CZYTANIE 4 EN [#15]

David Baddiel either has a very puritan attitude to John Updike’s morals (“Updike’s profligacy has always been counted against him”) or he relies too much on spellcheck. “Profligacy” means devoting yourself to vice and debauchery; an author who simply writes a lot is guilty of no more than prolificacy.

1. This letter to the editor was written because David Baddiel used ... incorrectly in his article.

Global poverty – defined as the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day – has nearly halved, from 19.7 per cent o 11.2 per cent. Moreover, this fall happened overnight, just the other day. How? Not, alas, because some hedge-fund manager hired helicopters to drop dollar bills across Africa and Asia but because the World Bank has recalculated. Instead of using currency exchange rates, it has switched to purchasing power parity – which tells you what $1.25 will buy in different countries. Goods are usually cheaper in poor countries so a little goes a long way and, as the Financial Times economics editor, Chris Giles, puts it, “Many of the world’s poor are not as destitute as we had imagined.” That is a convenient conclusion for the World Bank, a body that imposes “structural adjustment” of developing countries, meaning less welfare and fewer public services.

2. According to the author, in reality global poverty is ... it used to be.

Faced with the atrocities committed by the Islamic State, compassion demands that something be done. Yet, over the past century, every western act in the Middle East – every national boundary drawn, every move to protect our “vital interests”, every subsidy to supposedly friendly regimes or rebel groups, every bomb dropped, every soldier’s boot on the ground, every rocket, tank or gun supplied – has made things worse, culminating in the horrors we now witness.

3. The author suggests that should the West take action against the Islamic State, it will ... effect.

"In an infamous December 2012 press release, Citigroup announced that it would begin 'a series of repositioning actions that will further reduce expenses and improve efficiency,' resulting in 'streamlined operations and an optimized consumer footprint across geographies.'

4. The Citigroup’s announcement meant that some people ... the company.

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who soared to fame for his prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, was brought down to earth with a thud by his country's Supreme Court, which debarred him from practice for 11 years for abusing his judicial authority. His supporters claim that the left-wing Garzón is a victim of persecution by conservatives. To his critics - who loathed his hounding of Pinochet and his attempts to reopen Franco-era crimes - Garzón was Icarus. He flew too high.

5. After the Supreme Court’s decision, it will be impossible for Baltasar Garzón to ... for 11 years.

To this pedestrian philistine the examples you pictured of high-end Nordic restaurant cuisine were bewildering. The few sprigs of greens on the plate probably cost a small fortune and would appeal only to some ruminant. The tiny specks served up on the flat rock appeared to be bird droppings and the abdomen of an insect. It truly strains rational belief that people pay for the privilege of putting such titbits into their mouth. It would be faster, easier and certainly less pretentious just to flush the money down the toilet.

6. The piece was written to ... an illustrated food review published in a newspaper.

The European Parliament in Strasbourg is often treated as a joke, says Michael Laczynski. Set up in the 1950s as a "talking shop", it took MEPs decades to carve out a more serious role for it, and the more "thin skinned" of them still get upset if it isn't taken seriously. So they should be very upset indeed about Germany's constitutional court, which has just scrapped the voting threshold - 3% of the nationwide poll - which German parties have hitherto had to cross before being eligible to sit in Europe's parliament. With the threshold removed, Germany's fringe parties - campaigning on everything from animal rights to pension reform - have a far greater chance of winning a seat next May. Given their showing in 2009, Germany's neo-Nazis are certain to do so. Mainstream politicians are aghast. The point of a voting threshold is to prevent the kind of chaos that occurred in the Weimar Republic, when squabbling among numerous parties paved the way for Hitler. A threshold of 5% is still in place for Germany's national elections; but the court argued that as the EU parliament doesn't actually govern, it doesn't matter if it becomes unstable, it's more important that every vote should count. So now we know just what Germany's top judges think of the EU parliament. In their view, the grown-ups do national politics, while the EU's "Mickey Mouse" assembly is "for children only".

