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OTHER rebellions seeking international legitimacy might have welcomed their first visit by heads of state. Not Libya's. No sooner had the leaders of Mali, Mauritania and Congo-Brazzaville landed in Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital, than they were set upon by a Libyan mob, demanding their departure. Correctly predicting a rout, South Africa's president, Jacob Zumu, abandoned the African Union's diplomatic shuffle between Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and the rebels before the delegation headed to Benghazi.

Rebel anger stems in part from the AU's message. Delegates unveiled a roadmap which included a ceasefire and delivery of humanitarian aid to conflict areas followed by a transitional period of dialogue between the warring parties. But it did not stipulate the colonel's departure, the main rebel demand.

In five-star hotels dripping with chandeliers, the Libyan rebel council echoed the rebuff on the streets. "The African Union initiative does not include the departure of Qaddafi, his sons and his inner circle from the Libyan political scene, therefore it is outdated," said Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the National Council. Claims by the African Union that the colonel had accepted the plan only intensified the rebel rejection.

In many Easterners' minds, their origins alone were sufficient to condemn the AU delegates. Protests erupted as soon as the African leaders landed. For many Libyans, the African Union, which in 2009 named Colonel Qaddafi its president, epitomises the foreign projects on which the colonel frittered the country's oil wealth in his search for international adulation, while leaving his people in penury. That anger has intensified since the start of Libya’s uprising in mid-February, as rebels looked north for support, and the colonel turned south. While Tripoli greeted AU delegates with horse-parades, processions staged by Libyan tribesmen from the Sahara, and signs saying "Thank you, Africa," Benghazi's protestors chanted "murderers."

Rebels have accused at least two of the visiting leaders of facilitating the supply of mercenaries to the colonel's ranks. A defecting Libyan diplomat who arrived in Benghazi from Bamako, Mail's capital, last week estimated that the west African country had sent 4,000 fighters in exchange for Libyan largesse. True or not, rebels almost to a man believe it.

The visit served to highlight the widening gap between what is said and what is done which has characterised the conflict. While officials in Tripoli signalled the colonel's readiness to pursue a ceasefire, his forces on the ground continued to shell Misrata, Libya's third largest city and the rebels' last remaining urban stronghold in western Libya. By contrast, the rebels insist on maximalist aims while consistently retreating to a north-eastern rump where they are vulnerable to the colonel's predations. National Council members who urge realism and call for the consideration of political options are dismissed as defeatists. Last week, gun-toting youths on Benghazi's docks chased away a ship carrying ambulances and humanitarian aid from Turkey, on the grounds that its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was using the country's NATO membership to limit the military alliance's bombardment of the regime's forces.

NATO, too, seems divided between those seeking the colonel's downfall, led by America, and those arguing for a limited reading of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. On April 8th, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated that there "is no military solution" to Libya's crisis. Four days later, however, the foreign ministers of the two powers leading the combat operation—Britain and France—called for the organisation to fulfil the UN mandate to protect civilians with a more robust use of force.

There are limits. On April 11th, French and UN forces in Côte d'Ivoire captured former President Laurent Gbagbo in his Abidjan home, but it seems unlikely a similar attempt will be launched in Tripoli. Despite their bravado, the rebels have indicated their readiness to engage in political talks in Qatar, not least with Moussa Koussa, the colonel's former intelligence chief and foreign minister accused by rebels of being a principal agent of repression. Mr Moussa defected to Britain two weeks ago, but was allowed to leave for Doha after he issued a statement calling for "democratic dialogue" to prevent Libya degenerating into another Somalia.

Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee in the House of Representatives, has submitted his own proposals for sorting out America’s fiscal mess. His plan has energised the debate on the deficit. It calls for drastic cuts in spending and would terminate Medicare, the public health-care plan for the elderly, replacing it with government subsidies for private insurance. Federal funding for Medicaid, a health scheme for America’s poor, would be limited to capped grants to the states. According to Mr Ryan’s calculations, America’s fiscal deficit would be greatly reduced. We wrote about the plan in our issue dated April 9th, and readers have responded in droves.

