Houbion, 1903), 17-19 rue Henri Maus. Now you are within reasonably easy reach (no problems with public transport in Brussels) of some of the finest art nouveau houses of all. There’s the Solvay House, 224 Avenue Louise, built between 1895 and 1900 to the design of Victor Horta. This is the art nouveau master’s best house. Carriages once drove through the sinuous doors into the grand lobby where a top-lit stair ushered family and guests up into a suite of highly-decorated rooms, each last square millimetre worked over by the architect. A strange and impressive interior with its vegetable-like ironwork, pale orange and green paintwork, its swirling organic forms framed with a disciplined plan, the Solvay House is at the heart of art nouveau consciousness. Nearby, you’ll find the more restrained, though equally impressive, Horta House, 23-25 rue Americaine (1898-1911), designed by the architect as his own home and studio. The dining room with its shiny white-glazed tiles (the sort we associate with Victorian public lavatories) and snaking ironwork is a very strange place to sit, more like a station waiting room than a place to eat en famille. Other Horta buildings are the Waucquez department store (1906) and the Van Eetvelde House (1895-97). Back to the station. But before boarding the Paris train, pass by the nutty Saint-Cyr House, 11 square Ambiorix (Gustave Strauven, 1900). Children like this one. It is four storeys high but just one bay wide, in other words very thin, and quite bonkers. Each floor is a visual riot of swirly-whirly ironwork and gloriously over the top detailing. Richer than a Belgian chocolate. Paris. Take the Metro to Porte Dauphine (1898-1901). This station has the best of the surviving art nouveau Metro entrances that were for many years taken for granted and have now all but disappeared. They were commissioned in 1896 from Hector Guimard, a disciple of Victor Horta. Each boasts snaky graphics, The Day the Earth Stood Still ironwork and glazed canopies that resemble butterfly wings. They are painted an if-you-go-down-to-the-woods-today green. Odd but utterly, ‘ow you say, charming. Into town now for le shopping at, well, how about La Samaritaine, rue de la Monnaie, the great department store designed originally by Frantz Jourdain in art nouveau style in 1891-1907? This delightful courtyard building remains a pleasure to shop in, and you can climb to the roof for a view of tout Paris. Lots of twiddly ironwork. Yet, if it’s importantly-earnest ironwork you seek after lunch, let me recommend you the superb offices of Le Parisien Libéré, 124 rue Reamur, (Georges Chedanne, 1903-4), a handsome pile of iron and glass with flourishes of art nouveau decadence in the upper floors. Pevsner would have said that this is a precursor of the Modern Movement. As for you, you shrug your shoulders, take a pastis and carry on unconcerned. Aux Parisiennes. If you had a spare couple of days, a serpentine TGV would speed you due east to Nancy and back. Here, there are many art nouveau villas, but these have the look of Gaudi more than Horta about them, and so are well worth the trip. Antoni Gaudi, secular patron saint of Barcelona, was one of the most original architects of all time. He was certainly no decadent and is rather a different decorative kettle of fish from the “aesthetic” art nouveau designers of France and Belgium. His influence in Nancy can be seen in the wonderful, Hansel-and-Gretel Villa Marjorelle, 1 rue Louis Marjorelle (Henri Sauvage, 1901-2). The Addams family would have loved it. The weird balconies waving from the body of the house, the witch’s hat roofs, the tall, vegetable-like chimneys. The craftsmanship is superb. If you like houses with fairytale looks, don’t fail to pass along rue des Brices. This is the Villa des Glycines (Emile Andre, 1902). Underneath the beetling brow of its deep eaves, it has eyes, a nose and a big nord-et-sud. The “glycines” or wisteria, by the way, grows up around either side of the big mouthed window like a pair of sweet-smelling moustaches. There are plenty more art nouveau houses in Nancy, and anyway it’s good to have the excuse to stroll around a city that few tourists bother with. Just before we return to Paris, remember to pass by the Hermant House, 25 rue de Malzeville (Jacques-René Hermant, 1904) and the Villa Marguerite, 3 rue du Colonel-Renard (Gutton and Hornecker, 1905). Back in Britain, there just isn’t much art nouveau to see. Architecture, I mean. There are a few oddities such as the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1899-1901), east London and the Horniman Museum (1896-1900), south-east London, both by Charles Harrison Townsend, but the interiors are muted even though what you’ll see on show at both is never a disappointment. Back to the grand corridors and galleries of the V&A. And dreams of future trips planned to perhaps Vienna (the works of Klimt, Olbrich, Hoffmann), Barcelona (Gaudi), Prague, Budapest, Moscow… The tentacles of art nouveau spread far and wide. Enough to keep those with a taste for Lalique, Daum Frères and Tiffany glass, Mucha posters, Hoffmann cutlery and chairs by the decidedly decadent Rupert Carabin deep in timetables and maps for the next few years. And should you, like so many Brits, find art nouveau a little hard on the eyes, a small tincture of the right stuff might help you to see its fronds and curls more kindly. Absinthe, after all, makes the heart grow fonder. The practicals Magic Cities (020 8728 7575) offers city breaks travelling on Eurostar. One night in Paris at the 3 star Hotel Veronese from £99 (extra night £20). One night in Brussels at the 3 star Van Belle from £115 (extra night £25).

