After a year dominated by the global credit crisis, the election of a new president in the US and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Observer writers look ahead to the issues that are likely to dominate headlines next year
The Observer,
Sunday 28 December 2008
Where is al-Qaida going to hit next?
The al-Qaida leadership, said by security sources to comprise between 20 and 30 key figures, has been having a hard time of it recently. A concentration of attacks from unmanned American Predator drones in Pakistan's western tribal zones has meant surviving has become as much of a priority as trying to organise spectacular militant attacks across the world aimed at radicalising and mobilising the world's Muslim masses. These strikes have taken such a toll that al-Qaida has launched a series of internal investigations aimed at finding the mole passing intelligence to the Americans.
Also, Osama bin Laden is under attack from within the jihadi movement. There are increasing numbers of senior Islamic militants who, though they are still very much committed to the cause, are now less convinced by the Saudi-born chief's leadership. Without a major attack of a genuinely dramatic nature, the confidence of even bin Laden's more loyal followers may flag. Many already see the attacks of 9/11 as deeply counter-productive.
The best target for al-Qaida would be the US. But a combination of a huge security effort and the lack of Muslims to answer the call to arms makes that hard. Attacks in the Middle East, Asia or Africa are easier to organise - as are strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan - but have much less global resonance than a direct strike in the west. One exception would be India, where a big new strike could spark war with Pakistan.
But it is in Europe where al-Qaida has won recruits. Currently Germany's most wanted fugitive is a 21-year-old former skateboard rider and Muslim convert, who is somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Algerian groups are increasingly threatening France. Britain is easier to get to than the US, has close transatlantic links and a substantial community of people who have links with, and can easily travel to, Pakistan. If anywhere is in the firing line, it is.
And it is worth remembering that seven years ago bin Laden was on the run, in the same place, with 20 or 30 followers and question marks over his leadership.
Jason Burke
Observer correspondent and author of Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror
When will the recession end?
The speed at which the economy plunged into recession this year after a decade of growth and prosperity was truly frightening. Unfortunately, that does not necessarily mean we can look forward to an equally rapid recovery.
The economy performed worse than at any time since the early-1990s downturn, according to the Office for National Statistics, shrinking by 0.6% in the third quarter of 2008. Analysts from Capital Economics are now forecasting that 2009 will be the worst year since 1947, when the postwar slump was accompanied by a viciously cold winter.
A wave of redundancies in banking, construction and retail has taken the jobless total to 1.86 million, the highest for 11 years, and that figure will almost certainly get much worse. Many businesses have been staving off staff cuts, but barring a miracle these will happen in the new year. Capital Economics predicts the number out of work will almost double over the next two years to 3.5 million in the UK.
Even those who do not lose their jobs are affected by the fear factor, which is making households less inclined to spend money, despite the Chancellor's reduction in VAT; entertainment retailer Zavvi, menswear chain the Officers Club, and tea and coffee seller Whittard of Chelsea are the latest retailers to hit the buffers, following the collapse of Woolies. Shops have been offering huge discounts both before and after Christmas; good news for anyone brave enough to dip into their purse, but a big signal of the distress in the sector. More pain is on its way in the housing market, too. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is expecting a fall in house prices of 10% to 15% next year on top of this year's decline of 16%. RICS is also predicting an increase in repossessions.
The big questions when the banking sector crunch took hold in 2007 were whether, and how badly, the financial crisis would affect the so-called real economy of jobs, shops and factories. We now know that any hopes it would be quarantined in the financial sector were misplaced. Gordon Brown's bold measures to rescue the banks saved us from an even worse scenario - at one point, Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were days from the brink, threatening unthinkable chaos - but it seems likely banks will need more support next year. The events of the past year are unprecedented and it is unrealistic to think that businesses and individuals will recover in a hurry. We will be paying for this for some time to come.
Ruth Sunderland
Business and Media Editor, the Observer
Is organic food going out of fashion?
In the summer the Soil Association, which certifies products as organic, bullishly predicted that sales of organic produce would rise by 10% for 2008. Compared with the 26% average growth from 1993 to 2006, it looked like a cautious estimate.
