21st Century Visiontag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-487382008-11-24T00:07:36+00:00New Perspectives On The Changing World Of the New Millennium.TypePadThe revolt of the Southtag:typepad.com,2003:post-589406422008-11-24T00:07:36+00:002008-11-24T00:07:36+00:00What has the West most to fear today? Is it the credit crunch which has become a recession fast deepening into a full-blown slump? Or is it the spectre of renewed pressure on scarce resources when recovery comes: if oil...Francis Sealey
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<p><em>What has the West most to fear today? Is it the credit crunch
which has become a recession fast deepening into a full-blown slump? Or is it the spectre of renewed
pressure on scarce resources when recovery comes: if oil can drop from $147 a barrel to
nearer $50 in three months, it can do the opposite and more when demand
revives. Then there is the monster of climate change, put on the back
burner (to coin a phrase) for the duration of the economic crisis but none the less a clear
and present danger. As if that were not enough the world is sliding towards
uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, in large part because of the
hypocrisy of nuclear powers with no intention of honouring their
commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But there is something
more, an issue to which Jean Ziegler draws vivid attention in his new
book*.</em></p>
<p>We have often noticed here the declining respect for Western human
rights rhetoric: practise what you preach (in Palestine, Guantanamo, Iraq or New
Orleans, for example, or as regards Saudi executioners and Burmese
generals) is very often the response. What Ziegler does is to
demonstrate the increasing coherence of the reaction to Western
pretentions, its historical depth and growing confidence. Nor is it
just a matter of brushing aside the self-interested waffle that so
often passes for the will to implement humanitarian principles; there
is an increasing understanding of the mechanisms of economic
domination. Endlessly presented as essential to poor country
development, the mantras of free trade and open markets are more and
more seen for what they are, levers to open doors to Western economic
penetration and control.</p>
<p>For Ziegler - until last year a special rapporteur for the UN Food
Programme - what drives this awakening is an increasing consciousness
not only of present day exploitation but also of the stupefying
violence of the colonial period. In Algeria the <em>enfumades</em>, the
practice of stifling the populations of whole villages by herding them
into caves and lighting fires at the mouth, has been forgotten only on
the side of the perpetrators. The exploits of George Arthur in Tasmania
are no better known in his native Britain. Convicts, soldiers - any
white man - was good enough to join his "black lines", equipped with
guns and dogs and up to 75 miles in length, which swept across the country
killing every aboriginal in their path. Likewise the treatment of
Indians on latifundias and in the Spanish American mines, and the
abominable torture of any who resisted.</p>
<p>Today, open violence is mostly outsourced to carefully corrupted
local elites - Ziegler describes in detail the brutal oppression of the
peoples of the Niger delta in the interests of a handful of oil
companies. Instead the colonists themselves are now represented by
officials of the World Bank or IMF. Ziegler reserves particular
contempt for the former EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson.
Negotiator of numerous bilateral free trade agreements (EPAs) aimed
primarily at securing privileges for European companies, Mandelson is
described as an elegant and smooth-tongued product of the London
liberal left. "His arrogance is legendary", says Ziegler.</p>
<p>But the picture is changing. UNESCO's 2001 Durban Conference against
Racism was a complete failure for the simple reason that delegates
including heads of states from the global South demanded not only
recognition of the horrors of the colonial past but a measure of
repentance and reparation. The US delegation walked out. Meanwhile in
Latin America the election in 2006 of the first president of Indian origin in
500 years has radically shifted perspectives. Evo Morales has set the
goal of transition in Bolivia from the colonial state to the
national state, combining nationalization and land reform with an
appeal to the identity and ancient traditions of the Andean communities.</p>
<p><em>As with Chavez in Venezuela, powerful forces are ranged against
him, not least the European communities descended from fleeing Nazis
and Ustashi backed by the usual corporate interests. For the global
South a good deal depends on the success of Morales and like-minded
leaders in the region.</em></p>
<p><em>* "La Haine de l'Occident" (Albin Michel 2008): <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OWTv9zrZ52g">click here for an interview with Ziegler</a>.</em></p></div>
Spend, spend, spendtag:typepad.com,2003:post-586328522008-11-17T23:24:57+00:002008-11-17T23:24:57+00:00In the topsy turvy world of an economic downturn, it is interesting to see that the leaders of the major economies are turning to the poor to save them from the consequences of their incompetent management. Thus the G8 morphs...Francis Sealey
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<em>In the topsy turvy world of an economic downturn, it is
interesting to see that the leaders of the major economies are turning
to the poor to save them from the consequences of their incompetent
management. Thus the G8 morphs into the G20, and countries such as
Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and Argentina suddenly find themselves placed
solicitously at the top table. Are they being offered a free lunch?</em>
<p>Far from it. The <em>Titanic</em> has hit the iceberg that wasn't supposed to exist, and what the newly cosseted guests are asked to do is provide fuel for the engines needed
to refloat it. That means a massive splurge of spending - delicately
called an economic "stimulus" - to create the demand that will turn the
mighty engines of global production once more, and with them the somewhat less
tangible components of the financial system. As if debt were not already
a big enough problem, they are being asked to take on more, and the
cure for the world's financial problems looks very much like more of
the behaviour that caused it in the first place.</p>
<p>All this affects the poorer participants in the global economy, in two
ways. First, the countries which are being asked to take the strain are
themselves massively unequal, which large populations living at the
margins of subsistence in India, Brazil, South Africa and many others.