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  March 21 2011, 4:40pm | Comments »

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  Digital love: Manuelle Gautrand and the Gaîté Lyrique

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/20/digital-love-manuelle-gautrand-and-the-gaite-lyrique

  The Gaîté Lyrique, Paris‘s newest theatre, is a marriage of past and future so bold it takes the breath away. Jonathan Glancey explores a temple of technology and art

  This article titled “Digital love: Manuelle Gautrand and the Gaîté Lyrique” was written by Jonathan Glancey, for The Guardian on Sunday 20th March 2011 21.31 UTC Everyone knows appearances can be deceptive, but the newly renovated Théâtre de la Gaîté Lyrique in central Paris takes the Bourbon biscuit. From the outside, it seems as conservative as any French arts institution. Built in 1862, its slightly pompous facade makes it every inch a creation of Napoleon III’s overambitious second empire. When you walk inside today, though, a beautifully restored Italianate foyer gives way almost immediately to an ultra-modern world of pulsating, bleeping, thumping digital art, music and film. From this month, the building that in the 70s housed a circus school with elephants stabled in the attic will be simply known as La Gaîté Lyrique, an €83m (£72.5m) “theatre for the digital arts” created and paid for by the City of Paris. In fact, Gaîté Lyrique is far more than just a theatre. Bursting with energy, it is, according to its artistic director Jérôme Delormas, “a tool box”, a “place of continual evolution”, a “laboratory of cultural motivations”. Immediately behind the lavish marble of the lobby is a web of new spaces set across seven floors and shaped to allow the world of digital artistry to let rip. There is something distinctly French in this marriage between the grandly historical and the audaciously modern. Think of IM Pei’s glass and steel pyramid rising from the Louvre’s Cour Napoleon, or La Défense, a district of brutal 50s towers that stands to the west of the Champs-Elysées. In the early 70s, Paul Andreu‘s design for Charles de Gaulle airport evoked travel by spaceship rather than airliner. In 1977, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou Centre emerged from the heart of old Paris like some sci-fi oil refinery, and four years later the TGV came snaking out from under the glass roofs of 19th-century Parisian train sheds, projecting rail transport into a new, 300kph era. Every so often architecture in France, moves suddenly, shockingly forward even though planning and conservation laws can be very tough indeed. “The Gaîté Lyrique took eight years to redevelop. “We had to think first of the sound,” says Manuelle Gautrand, architect of the new-look theatre. “There are 120 apartments in the neighbourhood, so we had to build as quietly as possible and to make sure that even when the performances are exciting, the building is completely quiet. So, each of the performance spaces sits inside walls that sit inside walls; it’s like a Russian doll.” It was possible for Gautrand to build inside the walls of the theatre, because while the facade has, in effect, remained unchanged since 1862, the interior had been largely gutted. After a long decline, the theatre was closed in 1987 to make way for Planète Magique, a kind of low-rent Disneyland. Where the glistering auditorium had once stood – in which Offenbach‘s celebrated operettas played, Victor Hugo celebrated his 70th birthday and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes danced – there rose a clumsy great rollercoaster. Opened in 1989, the theme park closed just two years later. This grand architectural dame then stood empty until its radical transformation began. Delormas is the first to admit that the Gaîté Lyrique is likely to appeal mostly to an audience aged between 15 and 35: “For once”, he says, “it will be a case of young people dragging their parents to a museum.” The programme ranges from the latest experimental theatre by the Rimini Protokoll Collective – the young German directors best known for putting Das Kapital on the stage – to music from avant-garde artists such as Brian Eno to 3D digital performances. You can also come here simply to play the latest computer games. There are studios for artists, equipped with cutting-edge computer technology, a library that stocks hundreds of arts magazines, an auditorium for screenings and talks and, of course, a cafe, where the 19th-century architecture has been offset by funky new furniture and flying saucer-style chandeliers. In full flow – when walls dissolve into videos, three-dimensional computer-generated beings come to life in break-out spaces and futuristic music fills this enormous venue – Paris seems very far off indeed. The interior is something of a maze; sometimes seeming like an empty warehouse, at others a box of architectural tricks. The main performance space at the heart of the building – one of a number of theatres within the theatre – is lined outside with mirrored panels. Inside, this windowless black box can