Leslie Rogne Schumacher, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, is confused by The Economist’s "praise" of Mr Ryan’s blueprint:

“In no way is this plan brave or courageous. It merely panders to tea-party activists, who not only lack a pragmatic understanding of how to secure America’s future, but who have been often criticised by The Economist for holding such ill-informed and rigid views. Shouldn’t we be wary of a plan that promises to solve so much, while at the same time cynically promotes a political agenda?”

Party politics are also at the fore of Jeremy Ginsburg’s thoughts. Writing from New York, he thinks that, “A truly brave plan would disabuse the Republican base of its fantasies, rather than reinforcing them, and move towards gathering the support from Democrats that will be needed to actually address the nation’s fiscal imbalance. Mr Ryan’s plan has widened the gap between the parties”. Harry Breitrose takes time off from the Stanford campus to point out that the burden of Mr Ryan’s plan “is to be balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable members of American society, the young, the poor, and the old.”

With regards to the Medicare element of the proposals, Peter Spurging, from Seattle, imagines that “Many elderly Americans will be scratching their heads at your description of Medicare as an ‘all-you-can-eat buffet of care… paid for by government-run insurance’. Medicare is far from free. Its participants have paid a lifetime of taxes, and must still fork out a monthly fee to receive basic services, especially for prescription drugs. Retirees then face a bewildering hotchpotch of additional payments, deductions, limits and restrictions on access to services.”

Mr Spurging insists that this is “not exactly the generous government-funded bean-feast your leader suggests.”

Mr Ryan’s plan, however, will not affect current recipients of Medicare. The lion’s share of the cuts will actually fall on future retirees. Larry Littlefield, from Brooklyn, bemoans the fact that,

“Mr Ryan’s budget proposal did not call for any sacrifices from those aged 55 and over, but it did include even more Medicare spending on that group, to be funded by 30 more years of deficits, to be paid back by younger generations who would have drastically lower benefits. We have had 30 years of growing generational inequities. Politicians should speak more about generational inequity. What is happening at the moment can only be described as generational greed”.

Lastly, a reader from Alameda, California, places an emphasis on the intellectual antecedents of Mr Ryan’s plan. Andrew Laurence reminds us that:

“Congressman Ryan is an admitted devotee of Ayn Rand, who believed that helping the poor, whether it is done by government or through private efforts, was not only wrong but positively immoral”.

We will be writing more about the deficit and the politics of Paul Ryan’s plan in our next issue.

RENAULT is eating a lot of humble pie this year. After insisting for months that it had uncovered a major case of industrial espionage, the biggest French carmaker admitted a few weeks ago that it was tricked into wrongfully firing three senior executives after a company investigation. There has been speculation that Renault's probe mistakenly concluded that the three had received payments from Chinese companies via accounts in Liechtenstein and Switzerland in exchange for confidential information.

Immediately after Renault’s embarrassing admission, the French government, Renault’s biggest shareholder with a 15% stake, started to push for the resignations of those responsible for the unfair dismissals. Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, said that those responsible for the affair “must depart”. On April 11th, some of them did. Patrick Pélata (pictured above), the firm’s number two, resigned—as did Christian Husson, the company’s chief legal counsel, Jean-Yves Coudriou, the head of human resources and Laurence Dors, the company’s general secretary.

The French government did not demand the resignation of Carlos Ghosn, the boss of Renault, who also runs Nissan Motor, the Japanese carmaker linked in a close alliance with Renault. And with good reason: Mr Ghosn is the architect of Renault's alliance with Nissan, which he rescued from near-bankruptcy and revived with astonishing success. The Franco-Japanese tandem is making a bold bid for leadership in the electric-car sector, and the spy affair comes at a sensitive time for the development of the ambitious, €4 billion ($5.6 billion) electric-car programme. Moreover Nissan is currently grappling with the aftermath of Japan’s devastating earthquake.

