EADS cuts 5,800 jobs; Greece's dismal demographics; Capitalism's tragedy in America; South Africa's long walk is not over; Poll-axed in India!

1 EADS cuts 5,800 jobs (BBC) Aerospace and defence giant EADS says it will cut 5,800 jobs as a fall in governments' military spending begins to bite. The company, which owns Airbus, plans to reorganise its European defence and space businesses. It says there will be a "substantial consolidation" of sites in Germany, France, Spain and the UK. Tom Enders, chief executive of EADS, said: "We need to improve our competitiveness in defence and space - and we need to do it now. "With our traditional markets down, we urgently need to improve access to international customers, to growth markets."

EADS warned then that it would have to restructure in the face of defence budget cuts in its main markets. It is understood that the UK operations, which employ more than 17,000 people, will be affected as part of the consolidation of the Astrium, Cassidian and Airbus Military divisions in a new unit, to be called Airbus Defence and Space.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25300010

2 Greece's dismal demographics (Nikos Konstandaras in The New York Times) The Greeks are in a struggle for survival. And the odds are piling up against us. The fight is not only on the economic front, as it tries to meet commitments under an international 240-billion-euro bailout deal that has resulted in greatly reduced incomes, higher costs and taxes, and an overriding sense of insecurity. The danger is even more basic: Deaths are outnumbering births, people are leaving the country, and the population is aging so fast that in a few decades Greece may be unable to produce enough wealth to take care of its people and may cease to be a viable nation state.

“People tend to overlook the importance of the population, even though everything begins with it,” says Michalis Papadakis, professor emeritus of statistics and social security at the University of Piraeus, who has spent his life studying the issue. “Demographic reduction undermines defense capabilities, it cuts down the work force and obstructs business.” He noted that 2011 was the first year in which the number of Greece’s residents dropped (with deaths exceeding births by 4,671). According to the European Union’s statistical service, in 2012 deaths in Greece outnumbered births by 16,300, while 44,200 more people left the country than moved to it.

Many European Union countries face a similar demographic problem and the Union as a whole is aging fast. But whereas European Union and national officials are looking for ways to deal with an aging population, in Greece the battle for economic survival is so overwhelming that no one has time for the bigger picture.

Unemployment is at 27.3 percent (1.4 million people), with over 60 percent of those under 24 without jobs.

Those who do have work are getting less pay and facing higher taxes — and they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Even immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who came seeking a better life, are moving on. The most frightening figure is a Eurostat projection which estimates that, in 2050, 32.1 percent of the Greek population will be over 65, compared with 16.6 percent in 2000.

And yet, Greece has two mighty reasons for hope. It has a dynamic and prospering diaspora, mainly in the US and Australia; and its European Union membership is a pillar of support today but, with its open borders, also a potential source of immigration. If we in Greece can hold the country steady through the crisis, and work toward optimism and opportunity for ourselves, then people will come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/opinion/greeces-dismal-demographics.html?src=rechp&_r=0

3 Capitalism's tragedy in America (David Simon in The Guardian) America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.

I think we've perfected a lot of the tragedy and we're getting there faster than a lot of other places that may be a little more reasoned, but my dangerous idea kind of involves this fellow who got left by the wayside in the 20th century and seemed to be almost the butt end of the joke of the 20th century; a fellow named Karl Marx. But he was really sharp about what goes wrong when capital wins unequivocally, when it gets everything it asks for.

That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, that it has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without being connected to any other metric for human progress. We understand profit. And the notion that capital is the metric, that profit is the metric by which we're going to measure the health of our society is one of the fundamental mistakes of the last 30 years. I would date it in my country to about 1980 exactly, and it has triumphed.

And so capitalism is about to seize defeat from the jaws of victory all by its own hand. That's the astonishing end of this story, unless we reverse course. Unless we take into consideration, if not the remedies of Marx then the diagnosis, because he saw what would happen if capital triumphed unequivocally, if it got everything it wanted.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire

4 South Africa's long walk is not over (Justice Malala in Johannesburg Times) Let us not beat about the bush. The current crop of South African leadership is a pale shadow of the calibre of women and men who once surrounded Nelson Mandela. I do not wish to sully this time of mourning for the Mandela family and our nation. But the truth hurts. We have gone backwards, not forwards. The best-laid plans are nothing without resolute, ethical, leaders to implement them. We are going through a period of drought in South African leadership, and the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Is this how we honour Mandela, how we remember him and his legacy?

It was Desmond Tutu, the moral compass of our nation, who said on Friday: "He would not want just a stone as his memorial. He would want us South Africans to be his memorial. I, you, us." It is an indictment on South Africa that, 20 years after we achieved our much-vaunted democracy, so little is being done to reduce our poverty. Come now, let us talk straight. How can we speak of Mandela while our parliament has just passed the apartheid-esque Secrecy Bill into law? It is sitting on the president's desk as we speak. It will jail journalists. It will jail whistleblowers. And we dare to say we are following in the footsteps of Mandela, a man who again and again emphasised the freedom of the press?

Let us talk straight. People-centred society? When we now seem to be embracing a "Big Man" idea of leadership, as embodied in that monstrous house in a sea of poverty in Nkandla? Freedom from ignorance, when our children are being given a sub-standard mathematics examination (maths literacy)? Freedom from fear? Let us tell that to the 66,000 women who were sexually assaulted last year.  We can mourn and celebrate this week, and so we should: A great man is dead. At the end of the day, though, it would all be posturing, it would all be lies and playing to the gallery, if we do not achieve half of what he would have wanted us to achieve.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/12/10/the-big-read-our-long-walk-is-not-over

5 Poll-axed in India! (Khaleej Times) If Sunday's assembly poll results are a dress rehearsal for the 2014 general elections in India, then one thing is crystal clear: Barring a huge upset, the Gandhi dynasty that ruled India for three generations despite increasingly lessening merit, leadership and vision, is heading for an end.

The Congress, the dominant party leading the United Progressive Alliance that has been ruling at the centre since 2004, has been made to bite the dust. What makes the defeat doubly  ignominious is the massive rejection in Delhi. While its bête noir, the Bhatatiya Janata Party (BJP), won the majority of the 70 seats, the Congress did not even come second. Despite ruling the state since 1998, it was reduced to an abject third by the debutant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a maverick with no serious financiers. The results can’t be called an anti-incumbency verdict since in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan sailed to a comfortable victory. Therefore, the results are a clear ballot against corruption, crime and inefficiency. 

The polls also say something about the next prime minister of India. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, being groomed for the post, cut no ice with voters anywhere. The BJP’s candidate, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, fared better but still, could not perform miracles. The BJP should not gloat over its victory. With the AAP emerging as a third option, it will have to perform or go the Congress way.

http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=/data/editorial/2013/December/editorial_December16.xml&section=editorial