be transformed into a comfortable auditorium with rows of seats that pop up from under the floor. A second, smaller space features a floor built in steel sections; these can be raised and moved around to create different sets and seating structures. Galleries and mezzanines around the main performance spaces allow visitors to look into what’s happening and, as sound, light and images spill out of performances, these become auditoriums in their own right. Dotted throughout the largely windowless building – most of which is fitted out in a hard factory-like aesthetic, as well as splashes of bright pink, gold and yellow – are colourful mobile booths where you can watch a film, play a game, read or work. Gautrand calls these éclaireuses (girl guides); the idea is that they direct visitors through the ways of this unconventional theatre. “With the help of the éclaireuses,” says Gautrand, “you can find a place of your own even in all this colour and noise.” I enjoyed Gaîté Lyrique. It took me into another world. And, yet, the shift between grand Paris and the latest whizzy stuff is as abrupt as a train crash. I couldn’t help feeling a little like Jacques Tati in Mon Oncle, befuddled by technology, or Lemmy Caution, the private eye in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville who arrives in a nightmarish, ultra-modern city. Alphaville was filmed in La Défense, an area many hate, but which Gautrand loves. The Marseilles-born architect, who set up her own practice in Paris in 1993, is designing a skyscraper to be situated here. A shimmering tower, dressed in what looks like a filigree fabric but is actually multi-angled sunscreens, it will, she says, “soften some of the harder aspects of Alphaville”. It will also be in stark contrast to most of the straight up and down office towers that characterise this ageing “city of the future”. The project is currently waiting for the final stage of planning permission before construction can begin. Gautrand also designed the eye-catching Citroën 42 showroom on the Champs-Elysées, whose steel and glass facade is made up of giant Citroën logos. Life, colour, emotion In Saint-Etienne, a city south-west of Lyon, Gautrand has designed a remarkable Cité des Affaires, steel and glass government offices that snake through the city, further enlivened by three bright yellow entrances which bring a shimmering gold light into the undercrofts and courtyards. “It is, I suppose, scenographic”, says Gautrand, borrowing the language of the theatre. “The building is a densely occupied development, so I have given it, I hope, some life, colour, emotion. Also, I felt that this part of Saint-Etienne was somehow sad; if there had to be new offices here, then they had to have something special, something you cannot quantify.” Whatever that something is, the Cité des Affaires is a remarkable development. “As with the Gaîté Lyrique,” says Gautrand, “the modernity here is definitely a contrast with the old world around it, but it can be as playful and as atmospheric as a 19th-century operetta, too. Why not?” So in Saint-Etienne and Paris, visitors and government officials can work and play in an ultra-modern setting that seems theatrical to its very core. Only in Paris, this bright and boisterous new world has been housed behind the walls of a historic theatre, rather as if Jacques Tati was to walk by with an iPhone tucked away in his old raincoat pocket. France’s five most thrilling architects Christian de Portzamparc De Portzamparc is French architecture’s most brilliant intellectual. An urban planner as well as an architect, in 1994 he became the first Frenchman to win the Pritzker prize. He’s working on several huge projects, including the Cidade da Música in Rio. Jean Nouvel Nouvel is an international star, who often represents French architecture abroad. His experimental architecture is characterised by its use of metal and glass, creating buildings that glitter. Dominique Perrault In 1990, Perrault delivered his signature building, the industrial, totally transparent Berlier hotel in Paris. He also designed the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, draped in metallic meshexcels internationally at the art to handle the large scale and the drapes of metallic mesh. Patrick Bouchain Though he builds little, Bouchain is a pioneer, famous for his low-cost transformation of industrial spaces into cultural zones. Edouard François François proves that sustainable architecture needn’t constrain the imagination. His environmentally friendly buildings use trees, pot plants and other living materials in their construction. Sophie Trelcat, architecture critic

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  March 20 2011, 5:12pm | Comments »

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  Russia, China and Arab League condemn Libya attacks

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/20/russia-china-and-arab-league-condemn-libya-attacks

  US Coalition forces accused of mission creep and disproportionate action in Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya

  This article titled “Russia, China and Arab League condemn Libya attacks” was written by Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill, for The Guardian on Sunday 20th March 2011 21.37 UTC America, France and Britain – the leaders of the coalition’s air attacks on Libya – were struggling to maintain international support for their actions, as they faced stinging criticism about mission creep from the leader of the Arab League, as well as from China and Russia. Critics claimed that the coalition of the willing may have been acting disproportionately and had come perilously close to making Gaddafi’s departure an explicit goal of UN policy. Russia, which abstained on the UN vote last week, called for “an end to indiscriminate force”. Despite denials from coalition forces, Alexander Lukashevich, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesman, said that the coalition had hit non-military targets. He suggested that 48 civilians had been killed. “We believe a mandate given by the UN security council resolution – a controversial move in itself – should not be used to achieve goals outside its provisions, which only see measures necessary to protect civilian population,” he said. The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, also startled western governments when he denounced the air attacks only a week after the league had called for creation of a no-fly zone. Moussa, who is a candidate for the Egyptian presidency, said: “What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing other civilians.” The Foreign Office later said Moussa claimed he had been misquoted, or had put his criticism more strongly in Arabic than in English. “We will continue to work with our Arab partners to enforce the resolution for the good of the Libyan people,” the FO said. The Arab League had, though, been called to an emergency session to discuss the scale of the attacks. The British defence secretary, Liam Fox, said the scale was in line with UN resolutions that had been “essential in terms of the Gaddafi regime’s ability to prosecute attacks on their own people”. He also said it was possible that Gaddafi himself could become a target of air attacks if the safety of civilians could be guaranteed. Ahead of a Commons debate and vote tomorrow, leading figures in David Cameron’s cabinet were under pressure to clarify whether the explicit purpose of the attacks was to render Gaddafi’s regime so powerless that it collapses. Speaking on the Politics Show, Fox said: “Mission accomplished would mean the Libyan people free to control their own destiny. This is very clear – the international community wants his regime to end and wants the Libyan people to control for themselves their own country.” He then added: “Regime change is not an objective, but it may come about as a result of what is happening amongst the people of Libya.” He said: “When the dynamic shifts and the equilibrium shifts, we will get a better idea just how much support the Gaddafi regime has and how much the people of Libya genuinely long to be able to control their own country. “If Colonel Gaddafi went, not every eye would be wet.” Fox said it was possible that allied forces might treat Gaddafi himself as a legitimate target for air strikes. “There is a difference between someone being a legitimate target and whether we go ahead and target him,” he said. “You would have to take into account what would happen to civilians in the area, what might happen in terms of collateral damage. We don’t simply with a gung-ho attitude start firing off missiles.” One UK defence source said: “If we are seeking to destroy a military resource and he [Gaddafi] is caught in the process, that will not be our doing.” Fox also made it clear that the allied attacks would extend in the coming days from Gaddafi’s air defence systems to his artillery. Britain has ruled out the use of ground forces, but some of the more hawkish cabinet members such as the chancellor, George Osborne, only said ground forces were “ruled out for the moment”. In the Commons debate Labour will call for an explicit guarantee that British ground troops will not be involved. But in a boost to the coalition, there were signs that some of the much-trailed practical Arab involvement in the air strikes had finally materialised – after Qatar last night sent four planes to work alongside the French in the second round of attacks designed to set up a no fly zone across Libya. Britain is hopeful of further input from the United Arab Emirates, following calls by Fox. Arab political support, and military participation is vital to reduce the credibility of Gaddafi’s claims that this is a western act of aggression against a Muslim country. In an effort to reassure Arab opinion, Fox stressed plans to hand some of the co-ordination of the operation to Nato would allow a wider group of participants. But the attacks were under UN auspices. In the US, the Obama administration was more restrained in its language. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, insisted the campaign was only a limited, humanitarian operation, not a war, and was not aimed at regime change, as both Cameron and Sarkozy have suggested. “The goals of this campaign are limited. It is not about seeing him [Gaddafi] go. It is about supporting the UN resolution.” Asked if the mission could be accomplished with Gaddafi still in power, Mullen replied: “This is one outcome.” The Pentagon has been reluctant to become engaged in a third war against a Muslim country in the space of a decade and pressed Barack Obama on the dangers of mission creep. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate armed services committee, said that Obama had given them assurances on that and the Pentagon was satisfied. Mullen and other US commanders said that although the US had taken the lead in the first phase, there would be hand-over to the French and British, and the US would take a back seat role, restricted to tasks to which it was uniquely qualified, such as jamming Gaddafi’s communications and providing refuelling of planes in the air. John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, echoed Mullen over the mission goals, saying it was not a war. “This operation is not specifically geared to get rid of Gaddafi,” he said. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said he was troubled by Obama’s lack of enthusiasm, after the president went ahead with a trip to Latin America. “I’m very worried that we’re taking a back seat rather than a leadership role,” Graham said.