Then came the credit crunch and the first surveys that found sales of organic food had dropped month on month from Easter onwards. Organic eggs dropped from a peak of 7.4% of the egg market to 4.7%. While taken year on year 2008 is still likely to show an increase in organic sales - albeit less than the predicted 10% - by spring 2009 we are almost certain to be recording the first year-on-year falls in 15 years. Last week the Soil Association even applied to the government for an organic feed "holiday" for the producers it had certified. Organic animal feed is currently costing double the price of non-conventional feed, and the association fears it will force producers out of business. Does this mean the organic food movement is dead? Not entirely; it does have a devoted hard core who will try to stay true to the cause, regardless of how tough the economy becomes. However, its media profile has always overstated its importance. TV chefs may have extolled its virtues, but organic food has never accounted for more than 3% of the £120bn retail food market in the UK (as against more than 10% in the US). This is not out of ignorance. There is strong evidence from the market that the rest of us have started to think more deeply about our food. The drop in support for organic produce may not simply be down to cost (though that is bound to be a huge part of it). Issues of food security have made people think about where our food comes from and how it is produced. While there appears to be a growing opposition to the worst excesses of industrial food production there is also a suspicion that a lot of the claims for organic produce may be hype; that it is simply an indulgence for the affluent middle classes who can still afford it. In short, even when money is tight consumers are willing to pay for better food. But they don't see the need to go the whole (organic) hog and pay what they regard as an unnecessary premium. For conventional farmers, 2009 will not be the year to go organic.
Jay Rayner
Author and Observer restaurant critic
Will we finally face up to the challenge of climate change?
The answer, according to most climate experts, is simple: we better had in 2009 or the planet will be in trouble. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, an increase of almost 40% since the industrial revolution, and the highest the planet has experienced for at least 650,000 years. Evidence of global warming is appearing across the globe, particularly in the Arctic where scientists had always predicted it would strike first. Summer ice cover has dropped dramatically while permafrost in Siberia is melting. The first phenomenon reduces the planet's ability to reflect solar heat back into space. The second will release excess amounts of methane. Combined, they worsen the rate of global warming.
At the same time, the world's greatest carbon emitter, the US, has indicated - after eight years' inaction - that the climate will be a major priority, as revealed through the appointment of climate expert John Holdren as the chief scientific adviser for president-elect Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Britain is to announce approval or rejection for a major new coal power plant at Kingsnorth, Kent and a third runway at Heathrow. The go-ahead for either would leave the government open to accusations its climate-change commitments are worthless.
It is against this background that delegates will gather in December in Copenhagen, to agree a new global climate change treaty that will replace the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012. Only a decision then to establish tight, binding laws to cut emission levels will save the planet, say campaigners.
Robin McKie
Observer science editor
Will we see the end of the Steve Jobs era?
Yes, say anxious bloggers dismayed by the Apple chief executive's sudden withdrawal from next month's Macworld Expo trade show. No, insists Apple, but then it would, wouldn't it?
Jobs's move reignited the long-running speculation about his health. Five years ago, when a scan revealed that he had cancer of the pancreas, his doctor told him that it would almost certainly kill him in three to six months and he should get his affairs in order. A later biopsy found it was a very rare form of the disease that could be cured with surgery. Last July, however, Jobs, 53, appeared at an Apple event looking thin, which soon became "gaunt" in blogspeak. A month later the news agency Bloomberg mistakenly published his 2,500-word obituary. Jobs responded at the next Apple event by standing before a giant slide that said: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Then came the announcement about Macworld, a place of pilgrimage for the Apple faithful, the "Macolytes", who compared it to the cancellation of Christmas. With nerves jangling on Wall Street, Apple's share prices went tumbling, and it announced that after 2009 it will not be attending Macworld at all.
Could this be the beginning of the end? Some believe it is not so much about the health of Jobs's body as his imagination. Since returning to the Californian company he has presided over the "i" phenomenon - iPod, iTunes and iPhone, each raising the bar for the opposition. But recent Apple launches have been relatively anticlimactic, prompting mutterings about where The Next Big Thing is going to come from. Evolution alone won't do when the world is demanding constant revolution.