This isn’t the moment to lose the chief executive of Renault and Nissan so Mr Ghosn will be allowed to soldier on. Renault’s board has “turned a painful page”, Mr Ghosn said in a statement of the announcement of the departures. He had tried to hold on to the loyal Mr Pélata, whose resignation he refused in mid-March. And as an act of penance he pledged to forgo his stock options this year and repay the performance bonus in his 2010 pay, worth €1.6m. Both are honourable gestures, but they will not quite restore the shine of one of the great stars of the European car industry.

The sinking of the Titanic led, in time, to a new wave of regulations covering safety at sea. The new rules, which included an edict that ships carry enough lifeboats to accommodate all those on board, struck such a sensible balance between safety and cost that they were soon widely adopted. Britain’s Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, hopes to do the same with proposed rules that should make the financial system quite a bit safer, yet without imposing such onerous costs that its recommendations are laughed at all the way to the rubbish bin.

The two main recommendations in the commission’s interim report, which was released today, are that big British banks should hold a lot more equity capital against their assets and should rearrange themselves so that their retail banks can survive (or be plucked to safety) even if the rest of the bank hits a financial iceberg. The commission also wants to beef up the competition on the high street, signalling that Lloyds Banking Group in particular needs to divest more branches than is currently required under European Union rules.

On capital, the commission reckons that the minimum that systemically important banks should set aside as buffers ought to rise to 10% from the 7% proposed by Basel III. Its reasoning seems to be based on a mixture of research and realism. The interim report argues that there is ample evidence showing that the new Basel standard (which itself is twice as high as before the financial crisis) is far too low, and that even 10% may not be quite enough. The commission seems to have settled on this number in the hope that it will not be so high as to be unceremoniously rejected, and proposes that the additional 3% becomes the new surcharge applied to big and systemically important institutions. There is perhaps hope that in Britain this could become the new standard for large banks. It seems unlikely, however, that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a huddle of central bankers and regulators, would agree to an equity surcharge this big as the new global standard. People close to the talks seem to think the number agreed to in Basel will be closer to 1% than 3% and largely, if not entirely, composed of convertible capital instruments.

The Vickers commission’s second big proposal is to have banks ringfence their retail arms. Large universal banks, which combine retail and investment banking, would be allowed to keep playing in the capital markets. They would, however, have to set aside enough capital in separate pools to be sure that either part of the bank could survive without the other.

The proposals are far less radical than some banks may have feared. They will probably also not cost that much to implement. Industry estimates put the cost of ringfencing at about £5 billion ($8 billion) a year, mainly because funding costs of the separate parts will rise as each will be less diversified than the whole. These estimates are probably overstated. Moreover, the real impact of the commission’s proposals is that they may help to bring about a measure of transparency and market discipline to bank funding.

Because of its reasonableness, the commission’s recommendations will be difficult to dismiss. A final report is due in September.

Power struggle
To some, the crisis at Fukushima is a final demonstration that nuclear power carries risks that are too great. To others, even such accidents cannot trump the security of electricity supply and the low-carbon energy that it brings. Would the world be better off without nuclear power?

Defined difficulties
A videographic accompanying this week’s special report illustrates the scale of the problems facing pension provision in the West. The next generation is smaller than the baby boomers, official retirement ages lag behind longevity and defined-contribution plans are often underfunded

After the revolution
Tunisia’s revolution was the starting point of the Arab awakening and its transition to democracy may yet prove a blueprint for other Arab countries. We meet some of the people involved and travel to Tunisia’s poor interior where, as this short video shows, an anxious calm prevails

United States: Zealotry and responsibility
Terry Jones is not responsible for the mob violence in Afghanistan. David Petraeus is wrong to imply he is