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  March 20 2011, 4:54pm | Comments »

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  London to Frankfurt high-speed rail link back on track for Eurostar Deals to Germany

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/20/londontofrankfurt-highspeedrail-germaneurostardeals

  Deutsche Bahn plans to run 200mph trains from London to Frankfurt, Cologne, Amsterdam and Rotterdam from 2013 for German Eurostar Deals. Safety concern about having an electric motor engine underneath every carriage as the trains travels through the Channel tunnel are to be swept aside in a rush for truly pan-european high speed rail travel, more than just Paris breaks.

  This article titled “London to Frankfurt high-speed rail link back on track” was written by Dan Milmo, for The Guardian on Sunday 20th March 2011 17.45 UTC Plans to transport 1 million rail passengers a year between Frankfurt and London are back on track as an independent report prepares to back German rail operator Deutsche Bahn in a row over Channel tunnel safety. DB’s ambition to launch a Teutonic Eurostar has been threatened by French objections to the state-of-the-art rolling stock it plans to use in the tunnel. David Cameron and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, are believed to have raised their concerns about the row with the French government, amid fears that it will hinder the growth of pan-European high speed rail services. However, this week the European Railways Agency is expected to endorse new trains manufactured by Siemens, the German industrial group, which beat France’s Alstom to a coveted Eurostar rolling stock order. The order for inter-city express (ICE) trains, which will also be used by DB in its Frankfurt-to-London service, met with opposition on the other side of the tunnel. The French government supported Alstom’s argument that the Siemens trains are unsafe because their motors are distributed under each carriage. The row split the Anglo-French intergovernmental commission (IGC) on channel tunnel safety, which resulted in the ERA being asked for a second opinion. Sources close to the process said the ERA is likely to recommend that so-called “distributed power” trains can be used in the tunnel, clearing the way for the ICE carriages. It is also understood that the report will not raise objections to DB’s proposal to couple two separate trains – a proposal that raised safety concerns in some quarters. As a consequence, the IGC is expected to come under further pressure to allow the ICE trains to operate through the tunnel. DB plans to run 200mph trains from London to Frankfurt, Cologne, Amsterdam and Rotterdam from December 2013, expanding the rail market between Britain and the continent by 10% by carrying 1 million passengers a year.

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  March 20 2011, 1:41pm | Comments »

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  Operation Odyssey Dawn commences to end Gaddafi onslaught on Benghazi

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/19/operation-odyssey-dawn-commences-to-end-gaddafi-onslaught-on-benghazi

  Operation Odyssey Dawn commences with more than 100 Tomahawk missiles launched as mission begins to end Gaddafi onslaught on Benghazi without risking troops on the ground.