Secondly, within the rich countries, policymakers have woken
up to the Keynesian wisdom that putting money into the hands of the
have-nots generates more immediate demand than putting it into the hands
of the wealthy, who don't need to spend it immediately: our good old
friend a differential "marginal propensity to consume".</p>
<p>In the UK increased state spending is seen as too slow a method of
increasing demand - it takes several years to plan and build a school
or hospital. Even tax cuts for the poor won't do, because they won't
get the money until next financial year. No, the poor have got to get
on with the job of saving the economy immediately, meaning a hike in
benefits and pensions. Of course that sounds like generosity - nothing
to repay - until you consider that it is in fact the state which is
proposing to take on the debt on everyone's behalf. Later on, when it
comes time to repay the state's debt, the economy will be motoring
again, and the rich will be claiming they can't be taxed for fear of
destroying their incentives. Meanwhile those public sector goods like schools and hospitals will not have been built, and given the state of the government's finances are never likely to be.</p>
<p>And therein lies the point. As Bush, Brown and the others appeal to
the second and third tier economies to save the day, and promise to
reform the IMF to improve stability and revive the WTO negotiations
on freeing trade yet further, and as they
impose consumption on their own poor in the interests of economic
normal service, who will make the simple points in return?</p>
<p><em>From the states being asked to help: Yes, we will
co-operate, on condition of permanent democratisation of the management of the world
economy, with fair representation in the IMF, World Bank and WTO. And
from the poor themselves, the condition of a permanent shift to a more
equal pattern of income distribution, within nations and worldwide, including the construction of the sustainable public goods which only the state can provide.</e></div>
Old gods, new heroestag:typepad.com,2003:post-582598962008-11-09T23:43:38+00:002008-11-09T23:43:38+00:00Two recent news items tell us something is afoot. The Yorkshire-based furniture chain Roseby's has collapsed with the loss of 1,200 jobs, but its Indian avatar is launching four Rosebys Interiors stores in Punjab. Meanwhile the Indian firm Tech Mahindra...Francis Sealey
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p><a href="http://mpwatch.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341d7b4f53ef010535e67fc3970c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Obama" class="at-xid-6a00d8341d7b4f53ef010535e67fc3970c " src="https://mpwatch.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341d7b4f53ef010535e67fc3970c-800wi" title="Obama" border="0"></a>
<p><font-family: Arial><em>Two recent news items tell us something is afoot. The
Yorkshire-based furniture chain Roseby's has collapsed with the loss of 1,200
jobs, but its Indian avatar is launching four Rosebys Interiors
stores in Punjab. Meanwhile the Indian firm Tech Mahindra is opening a
call centre with 500 jobs in South Tyneside. Even two years ago the
talk was of the booming UK consumer economy fuelled by ever
more house-price driven borrowing, while outsourcing service jobs to
the Far East was seen as a major threat to British employment. What a
difference a crash makes.</em></p>
<p>But perhaps the time has arrived to peer into the impact of a
fracturing economy not just on mortgages and dole queues but on the way
people react to frightening changes in what until recently had seemed
the natural order. Part of the problem is that an unprecedented period
of expansion has undermined every form of authority, as markets
appeared to demonstrate that they were the only reality. Nearly
50 years ago <em>That Was the Week That Was</em>
shocked the establishment by presenting religious faith as a consumer
choice, concluding if memory serves that Buddhism was the "best buy".
Today, only evangelicals and fundamentalists seem to regard faith as a
guide to public conduct, and are treated as cases of overstated brand
loyalty.</p>
<p>In a world dominated by technology, it is even more startling to
contemplate the weakening of the scientific outlook. The more that is
learned about the history of the universe, the physics of our own planet and
the mechanisms of heredity based on DNA, the less of it penetrates
public understanding. Space exploration is reduced to "Is there water on
Mars?", the Large Hadron Collider to "Will it create another Big
Bang?", and heredity to "Are there genes for obesity?". Meanwhile
climate change denialists have flourished and academy schools are
handed over to wealthy individuals interested in promoting creationism.
No doubt the Royal Society has a good deal to answer for,
but how was it or anyone to foresee that commercially-funded modern
media would reduce the physical world to the realms of magic?</p>
<p>Now the authority even of markets has gone: not only has their
brutality been revealed (it should never have been forgotten), but it
is still only vaguely understood that they are the creature of society, which can trim them or to a large extent dispense with them if it wishes. We get the markets we vote for (and therefore deserve).</p>
<p>So the world is on the lookout for new sources of certainty. Part of
the rapturous response to the election of Barack Obama is his
articulation of an intelligent discourse founded on human values;
though in truth it is not easy to discern what practical break he
proposes with the past. In the UK the Glenrothes byelection win is
represented as Gordon Brown's Obama moment, notwithstanding airport
expansion, nuclear power and immigration crackdowns. Something of much greater substance is required if democracy is to be refounded.</p>
<p><em>The risk is that disenchantment with the old gods will trigger a
flight to new and nastier ones. We are already seeing a semi-fascist
resurgence in Europe. Stefan Zweig, observing a parallel moment in the
Austria of the 1920s, remarked that Austrians had never paid so much
attention to art as during the hyperinflation: "seeing that money was
betraying us, we felt that only the eternal within us was truly to be
relied upon". The Anschluss followed some years later.</em></p>
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