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Correction: America's sex laws Aug 13th 2009 From The Economist print edition Our leader on America's sex laws (August 8th) contained a conversion of 1,000 feet to 900 metres. It should, of course, have been approximately 300 metres. We are clearly losing touch with our Imperial past. This error has been corrected online. Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. -15-
On torture, hate radio, Arabic, free trade, education, the rich, Britain's monarchy, toilets Aug 13th 2009 From The Economist print edition Barack Obama and torture SIR – Your briefing about the debate on torture perpetuated an unfortunate myth: that Barack Obama has dramatically altered the detention policies of his predecessor (“The dark pursuit of the truth”, August 1st). The regrettable fact is that the policies implemented by Mr Obama are materially indistinguishable from those of George Bush at the end of his second term. Moreover, the Obama administration has adopted no measure that runs counter to the desires of the agencies ostensibly being regulated, including the CIA. Support for the myth rests principally on three decisions: to close the CIA’s secret “black sites”, to end the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and to shut Guantánamo. As for the black sites, these were already empty and the CIA had long wanted to get out of the detention business. Nothing in the decision, therefore, reforms practice. In fact, Mr Obama has continued to allow the CIA to hold prisoners “temporarily” and conduct extraordinary renditions—transferring prisoners to third countries for interrogation. With respect to American interrogation practices, the Bush administration had already ended the most loathsome abuses, including waterboarding, and the so-called “high-value” detainees, who had been subjected to these methods, were no longer being interrogated at the end of Mr Bush’s second term. What’s more, Mr Obama has directed American interrogators to follow guidelines in the Army Field Manual. This was drafted by the Bush administration. Finally, there is the much-heralded decision to close Guantánamo. Granting the symbolic significance of the prison, reasonable minds would agree that what matters most is not where a prisoner is held but how. And in that regard, Mr Obama’s decision to close Guantánamo is qualified in two respects. First, he has endorsed preventive detention, a wretched and morally bankrupt practice familiar to most British (and Irish) readers. Second, he has continued with the Bush-era approach that prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan may be held without judicial review and he defends this with many of the same arguments that Mr Bush made about Guantánamo. In the life of a nation, symbolic change is not meaningless. In fact, in the modern political climate, it may be all one can reasonably expect. But it should never be confused with genuine reform. Joseph Margulies Northwestern University School of Law Chicago Defending the airwaves SIR – It is true that instances of hate media are increasing, especially in fragile states (“Crackles of hatred”, July 25th). But research by our charity, an independent body created by the BBC, suggests that the use of radio during Kenya’s post-election crisis was rather different from the carefully orchestrated propaganda observed during the Rwanda genocide, or in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. In the Kenyan case, supply met demand. There was pent-up anger among people who felt economically and politically marginalised and this found an outlet in newly created local-language radio. In these circumstances, simply clamping down on new media could amount to putting the lid on a pressure cooker. James Deane BBC World Service Trust London -16-
Page 2 and 3: Search Requires subscription Econom
Page 4 and 5: Politics this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
Page 6 and 7: Business this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
Page 8 and 9: KAL's cartoon Aug 13th 2009 From Th
Page 10 and 11: Asia’s rebound has several causes
Page 12 and 13: democratic region. But Brazil’s l
Page 14 and 15: World trade and commercial aircraft
Page 16 and 17: Galileo, four centuries on As impor
Page 20 and 21: SIR - You mentioned the slaughter d
Page 22 and 23: Professor of the history of art Sch
Page 24 and 25: Their arrival coincides with, and i
Page 26 and 27: and integrated well.) Peru has beco
Page 28 and 29: Clean energy in the Midwest Greenin
Page 30 and 31: The economics of natural gas Drowni
Page 32 and 33: meetings on health reform planned f
Page 34 and 35: Drought in Texas Not a cloud Aug 13
Page 36 and 37: Rich animals The dog will have his
Page 38 and 39: twice the national average. But it
Page 40 and 41: international institutions and the
Page 42 and 43: Energy v environment in Canada Bomb
Page 44 and 45: further sanctions. Yet it is doubtf
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Page 50 and 51: Taiwan's typhoon Taiwan's disastrou
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Page 54 and 55: Fatah and the Palestinians Fresh fa
Page 56 and 57: Iran and human rights The crackdown
Page 58 and 59: Security in Iraq A return to the ba
Page 60 and 61: Ethiopia's resilient prime minister
Page 62 and 63: America and Africa Hillary (not Bil
Page 64 and 65: Southern Italy's ills The messy mez
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Italy's vigilantes On the beat Aug
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crisis-driven entanglement in banks
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colluded with the Russian patriarch
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Prospects for recovery Mervyn's rea
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Conservatives will be fighting over
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advanced to scale down much. If the
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Scotland's capital and recession Pa
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Edinburgh festivals Fringe-onomics
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Bagehot Love in the time of swine f
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Correction: Teaching in Britain Aug
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Their aim is more modest. It was sp
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At a review conference next year, s
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All this would not matter much, wer
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with state aid. In an average year
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Mauro Cutrufo, Rome’s head of tou
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Online auctions Mind the pennies Au
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hire in anticipation; they will wai
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Face value Top of his game Aug 13th
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Emerging Asian economies On the reb
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y 70%. One reason why Asia’s emer
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industries with subsidies and under
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Of the three firms, AIG represents
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Assessing quantitative easing Muzzl
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All these rules failed and the sche
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Retail bonds in Europe Small fry wa
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A current-account surplus that has
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politicians still seem fixated by e
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In an influential early example of
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Thinking space Another way to encou
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Detecting habitable new worlds The
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The history of science Kepler's wor
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Engels (whose name resembles the wo
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prose, having gone from Uighur to G
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anks to hold more capital, the flow
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Football and economics Game for gee
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There are two intellectual bugbears
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she continued to lurk, roiling the
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Output, prices and jobs Aug 13th 20
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The Economist commodity-price index
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Trade, exchange rates, budget balan
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Markets Aug 13th 2009 From The Econ
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Office vacancy rates Aug 13th 2009
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