7. By their decision, German judges showed ... the European Parliament.

When Mitt Romney attacked President Obama for not prioritising national defence, Obama replied, ‘You mention the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.’ John Kerry believed that it ‘sank Romney’s battleship’ and it was widely repeated. And widely expanded with what comedians call ‘a topper’ – a hundred pictures of cavalry charges, from sources varying from the Bayeux Tapestry to the film War Horse, superimposed with captions like ‘Romney’s military’, spread before the two candidates had left the stage - so that a somewhat abstruse point about American naval strength became a widespread symbol of the Republican’s hopelessness.

8. The text suggests that ... may be a powerful weapon in politics

9. states the reasons for the lack of compromise in international negotiations

10. gives reasons why it’s time for Europe to change its outdated privacy protection policy

11. describes unwillingness to implement international data exchange

12. indicates circumstances which might help the interested parties to reach consensus

13. exemplifies difficulties caused by strict European data regulations

14. tells us what has started a change in the Europeans’ attitude to privacy regulations

15. mentions the reasons for differences in views on privacy in different countries

A
A few years ago I received an impassioned lecture from the square-jawed owner of a gun shop in Denver, Colorado. Governments, the proprietor noted, have a natural tendency to tyranny; firearms insure individuals against it. The man added that he once lived in East Germany, where he had seen how rapidly the slide can occur, once citizens lack weapons. I found this unpersuasive, even if, surrounded by assault rifles and handguns, he was too polite to admit it. But the owner’s logic resembles a claim heard in parts of Europe with memories of dictatorship more recent than George III. Tough laws, it is said, are needed to limit the abilities of governments (or firms) to record, store and distribute data on individuals. The spectre of the Gestapo is often raised. These concerns, perhaps unsurprisingly, are strongest in Germany.

B
Attitudes to privacy are grounded in different ideas of the relationship between the individual and the state, and encoded in different types of law in Germany and the USA. In 1970 Hesse, a German state, passed the world’s first data-protection statute. A federal law followed six years later. Thanks to patient-confidentiality rules, journalists, prosecutors and even his employer, Lufthansa, struggled to get the full medical facts about Andreas Lubitz, the pilot who flew an aircraft into a French mountain not long ago. Such difficulties would be hard to imagine in America, where data protection is mostly an issue of consumer regulation.

C
The growth in transatlantic travel and commerce has forced various creaky compromises. But the strains are showing. Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about the National Security Agency’s snooping did not, in the end, have much lasting impact in the United States. Yet in Germany they were devastating, especially after it emerged that the NSA might have been tapping the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

D
Europe’s other great bulwark of data protection has been the European Union, and particularly the European Parliament. For years its members blocked a proposal to create a pan-European “passenger name record” (PNR) data-sharing scheme for airline passengers. American officials have been irked by the difficulty of negotiating transatlantic PNR arrangements with the EU. The first, agreed on after the September 11th 2001 attacks, was squashed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in 2006. MEPs have never been satisfied with the provisions of its successors.

E
That is awkward enough. But now spats over privacy threaten the biggest joint project: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, an ambitious but teetering proposal to lower tariffs and boost investment. Just as German shoppers fear that TTIP will fill shelves with chlorine-dipped chicken from Arkansas, geeks worry about importing America’s lax data standards. Perhaps the biggest effect is indirect: the Snowden affair has helped set off a wave of anti-Americanism in Germany and Austria that found its fiercest expression in opposition to TTIP.

F
Yet the wall of hostility faced by America’s politicians and diplomats is nothing compared with the problems faced by its tech firms. Google and others share Germany’s concerns over the NSA. But their own activities are consistently tripped up by European regulations. Last May the ECJ ruled that Google must consider requests from individuals to wipe links to incriminating data. “Google”, thundered Germany’s vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, “can no longer simply bypass European standards.” Another case before the court threatens to unpick the “safe harbour” agreement that allows companies based in America to transfer their European customers’ data back home after pledging to protect it. Silicon Valley dreads having to deal with Europe’s patchwork of data-protection laws instead.

G
What makes negotiations between America and Europe even tougher is the considerable disproportion in the size of their tech firms – the field is dominated by Americans. Europeans have done badly at building internet firms whose services they like using. Quaero, a Franco-German attempted rival to Google, failed risibly. Now a proposal to complete the EU’s digital single market could correct this by helping online businesses to trade across borders. So could an updated European data-protection law, to replace one drawn up in 1995, if it is not overburdened with regulation.