However, Jobs is a notorious perfectionist living in what has been described as a "reality distortion field". He is a billionaire but unlikely to go gently into that good night of retirement in the way his Microsoft rival Bill Gates did this year. As in any dictatorship based on charismatic leadership, Apple's biggest nightmare is how to replace the man who saved the company and shaped it in his own image. None of the potential crown princes is a household name, although principal designer Jonathan Ive, from Chingford, east London, would strike a chord with the devotees. Jobs likes to quote former ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." Perhaps only he knows where the puck will be a year from now.
David Smith
Observer technology correspondent
Should we welcome Obama as president?
In one of his more intriguing koans, George Bush, when asked about his legacy, responded: "In history we'll all be dead." As 20 January, Inauguration Day, approaches, all I can think is: "L'histoire est morte. Vive l'histoire!"
To me, the election of Barack Obama feels like a new lease on life. Of course, I don't underestimate the challenges that his administration will face in this war-torn, financially distressed, globally overheated moment. But perhaps it's because we've hurtled so far downward in recent years that I am optimistic: frankly it is much, much too easy to imagine an alternative universe, a veritable slough of despond. We Americans came very close to electing John McCain and Sarah Palin. Imagine this interregnum if McCain were filling his cabinet with insiders from the Bush White House. Imagine what Sarah Palin's budget for clothes might be, just for the swearing-in ceremony alone. And imagine the savoury distractions: Last week, for one juicy if unfair example, Palin's pregnant daughter's fiancé's mother (or "Palin's daughter's baby daddy's mama" as the tabloids gleefully dubbed her) was arrested on drug trafficking charges.
Really - how could one not be panting with relief and a sense of promise just now? As the Palin family soap opera continued to unfold, Obama was busy rounding out his cabinet with the nomination of Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy. Chu is a physicist and Nobel laureate whose work centres on green energy alternatives. An actual climatologist! O joy and hallelujah!
President-elect Barack Obama (Lord, I love the feel of that on the tongue) really does represent a profound change of thought and direction for the US. Whether he can accomplish all that some of us hope remains to be seen, but the very fact of the change is sustaining. He's intelligent, well-informed and thoughtful; for the most part, he has surrounded himself with the same. He's also an unparalleled source of inspiration, giving the term "role model" whole new vigour. A young friend tells me that the Barack Obama action figure is selling like hotcakes, literally leaping off the shelves, something few black action figures have ever done before. "It's got moveable joints," exults my friend. "And it points!" Towards the future, I'd warrant. Yes, we'll have to see just how far symbolism can get us, but in Obama's case it's already farther than one might have had reason to expect.
So here's my New Year's shout-out to us all: Season's greetings, global friend!/The Great Mistake is at an end./Whatever gloom may yet portend,/ Just think what Heaven did forfend.
Patricia J Williams
Professor of law at Columbia University
What will be the big publishing trend?
Next year, along with a surge of finance-related titles (bankers' memoirs, polemics for reinventing capitalism), we're going to see more books about the 1980s. There are various reasons for this. Partly, it's an age thing. People who grew up in that decade are now increasingly of a book-writing age (late thirties, early forties). And so while in recent years we've had a glut of memoirs and novels about the 1970s, the next age demographic is taking over and we'll see a boom in 1980s books. Forthcoming examples include Jason Cowley's The Last Game, about football at the end of the decade, and Stephen Foster's 1980s memoir, From Working Class Hero to Absolute Disgrace
But there's another factor, to do with distance. As we approach the second decade of the 21st century, suddenly the penultimate one of the 20th century seems a lot more remote. Lots of us have clear memories of those years; but there's also a sense in which they are being claimed by history. The financial crisis has something to do with this. In the last few months, we've effectively witnessed the end of the era of unfettered capitalism ushered in by Thatcher and Reagan; the umbilical cord connecting now to then has been cut. The fact that there are so many 1980s anniversaries coming up also helps. Next year it'll be 20 years since both the collapse of communism and the Salman Rushdie fatwa, 25 years since the miners' strike, 30 years since Thatcher came to power. Such markers make it easier for us to think of the 1980s as history. And, of course, publishers love them.
Will Skidelsky
Observer books editor
Any ideas/thoughts on key questions for Kabirwala in 2009?