Europe: Going nowhere fast
The International Court of Justice throws out Georgia’s case against Russia over the 2008 war, and talks in Geneva stall

Middle East: A change of heart
Richard Goldstone recants some parts of his report on Israel’s war in Gaza two years ago

Asia: No country for old men
Cambodia forbids foreign men aged over 50 or earning too little from marrying its women

Britain: The front line needs the back office
Getting rid of paper-pushers in the National Health Service doesn’t get rid of the paper that needs pushing

Americas: It’s the economy
Mexico’s main opposition party will campaign on poverty rather than security

Finance: Forced out
Bangladesh’s highest court rules that the removal of Muhammad Yunus from Grameen Bank last year was legally valid

Science: Flexible electronics
Engineers have at last built chips out of something cheaper and bendier than silicon

Science: Big Astronomy
It’s not only particle physicists: astronomers like expensive toys, too. Just look at the planned Square Kilometre Array

Culture: Whither the book?
A new collection of essays puts this question to a group of writers

Economics: Sand in the gears
In the aftermath of the global crisis, the IMF is softening its view of policies designed to slow volatile capital flows. Our network of economics experts discusses when, if ever, capital controls are justified

ON APRIL 4th, uniformed soldiers and plain-clothes policemen opened fire on protesters in the Yemen's commercial capital, Taiz. The government's forces killed 12 and injured another 300-odd people, mostly through their liberal use of tear gas. It was the worst attack so far on the peaceful demonstrators in Taiz, a poor city four hours south of the capital, Sana'a, where there have been many protests since unrest broke out earlier this year.

As negotiations between President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the opposition have faltered, attacks on Yemen's pro-democracy protesters have escalated. In Hodeidah, a quiet port on the Red Sea, government supporters used tear gas and live ammunition on demonstrators, killing three. The day before Monday’s fatal shootings in Taiz, there had been clashes when police attacked thousands of women gathered to protest against the government, provoking men to step in to protect them.

So far America been reluctant to criticise Mr Saleh, an important—if mercurial—ally in fighting Al Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula franchise. The White House was quick to condemn the violence in Taiz but has not yet called for Mr Saleh to step down.

In a television interview on March 27th, the American defence secretary, Robert Gates, spoke of the dangers of a post-Saleh Yemen and announced that his priority there was the "war on terror."  There has already been a breakdown in security as government troops stationed across the country are called back to various cities to put down protests, he argued.

Militants are said to have taken control of the town of Jaar, an al-Qaeda stronghold in the restive southern province of Abyan. Last week the group announced an "Islamic emirate" there. "From now on," read a statement posted online by the militants, "women who go out to the markets need to be accompanied by a relative, who carry a proof by identity cards, or passports."

The latest edition of al-Qaeda’s online English-language magazine, Inspire, published on jihadi forums at the end of March, carries an article by the Yemeni-based radical cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, describing the organisation's enthusiastic response to the "tsunami of change" sweeping through the Arab world, and bragging of "the upsurge of mujahideen activity" throughout the region.

Mr Saleh has been keen to stress that his continued leadership is essential to keeping Yemen stable. On March 30th he told a committee of the ruling party that six of Yemen's 18 governorates "have fallen". But many opposition protesters say that Mr Saleh is exploiting and even exaggerating the threat of al-Qaeda to retain the backing of Western powers.

The Americans are looking increasingly unconvinced.  On April 3rd the New York Times reported that Ameria is ready to abandon Mr Saleh. But as Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert, points out, the worry is not only over what happens if Mr Saleh goes, but what will happen if he stays.

THERE is no joy like schadenfreude, say Israelis. The 17th verse of the 24th chapter of the book of Proverbs counsels otherwise. But the Israeli government preferred popular gloating to biblical restraint in its response this week to Richard Goldstone's public recantation of the charge that Israel may have deliberately killed non-combatants in Gaza two years ago.