H
Yet the transatlantic data divide will not close soon. Europeans are right to be wary of today’s unprecedented data-hovering, particularly by internet giants: public policy has failed to keep up. But for that very reason Europeans should seek to steer the debate, not eschew it. Two things make old defences of privacy harder to justify: the growth of online services that require data to be transferred and stored, and the terror threat.

I
Europe faces an even greater risk of terrorism than America does, and that weakens the case of privacy-conscious MEPs. Calls on the European Parliament to relent on PNR have grown louder since France’s recent attacks. Spooks speak as one in their fears of terrorists “going dark”: the head of Europol, a European law-enforcement agency, frets as much about impossible-to-crack encryption on new devices as do the Americans.

J
When talk of agreed standards looms, it is best for privacy advocates to avoid leaving them to the securocrats. If the European Parliament does not act on PNR, Europe could be left with a mess of national schemes, some overly intrusive. Similarly, tech firms anxious about granting spooks access to encrypted communications are well placed to negotiate new rules that balance security and liberty. If Google and Germany have been at odds on other issues, here they could find common cause. And Germans might take comfort from the idea that they now have a democracy robust enough to be able to alter the balance occasionally

To wear?

Recently an Arab woman in a niqab, the Darth Vader outfit, little slit for the eyes, was evicted from the Parisian opera house for exactly this misdemeanor. The whole bunch of warbling luvvies agreed to resume performing provided she was chucked out. In France, a niqab is illegal, as is not wearing one in some Muslim countries. Either way, it is women who get the rough end; whether in a Roman Catholic state or in the Muslim UAE, the female sex is liable to be picked on for contravening the local dress code. “Too modest” or “not nearly virtuous enough”– neither is morally justifiable, and the French legislation racist to boot. It is spite directed at a bunch of people who, too late, the French fervently wish they hadn’t let into the country.

To my mind, it is the sexist thinking behind the niqab, posing the thorny problem, not the niqab itself – and you address it by abandoning our multicultural mindset which insists that all competing cultures are equally valid; and some especially valid if they oppose the oppressive, imperialist white, Christian hegemony, such as Islam. But surely we should let people wear what the hell they want. That’s what we value over here, isn’t it, freedom?

Generally, we have become deranged by Islam. More often than not, we act towards its adherents in ways which must be mystifying and contradictory to ourselves. I find Islam in general an illiberal, arid, vengeful creed and nothing gives me a longer belly laugh than western politicians insisting it’s magnificent and peaceable, while locking up Muslims for stating the tenets of their religion and then sending in bombers to Iraq. Come on – it is not that peaceable, is it?

Another example of our derangement came in the bizarre notion that young jihadis returning from chopping off people’s heads in Syria might face charges of treason. Atrocious and brutal though their crimes could have seemed, a couple of years ago, unhesitantly their impunity would have been granted. Not only were they being cheered on in their fight against the monster Assad but the top brass here were also contemplating aid for their cause. If our then foreign secretary, William Hague, really was dumb enough to think the rebels were all Jeffersonian Democrats, yearning for nothing more than a free and open secular society with a decent minimum wage and equal rights for the LGBT community, then he is possibly the least perspicacious foreign secretary in British history. Every time the mass of Muslims exert their popular will, it is to create a regime considerably more punitive, illiberal and hostile to us than the undoubtedly ghastly regime which was peremptorily overthrown. When will we grasp that?

But I digress. The British jihadis were answering a call to arms from the very political leaders who are now hell-bent to incarcerate them. That they ended up fighting on the side of an organization with the aims and values of the Islamic State should be stupefying only to someone with the IQ of a bowl of butterscotch Angel Delight. At the time of writing, it is estimated that some 30 homegrown Muslim fanatics have been killed fighting alongside IS. I have to say that any man’s death must diminish us, however, barely does this grieve me and I am tempted to suggest free transport to the Turkish border should be offered for any fanatic itching to donate his life, or they can stay and watch the opera, dressed however they so wish.