As the global financial crisis continues to hit the eurozone, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and other European leaders have been banking on China to step in and wave its magic wand. But is China prepared to bailout Europe?
Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili talks to Jin Liqun, the supervising chairman of China Investment Corporation, China's sovereign wealth fund, to find out whether China is willing to invest more money in Europe, in particular in the European Financial Stability Fund (IFSF), which European leaders now want to beef up for future bailouts.
Jin, who has served as China's deputy minister of finance and vice president of the Asian Development Bank, manages $400bn worth of the nations money through the sovereign wealth fund. He says unless Europe changes its labour laws and adjusts its welfare system, he does not consider it to be a profitable investment.
"If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society. I think the labour laws are outdated. The labour laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking. The incentive system, is totally out of whack."
"Why should for instance, within eurozone, why should some members people have to work to 65, even longer, whereas in some other countries they are happily retiring at 55, languisihing on the beach! This is unfair! The welfare system is good for any society to reduce the gap, to help those who happen to have disadvantages, to enjoy a good life, but a welfare society should not induce people not to work hard."
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#1
The Chinese have long had a good head for business, and have no incentive at all to lie about bad business practices--or to loan money to those who engage in such practices.
Its editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told Reuters news agency it planned to print 175,000 extra copies, after its first print run of 75,000 sold out fast.
The paper has been housed by French daily Liberation since fire bombs gutted its own offices.
Continued on Page 47
PARIS: Gray hair and a paunch have replaced the beret, leather jacket and dark glasses but Carlos the Jackal's defiance remains intact before he stands trial in France for a series of bombings in the 1980s.
The international revolutionary from Venezuela, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, built a career as one of the world's best known guerrillas after a hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in the name of the Palestinian struggle in 1975.
Since his capture and sentencing nearly two decades ago, the Jackal has been resident of a French prison.
On Monday, Ramirez, already condemned to life in jail, will face a three-judge terrorism panel to answer charges he was behind four urban bombings in France that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200 in the early 1980s.
"I am really in a combative mood," Ramirez, 62, told Europe 1 radio last month. "I'm not fearful by nature...My character is suited to this kind of combat."
The Marxist with a Che Guevara beret became the face of 1970s and 80s anti-imperialism, his taste for women and alcohol adding to his revolutionary mystique.
"He was the symbol of international leftist terrorism," said Francois-Bernard Huyghe, a terrorism expert at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations, IRIS, in Paris. "One day it could be in the service of the Palestinian cause, the next day he could put bombs in French trains. He was a kind of star."
Sounds more like a mercenary, or perhaps a button man, than a man of lofty principle...
Ramirez got his nickname after a reporter saw a copy of Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" at his flat and mistakenly assumed it to be his. His larger-than-life ego manifests itself today in waging hunger strikes and writing letters to US President Barack Obama. He also married his attorney inside the prison walls.
But he and his modus operandi are anachronisms, experts say.
"Carlos the Jackal was the Osama Bin Laden of his day," his biographer, John Follain, told Reuters TV. "Terrorism has evolved so much that today he represents a solitary voice in the desert, a pretty old-fashioned voice."
Huyghe was more blunt: "A man like Carlos is really a dinosaur today. I think of him as 'historical remains.'"
I'd prefer to think of him as worm food, but that'll happen someday...
#2
The Israelis have long admitted that Carlos was one of their worst unintentional mistakes.
Carlos' boss in South America was also a murderous thug, but he was nowhere on the scale of Carlos in his aptitude to make trouble. But after an attack, Israel sent some assassins to take him out, which resulted in Carlos taking his place.
This has led to a change in the assassination decision making process, that it is a very good idea to assess the lieutenants of a target, as well as the target himself.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