  This article titled “Operation Odyssey Dawn commences to end Gaddafi onslaught on Benghazi” was written by Mark Townsend, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 19th March 2011 23.29 UTC The first strikes came out of the late afternoon sky. At 4:45pm GMT it was confirmed that a French Rafale fighter jet had destroyed a Libyan military vehicle, possibly a tank, near Bengazi, the rebel city that pro-Gaddafi troops had attempted to storm. Then, after nightfall, the real offensive began. As more than 100 Tomahawk missiles rained down along the vast Libyan coastline, the Pentagon confirmed that American and British forces were targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s air defence systems in a concerted attempt to enforce the UN no-fly zone, ending his capacity to continue the offensive against the rebel forces. Within minutes the prime minister, David Cameron, declared that British air forces were in action above Libya, joining combat aircraft from several coalition countries. The sheer weight of firepower trained on Libya was designed to intimidate as well as incapacitate. The Tomahawk missiles were fired at supersonic speeds from a British Trafalgar-class submarine and two American warships in the Mediterranean. In total, more than 20 designated Libyan targets were struck. Batteries of Libyan surface-to-air missiles were destroyed. The military communication network, crucial to Gaddafi’s ability to maintain the momentum of his offensive, was severely disrupted. The Pentagon dubbed the offensive Operation Odyssey Dawn, confirming that the intention of the bombardment was to open up airspace for a second wave of strikes by ground-attack aircraft. The battle to save the Libyan revolution, authorised by the UN security council resolution on Thursday night, has begun. State of the art 21st-century weaponry is being pitted against tanks, guns and missiles from the cold war era. Knocking out Gaddafi’s command structure and jamming his military communication networks is likely to happen quickly. Libya’s air defence system is considered antiquated, comparable to the Soviet systems that international forces faced during the Gulf war of 1991, and the Balkans conflict. In fact, much of Gaddafi’s weapons stock is Soviet-era with his air force thought to include up to 80 operational aircraft based around the MiG-23, which was phased out of Russian service 17 years ago. Ground forces rely on Soviet-era weaponry including T-72 tanks that entered production 40 years ago In Tripoli there was panic and defiance. Thousands of Libyans were reported by state TV to have packed into Gaddafi’s heavily fortified compound in the capital to form a human shield against possible air strikes by allied forces. In Benghazi, the streets were eerily quiet as the first rounds of this epic confrontation played out. From a military point of view, the plans finalised earlier in the day in Paris, at a summit of international leaders, were being put into action with impressive speed. Ahead of the operation, a formidable array of firepower was positioned around Libya. In terms of airpower alone, hundreds of jet fighters were placed within easy reach of the North African state. The squadrons included F-16s, used on bombing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the G4 Tornado ground attack aircraft which forged its reputation attacking Iraqi military sites and runways with smart bombs during the Gulf war. Most of the jet fighters are stationed in southern Italy. The vast US base at Gaeta is less than 600 miles from Benghazi. Six Danish F-16s landed at the base in Sigonella, Sicily, and will be ready for operations on Sunday. France has deployed around 100 warplanes, mainly Rafale and Mirage 2000 jets. Its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle will head toward the Libyan coast . Six Canadian CF-18 fighter jets have arrived in Italy. By the time Cameron announced that Britain’s forces were involved, the offensive was fully under way. America’s Vice-admiral Bill Gortney described the strikes as the “first phase in a multi-phase operation”, revealing that the US was in charge of the offensive, but that command would switch to coalition forces in the coming days. Few could have foreseen the weight of firepower that would be directed at Libya, just two days after the UN resolution on a no-fly zone was agreed. The decision to use Tomahawks would have sent a fearsome message to Gaddaffi. During the first Gulf war the sight of cruise missiles sweeping across the Iraqi landscape in broad daylight became one of the enduring images of the 1991 conflict. A Pentagon spokesman said: “The targets were selected based on a collective assessment that these sites either pose a direct threat to the coalition pilots or through use by the regime pose a direct threat to the people of Libya.” He admitted that because the attacks began after nightfall it was difficult to ascertain how successful they had been or, as Gaddafi’s camp is likely to claim, if there have been significant civilian deaths. What is certain is that many of the targets are located on the coast, making their destruction pivotal to the enforcement of the no-fly zone. Analysts had warned that the sudden storming of Benghazi by pro-Gaddafi forces was a military ploy designed to negate the potency of international air strikes but also increase the risk of coalition air strikes inflicting civilian casualties. Moving his ground forces from the flat, exposed terrain of the desert to Libya’s second city and into its streets raised the risk of civilians being killed, they said. Experts warned that the consequences of collateral damage would create a propaganda coup for the Libyan leader, while potentially damaging the conviction of the coalition. Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, an independent thinktank, said: “It makes airpower considerably less effective. Given that some of Gaddafi’s most pernicious weapons – ground-based artillery and tanks – are now intermingled with the urban infrastructure and civilian targets like schools and hospitals, it does blunt one of the international coalition’s greatest strengths, which is advanced fast jets with precision targeted weaponry.” Another concern is to avoid hitting British special forces units, which are likely to be operating in the city to help “light up” targets and offer ground-level intelligence. Paul Smyth, a former wing commander with the RAF, Tornado navigator and founder of defence analysts R3I Consulting, said it was technically possible to hit targets in built up areas from a Tornado, although there were obvious challenges to hitting a tank behind a building while moving at 600mph. However, he said the expansion eastwards of pro-Gaddafi troops sent to crush the rebellion had presented international forces with a golden opportunity to deliver a blow against the Libyan leader. “Gaddafi’s forces have travelled a long distance and require long lines of supply and communication. Whether they have the means required to sustain combat is open to question,” he said. Smyth added that even if Gaddafi’s troops had succeeded in making substantial progress in recapturing Benghazi, the rebels’ determination to hold their positions would have been boosted by the arrival of international force. Among the munitions Britain is now likely to deploy against ground forces is the Brimstone “fire and forget” anti-tank missile with a range of up to 12 miles and the sophisticated Storm Shadow, an air-launched cruise missile that can eradicate static targets from up to 155 miles. It remains a possibility that airborne firepower will be supplemented with unmanned aerial surveillance drones like the advanced US Predator that can loiter above a battlefield before attacking positions with Hellfire missiles. How long the airborne attacks will continue is uncertain. Leaders of the countries involved are clearly hoping to avoid being embroiled in a long-running and resource intensive campaign. Joshi points out: “How long can we stay there? Can we keep Typhoons in southern Europe for the next 10 years? Can we keep a no-fly zone in place, like over Iraq, for 12 years? The political decisions are not in place for that.” But the military campaign in Libya has begun and there is no turning back now. The west is once again at war in the Middle East