The charge was a key element of the Goldstone Report, an investigation into Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 which was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Commission and endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Mr Goldstone, an eminent South African judge and a lifelong Zionist, chaired the panel. He has faced obloquy and condemnation from Israel and Jewish groups worldwide in the wake of its findings.

Some 1,300 Palestinians died in "Operation Cast Lead", most of them armed militants but many hundreds of them innocent civilians, including scores of children. Thirteen Israelis, soldiers and civilians, were killed during the operation.

It was the accusation that Israeli policymakers and generals caused civilian deaths as a premeditated war aim that triggered the almost unanimous excoriation of Mr Goldstone and his report throughout Israeli society. Plenty of doveish moderates were aghast at the death toll and prepared for severe strictures from the rest of the world. Many in Israel, including the army, recognised that the rules of engagement between regular armies and guerrillas needed revision and clarification.

But almost no Israelis were prepared to accept the notion that Israel's operation had deliberately targeted Gazan civilians as a way of defeating Hamas. It is principally in this core matter of "intentionality", as he calls it, that Mr Goldstone has now recanted, in an article this weekend in the Washington Post. There was no evidence, he now says, to sustain it. That, it may be noted, was largely because Israel refused to co-operate with Mr Goldstone and his team during their compilation of evidence, which was necessarily collected from Gazans and international observers in Gaza.

Nor has Mr Goldstone recanted from a string of serious accusations levelled against Israel in his original report. Among them were charges that the Israelis had hit buildings that were not military targets and were "the foundations of civil life", such as a school, a flour mill, water installations, sewage-treatment facilities, wells, greenhouses and so forth. It also chided the Israelis for the blockade of Gaza, resulting in severe shortages of food and medicine for the civilian population.

But he noted that the Israeli army meanwhile has officially instituted much tighter restraints on the use of its firepower—a consequence of the Goldstone report which, it is to be hoped, will not now be reversed amid the rejoicing over Mr Goldstone's discomfiture.

Part of the reason for Mr Goldstone's partial change of heart seems to have been the apparent readiness of Israel to examine its own behaviour. He writes: "Our report has led to numerous "lessons learned" and policy changes, including the adoption of new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas." By contrast, said Mr Goldstone, Hamas, Gaza's Islamist movement, which the original report criticised for firing rockets indiscriminately at concentrations of Israeli civilians across the border in Israel, had made no such efforts.

Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has set up an inter-departmental team whose task is to bring about, through vigorous diplomacy, the renunciation of the report by the UN. That is unlikely. But demanding it, Mr Netanyahu presumes, will enhance and extend the enjoyable public-relations coup which Mr Goldstone's backtracking has afforded his country.

Japan gets all the bad luck these days. Just as economic conditions were finally improving—at least for big business—after the long post-Lehman slump, the March 11th earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power-plant crisis has knocked them for six again. This is clear from an extraordinary release from the Bank of Japan on April 4th which compares results of the Tankan business-conditions survey for which responses were supposed to be submitted by March 11th.  Using submissions from before and after that fateful day, it shows just how dramatically business confidence has worsened.

For example: in the manufacturing sector, the diffusion index for large firms who sent back responses before March 11th was seven, and its forecast was three (a positive reading means optimists outnumber pessimists). Those responding after the earthquake put current conditions at six, but their forecasts had fallen to minus-two. Medium-sized and small enterprises, which make up the bulk of those in the stricken Tohoku region, were less confident about the future than the bigger ones even before the earthquake. But since, small manufacturing firms, whose judgment of actual conditions was minus-six on the index, now have a forecast of minus-18.

This is hardly surprising. Companies face a looming energy crisis, with planned black-outs that may last into next years, as well as the devastation of parts of Tohoku, which Barclays Capital estimates affects 6-7% of Japanese GDP. On top of that is the spectre of radiation, which is making it difficult for exporters to ship goods abroad because of exaggerated fears in foreign ports, as well as putting off many foreigners from doing business in Japan. Add to this the danger of jishuku, the Japanese notion of self-restraint, which is leading to the cancellation of everything from hanami (cherry-blossom viewing parties) to baseball games, and you have dashed consumer confidence overlaid on waning business confidence.

Time, then, for the government to get out in front of its own people, and tell them to spend, and to get out in front of foreigners, and tell them that they shouldn't panic. As for companies, the surprise is, they are not more pessimistic. Let's hope that's the positive side of jishuku.

SPAIN'S Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has ended months of speculation by announcing that he will not stand for a third term at a general election expected early next year.

When Mr Zapatero took office in 2004, Spain's economy was booming. But as it has sagged, his popularity has sunk: a poll in today's El País gives him the worst personal rating of a Spanish prime minister in recent history. A toxic combination of an outdated economic model, a burst housing bubble and the global credit crunch has left investors wary and a fifth of the Spanish workforce unemployed.

The problems were initially accentuated by Mr Zapatero's sluggish response. He is now an enthusiastic proponent of austerity and reform but this has lost him voters and was unlikely to produce sufficient growth, or jobs, to win him new ones by next spring. Time, then, for a dignified exit.

Attention is turning to the question of who will replace him to do battle with the opposition centre-right People's Party, which enjoys a large lead in opinion polls. The Socialist Party will probably hold primary elections to find a new leader after local elections on May 22; the strongest candidate is Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the hyperactive deputy prime minister, interior minister and government spokesman.

The interior ministry, with the opportunities it presents ministers to display their crime-fighting and terrorist-catching credentials, can be a good spot from which to woo Spanish voters. Today's El País poll shows that Socialist voters see Mr Rubalcaba as a safer electoral bet than the other leading candidates, Carme Chacón, the defence minister, and José Bono, president of the parliament.

The 59-year-old Mr Rubalcaba is a wily and enthusiastic politician, but his track record is patchy. In 2000 he backed Mr Bono over Mr Zapatero when they fought for the party leadership. The People's Party has begun searching for scandals implicating him from the messy world of the fight against ETA, the armed Basque separatist group, including alleged attempts to prevent the police arresting militants during a ceasefire in 2006.

Ms Chacón presents a fresher, more sympathetic face. The 40-year-old spent nine months running the housing ministry without capturing the imagination of Spaniards. But her ratings soared after she barked a stand-to-attention order to a parade ground of uniformed men after becoming defence minister in 2008. She is the most popular member of the government among voters.

In policy terms there is little between the pair, although voters might see the Real Madrid-supporting Mr Rubalcaba as more of a centralising figure than Ms Chacón, a Catalan.

Mr Zapatero's announcement has reinvigorated Spanish politics, but it is tricky to guess what the consequences will be for his party. Its biggest challenge over the next year is likely to be convincing disillusioned Socialist voters to turn out at election time.

The Socialists may also find it difficult to unbundle themselves from their outgoing leader: at previous elections they have made great play of his “ZP” brand. If they are canny, however, the party's leaders may be able to turn this to their advantage. As they begin to look back on his political career, some traditional Socialist voters might remember things Mr Zapatero did that they liked—such as pulling troops out of Iraq, introducing gay marriage and promoting women's rights—and return to the polling stations to pay him final homage.

The timing of Mr Zapatero's announcement is a response to party demands that he fall on his sword before May's elections for 13 of Spain's 17 regional parliaments and all of its town halls. A huge and varied array of local factors will affect the results, which will make it hard to work out the impact of his decision. 

More than anything, Mr Zapatero's announcement removes an excuse from those members of his party who have quietly been blaming him for their poor polling. Overt criticism of their leader has, in any case, been negligible. The party shares the blame for the unpopularity of his policies. That, of course, also goes for Mr Rubalcaba and Ms Chacón.