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  March 19 2011, 6:42pm | Comments »

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  Benghazi rebels plead for Libya air strikes as Gaddafi forces advance

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/19/benghazi-rebels-plead-for-libya-air-strikes-as-gaddafi-forces-advance

  Gaddafi forces advance into rebel stronghold of Benghazi as international forces discuss military options against Libya

  This article titled “Benghazi rebels plead for Libya air strikes as Gaddafi forces advance” was written by Chris McGreal in Benghazi, for The Observer on Saturday 19th March 2011 17.10 UTC Between the earthshaking thud of the artillery shells rattling nerves and buildings across Benghazi, a single question emerged time and again. On occasions it was delivered as a baffled plea by middle-aged men gathered on the city’s seafront as they anxiously awaited the latest word on the fighting. At other times, the question was shouted in anger by young men manning the barricades and facing the threatened onslaught with Kalashnikovs and petrol bombs. “Where are the air strikes? Why is the west waiting until it is too late?” asked Khalid el-Samad, a 27-year-old chemical engineer, who shook his finger in fury. “Sarkozy said it. Obama said it. Gaddafi must stop. So why do they do nothing? Is it just talk while we die?” The de facto capital of Libya’s revolution awoke to discover that its wild celebrations over the UN security council’s declaration of a no-fly zone and Muammar Gaddafi’s calling of a ceasefire on Friday were premature. Benghazi’s residents had imagined the city was saved by the west’s threat of air strikes unless Gaddafi halted his attacks on Libya’s rebellious towns. But at dawn the dictator’s army was fighting its way into the country’s second largest city of about 700,000 people using rockets and tanks. Benghazi reeled in shock as the rebels initially fell back and then fought hard to contain the assault while artillery fire rocked parts of the city for much of the day. Dozens of people were killed, among them the civilians the UN resolution was pledged to protect, and hospitals treated an even larger number wounded. As the fighting intensified, thousands fled east towards the Egyptian border in cars, pick-up trucks and buses crammed with people and what was most precious or essential – bedding and cooking pots. Alongside the angry questions over the lack of air strikes was bafflement that the western powers had apparently been duped into believing Gaddafi’s false promise of a ceasefire that bought him time to launch the assault on Benghazi by delaying military action French officials had suggested was imminent. “In 42 years we learned never to trust Gaddafi,” said Hassan Khalafa, an accountant carrying a Kalashnikov at a checkpoint near the former courthouse that serves as the revolutionary government’s headquarters. “He always lies. The only time he told the truth is when he said he will kill all of us in Benghazi. France and America and the UN have been fooled by him.” As dusk settled, Gaddafi’s gamble was still in the balance. His assault on Benghazi was fended off for now, although there remained a concern that his forces could still surround the city and cut it off. Paris and London had appeared to be on the brink of military action, with French planes carrying out reconnaissance flights over Libya, after accusing him of lying over the ceasefire. But the people of Benghazi will not feel safe until the man who has controlled their country for 42 years is overthrown. Gaddafi’s assault on the rebel stronghold was led by forces that broke away from the attack on the town of Ajdabiya, 90 miles along the coast, in what appeared an effort to seize Benghazi before Tripoli is forced to halt its bid to crush the month-long popular uprising. The Libyan leader’s army smashed its way into the south east of the city while much of it slept, quickly seizing a military base and the university. The rebels established a line of defence beyond the city’s zoo and one of its main hospitals. Fighters manning large machine guns fitted to the back of pick-up trucks said that Gaddafi’s soldiers were a few blocks away. Benghazi’s mosques broadcast a call to arms mixed with prayers for the rebel fighters. In the neighbourhoods on the frontline of the fighting, the persistent sound of Kalashnikov fire was periodically drowned out by the explosion of a shell. Sometimes the thud of artillery was so loud it shook buildings across the city. Thick smoke drifted across the embattled areas. Deeper into the city, the revolution’s volunteers threw up makeshift barricades. Some were jumpy. Early in the day, they shot dead two men in a car they alleged were Nigerian mercenaries. The revolutionaries said they had discovered hand grenades in the vehicle. But they would not be the first innocent foreign nationals to die or be arrested in the climate of paranoia about mercenaries fighting for Gaddafi. The young rebels, full of bravado but with little or no military experience, swaggered with Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and petrol bombs. “We will all fight to the death,” said Khalafa, the accountant. “We will die anyway if Gaddafi comes back. He said he will hunt every one of us down. You can’t reason with a man like that. Everyone who joined the revolution said it was him