Photo credit: AFP

As the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant continues (see our article in this week’s issue), readers have been sending in their thoughts on the future of nuclear energy. Responding to our briefing, Rob van Riet, who works at the World Future Council in London, calls attention to research conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which “reveals that 20% of the world’s 442 working nuclear-power stations are in areas of ‘significant’ seismic activity”. Mr van Riet thinks that “this is an unacceptable gamble”:

“Although I personally believe nuclear energy should be phased out entirely from the world’s energy infrastructure for a number of reasons, I propose we start doing it in the areas most prone to natural disasters. That would be a lesson well learnt.”

Our briefing also compared the safety record of nuclear power to the airline industry. Both are significantly better than their direct competitors, but when they fail they fail spectacularly. Frank Lowther, from Los Angeles, extends the comparison:

“The airlines have one advantage that nuclear power lacks: there is no plausible alternative. When someone wants to travel from, say, New York to Sydney, flying is the only option. With the highly limited exception of large navy vessels, nuclear power has no such captive market. As such, its future can and will be in jeopardy every time a disaster strikes, even when those occurrences are a quarter-century apart.”

Another of our articles remarked that “there is a trustworthy and transparent regulation, a clear distinction between operators and regulators and well enforced building codes” in the Western nuclear industry. But this statement reminded Hisao Tateishi, who lives in Tokyo, of assertions made about the financial industry in the West before the Lehman crisis:

“What happened then was the contamination of the financial markets on a global scale by financial companies. It took an earthquake and tsunami to cause a disaster at Fukushima. How many Western nuclear reactors could withstand an impact like that? What about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?”

But Dale Fisher, who writes from Calgary, points out that,

“At Three Mile Island the safeguards caught the breakdown and the reactor was safely shut down with no loss of human life. It was not so fortunate at Chernobyl. That was a serious and ongoing tragedy. The Russians, however, were never licensed by the IAEA for nuclear reactors. Not having sanction and not having built the required safety requirements did not stop them from initiating the Chernobyl reactor. The results speak for themselves. 

Chernobyl should not be used as a reason for halting all nuclear reactors. Chernobyl should never have been permitted to operate.”

Meanwhile, Adam Woodman from Canberra, read our recent leader on reducing the size of the state, which he thinks is bad timing for Japan right now. Mr Woodman believes that,

“The Japanese people are probably glad that the army and firefighters, all employees of the state, are helping with the nuclear emergency. Tokyo Electric Power Company, a private company, was unable to cope without state help. It would certainly be bankrupt from paying for the emergency work and fighting lawsuits from those seeking compensation for health or financial difficulties caused by this crisis.” 

What with the recent protests by unions in Wisconsin, a huge demonstration in central London and Portugal on the verge of a bail-out, public-sector cuts are very much in the news in America, Britain and continental Europe. Our readers have piled into the debate. Responding to our special report on the future of the state, Jonathan Brooke, a teacher from Hertford, thinks that “almost every article you publish about education stresses the need to sack bad teachers”. But, he asks,

“Have any of your editors or writers ever been to a real school? I waited three years for someone to put a projector in my teaching room so I could use PowerPoint. There is no money in the budget to equip a class with laptop computers. Despite your admirable devotion to the market you seem unwilling to engage with the brute fact that private schools give us an accurate market price for a good education and it is a price somewhat higher than that which the taxpayer is willing to bear.” 

Glen Matthews is an economics professor at a community college in Lakewood, Colorado, who believes that we never acknowledge that “the performance of schools reflects the communities where they are based”. He goes on,

“You don’t blame the police for crime in the streets nor do you blame doctors for poor health in a community. So why do you blame teachers for bad students? Until your newspaper has the courage to address failing homes and communities and the lack of value placed on education then none of the proposed measures will have a tangible impact.”

Writing from Frankfurt, Mark Schieritz, a journalist at Die Zeit, enjoyed reading our special report on the state. Yet he is curious as to,

“Why you are bringing up the issue now? After all your chart  shows that government spending as a percentage of GDP in the West more or less stagnated since 1980 and only started to rise when the financial crisis struck and private banks needed to be bailed out. I am not aware of many economic indicators which show such a degree of stability. Probably the image of the ever-increasing Leviathan has more relation to ideology than to reality?”

Finally, our article on the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist worskshop in New York, which killed 146 workers and became a catalyst for the ideas that spurred the New Deal, drew a parallel with collective-bargaining rights for unions. Scott Wood, of Shelbyville, Tennessee, says of more relevance,

“Is the quick destruction of the unions if governments cannot negotiate balanced budgets without taxing their citizens into poverty. Although collective bargaining is not the only reason for the governments’ woes, it has been a factor.  The destruction from unbalanced budgets will be much more rapid and heartbreaking than the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.”

TURKEY'S mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thinks he can take credit for the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world. “Which country were they inspired by?” he asked the Turkish parliament recently. He answered his own question: Turkey, with its “advanced democracy”. The country's mix of secularism, free elections and European Union-tailored reforms has certainly raised its profile in its former Ottoman dominions. (Mr Erdoğan’s salvoes against Israel have gone down well too.) The prime minister was among the first world leaders to tell Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, to step down.

So why has Turkey been so reluctant to back western efforts to stop Libya’s dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, from slaughtering his own people? The question has been burning in western capitals ever since Turkey balked at plans to erect a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians.

When the uprising in Libya erupted last month, Mr Erdoğan swiftly opposed any foreign intervention. He described the idea of NATO intervention as "absurd". He called on Colonel Qaddafi to resign but mistrusted Western motives, suggesting that Europeans and Americans were more interested in guzzling Libyan oil than saving Libyan lives. Their "real plan", whispered conspiratorially minded members of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, was nothing less than an “imperial carve-up” of the country.

So it came as something of a shock last week when Turkey declared that it would provide four frigates, one submarine and an extra warship to help enforce the no-fly zone and prevent the flow of weapons to Libya. The government has put a brave face on this U-turn, insisting that it had only moved when the military operation was taken out of French hands and placed under the command of NATO, where Turkey, a key member, wields veto power.

The line is disingenuous, as other coalition members, such as Italy, had also been demanding that NATO take the lead. It seems more likely that Turkey feared being left out altogether, as it had been from the conference in Paris where the decision to attack Colonel Qaddafi's forces was agreed. Moroever, the Arab League had already voted on March 12th to support a no-fly zone, thereby giving “Muslim cover” to the operation. Above all, American arm-twisting is said to have won the day.

Libya has thrown AK’s much-vaunted Middle East policy into disarray and further strained ties with America and the EU. As Semih Idiz, a columnist for the daily Milliyet, observes [link in Turkish], AK’s approach has been based on friendly relations with existing leaders, no matter how brutish. And although Turkey was quick to scent Mr Mubarak’s defeat, Colonel Qaddafi's future is less clear. Mr Erdoğan warns of a protracted and bloody civil war that could make Libya "a second Iraq." He has suggested that Colonel Qaddafi could yet be involved in a peaceful transition of power, which Turkey could help mediate.

Turkey’s attempts to sit on the fence may be partly explained by self-interest. Some 20,000 Turkish citizens worked in in Libya (they are now mostly repatriated). The country has around $15 billion worth of outstanding contracts which may be scrapped if the rebels prevail.

Yet an even bigger challenge is being posed by neighbouring Syria, where nationwide protests have left scores of civilians dead. Mr Erdoğan is a big friend to Syria’s strongman leader, Bashar Assad, and has urged him to ease his iron grip. Should the violence spread to Syria’s Kurdish-dominated north, thousands might cross the border into Turkey, already home to 14m or so restive Kurds. Mr Erdoğan’s pious base have been incensed by the slaughter of their fellow Sunni Muslims at the hands of Mr Assad’s forces. When it comes to Syria, sitting on the fence may not be an option.