or us. We have tasted freedom. We have spoken the thoughts in our head when we never dared before. We have laughed at the devil. We will never go back to hiding.” But before Gaddafi’s better armed troops and tanks could bring their weight to bear the more experienced fighters, some of whom had defected from the government side, kept the attackers from reaching the heart of the city. Still, there was a notable shift in discipline as the random fire by hyped-up young men that had become part of daily life in Benghazi largely ceased as they realised they might need the ammunition to fight. Early in the day, the city had watched in apprehension as a lone military jet made a couple of runs over Benghazi. As it passed overhead, those immediately below eyed the plane for a bomb breaking away. Suddenly the aircraft twisted and dropped sharply. A second or two later a flicker of flame became a fireball. The plane seemed to fall slowly, like a flare. Its pilot ejected but it was too late for his parachute to open. As the aircraft hit the ground and erupted in to an even larger ball of fire, Benghazians watched awestruck. There were cheers, but some among the revolutionaries knew that the doomed Russian-made plane was their only jet fighter in the air in defiance of the no-fly zone they had demanded. The aircraft had apparently been preparing to attack Gaddafi’s forces when it was hit. As the battle wore on, the head of the revolutionary council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, put out a desperate plea. “The international community is late in intervening to save civilians from Gaddafi’s forces. Today in Benghazi there will be a catastrophe if the international community does not implement the resolutions of the UN security council. We appeal to the international community, to the all the free world, to stop this tyranny from exterminating civilians,” he told Al-Jazeera. He said that the rebels were facing a better armed enemy. “We only have light arms. Gaddafi seems to have new and powerful weapons,” he said. Benghazians closely followed every statement by western leaders and then threw it back at them. The US president said Gaddafi was in violation of the UN resolution and that all attacks on civilians must stop. France said action was imminent. Britain warned that preparations were under way for an attack. But as the day wore on, the city continued to fight on its own. The mood in Benghazi has ridden a rollercoaster of fears and expectations since the early days of the uprising when the revolutionaries deluded themselves that Gaddafi would be gone within days. The growing fears of an attack on the city, and the bloody retribution that would follow, gave way to an ecstatic flirtation with relief after the UN imposed the no-fly zone and Gaddafi called a ceasefire. But the hope proved short-lived. The hints from Paris of military action by France within hours of the UN declaration proved as illusionary as the ceasefire. There was immediate scepticism on the rebel side when the government said it was halting military operations, but the revolutionary leadership’s concern was that Gaddafi was trying to remove the justification for air attacks so he could divide the country and continue to cling on to the parts of Libya he still controlled. As it turns out, Gaddafi bought himself at least enough time to launch the attack on Benghazi. The Libyan dictator appeared to be trying to take the rebel stronghold and finally crush the uprising before any foreign military intervention could curtail the assault. The rebel leadership realised that it would be nearly impossible for foreign planes to strike against Gaddafi forces inside the city because of the politically unacceptable risk of civilian casualties and appealed for immediate action. The delay as France was meeting its Nato allies to discuss action was met with disbelief. The regime’s officials kept up the pretence that the government was holding to the ceasefire and that the fighting was somehow the responsibility of al-Qaida, in a vain attempt to persuade the rest of the world that there was no reason for air strikes. But any pretence was exposed by a letter Gaddafi wrote to David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that dismissed the UN resolution. “Libya is not yours. Libya is for the Libyans. The security council resolution is invalid,” the letter said. As the day wore on, the rebels gained the upper hand and by late afternoon claimed to have driven off the initial assault and captured tanks and prisoners. One of the tanks was paraded on the waterfront along with an armoured vehicle fitted with a rocket launcher. Children climbed over them and adults took it as a sign that all is not lost even if there was still no word on air strikes. But the celebrations were tempered by the realisation that Gaddafi’s forces had moved great distances in just a few days and struck at the heart of the revolution. Having done it once, the immediate concern was that they could do it again, and harder next time. Or perhaps they would just surround Benghazi and turn it in to an outpost of liberation to be slowly strangled. The question asked so forcefully earlier in the day came up once again: where is the promised defence?

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  March 19 2011, 12:34pm | Comments »

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