Climb every mountain

Sixty years ago

"There's an underlying feeling among the Sherpas that they've been treated quite badly by westerners and that clients don't have any respect for them. If you look around at how incredibly luxurious some base camps are, you can see their point," he said.

"It's not that we pissed them off and there was a fight. This is 10 or 20 years of frustration spilling out. Mob rule shouldn't happen anywhere, let alone Everest, but something needs to change."

"That's the issue that everyone at base camp will now have to resolve. They'll have to listen to the Sherpas. I don't know how this will affect Everest. Part of me thinks the show will always go on. The only way things will change is if the money stops coming in."

Jon Griffith, British climber and leader of an expedition that has left Mount Everest after being attacked by a large group of Nepalese sherpas.

East and West

Just the job

Can the sartorially open-necked dynamism of our elecronics whizzes save us from the onslaught from the East, where they are so easy in their skins that they feel no need to discard their suits? We shall bury you, as someone else once said. This time it looks a bit more threatening. At least that isn't an iPhone he's holding in his left hand at a slightly lower altitude.

Background reading

I am no expert on north Africa or on any of the groups that our Prime Minister refers to:

"We face a large and existential terrorist threat from a group of extremists based in different parts of the world who want to do the biggest possible amount of damage to our interests and way of life," he said. "Those extremists thrive when they have ungoverned spaces in which they can exist, build and plan."

Yet I can glean enough information to see that the version of events in Algeria presented to us by our politicians and most of our press is largely a mixture of simplification and falsification.

The Algerian government and military are presented to us simply as a tough act with great experience of dealing with terrorism, who might nevertheless have benefitted from British 'intelligence' about illegal and terrorist activity in north Africa. The region (now that the west is adandonning Afghanistan to its fate) is presented to us as a kind of vacuum. Because it does not have a functioning national state government of the type we are accustomed to in the west, there can be no social or economic structure worth taking account of. Yet,

Smuggling has been around in the southern Sahara for as long as trans-Saharan caravan trading has existed, in other words, since time immemorial. The transport of goods from north to south across the Sahara and vice versa is the prerogative of desert people, most notably the Arabs, or Moors, and the Touareg. Members of certain families and clans are caravan traders almost by birthright, and the desert road is in their blood. Nice distinctions between the legality and illegality of different types of cargo matter less to these traders than to the distant governments under whose authority they are supposed to operate. ...

In bygone colonial and pre-colonial times, trans-Saharan trading was often dominated by large Arab families and clans, especially the Cha’ambi from the Tidikelt, the Ahl Azzi of the Touat, the Berabiche clans who lived in the deserts north of Timbuktu and the Kounta who lived on the eastern shores of the Niger bend, north of Gao. These families would trade across the desert with each other, turning the Sahara into one unified economic, social and cultural space. Their activity created links and ties that have survived and gradually mutated into the trading or smuggling networks of today. ... Not only trade goods, but politics, religion, tribal loyalty, power and influence are determined by those ties, making the Sahara one of the most complex regions in the world to understand. This economic and social unity of the Saharan space also explains why the borders imposed on the region at the end of the colonial era were so problematic to livelihoods and connections and so often despised by desert people.

Into this empty space, it is assumed, a distinct transnational corporation, known to us as Al Qaida, inserts itself, rather as a western corporation might move in to exploit and trade in newly discovered natural resources. This intruder is capable of directing, controlling and 'radicalising' the previously inchoate forces of the region (which hitherto had been harmlessly engrossed in killing and robbing each other) so that they become an 'existential threat' to our western civilisation and way of life, and thus the new targets of the 'war on terror'.

The Americans were convinced that the Sahel was becoming a crucible for anti-western terror groups inspired by Islam. Pondering the anti-american topography of the globe, they noticed that a huge contiguous swathe of central Asia, east and west Africa was becoming ‘radicalised’, from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen, into Africa via Somalia, the Sudan and across finally to Niger, Mali, Algeria and Mauritania. With that strategic and remote point of view so favoured by intelligence analysts and their political clients, this banana shaped chunk of earth was seen as a homogenous battleground, with each territory within it linked to the others by dark and hostile forces.

Of course it is undeniable that many of the progenitors of these anti-western terror groups inspired by Islam had been brought together in the mujahideen struggle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which the west had so assiduously encouraged:

Reagan was determined to make Afghanistan the Soviet Vietnam. Therefore in 1986 he decided to provide the mujahideen with portable surface-to-air Stinger missiles, which proved devastatingly effective in increasing Soviet air losses (particularly helicopters). The war in Afghanistan cost the United States about $1 billion per annum in aid to the mujahideen; it cost the Soviet Union eight times as much, helping bankrupt its economy.

Yet now they should "be on notice they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria or anywhere else, not in North Africa, not anywhere … they will have no place to hide". This is a world seen not as a collection of societies, habitats, communities, but as a battleground, a global chessboard on which pieces are moved, and taken, at will.

At the level of overt policy and action our governments seldom if ever engage with the world as it is and as those involved in its daily social or economic activities actually experience it. They engage instead with a convenient construct, to which all experience and analysis must be fitted. (It is not of course a failing unique to governments: citizens struggling to understand economic and social disintegration in the west may create in their minds a similar monolith and come almost to welcome each new confirmation of gloom and despair: the illusion of understanding is all that is left.) At the same time governments, directly and indirectly, employ vast and varied companies of actors pulling levers and triggers to create events in supposed pursuit or destruction of those political and economic constructs.

Events, dear boy, events; but somehow they have become more malign. No more 'ungoverned spaces' is what we apparently need: never mind how unadept we have shown ourselves in governing spaces on our own doorstep. Perhaps the Algerians, who of course owe much to European colonial history, can show us how to do it.

This follows gradual attempts by Paris to turn a page in its bleak relations with Algiers. Hollande visited Algeria last month, offering a qualified apology for the harm France did to the country during its 132-year rule, and calling for greater economic co-operation between the two countries. This co-operation was to include an increased emphasis on the kind of deals that allowed multinationals such as Total and BP to tap into Algeria's oil and gas riches. ...Co-operation on Mali is clearly a move by the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to respond to Hollande's hand of friendship. Despite years of relative isolationism and mistrust, Bouteflika believes his country's future lies in increased participation in a profit-driven global economy and specifically trade with western neighbours.

Lifted out of poverty

Natural globalisation

The orthodox view is still, especially in hard times, that economic growth is a Good Thing, indeed an essential thing. See what misery it produces when it slips into negative territory by only a few percentage points. And it's not just for our own comfort; it's needed in poorer countries on distant shores to 'lift people out of poverty' (and much else besides).

Cultural globalization follows economic globalisation inevitably and there are still plenty of commentators to make a case for that. Cultural interaction has always led to cultural vibrancy and creativity has it not? Just think of Shakespeare's time, and indeed of the whole English language. But perhaps we are reaching the endpoint where there is nothing left to stir into the soup.

Then follows linguistic globalisation - but we're not so happy about the growing extinction of minority languages. There is little talk of social globalisation - perhaps the increasingly dramatic polarisation of poverty and wealth will preserve us from that.

What of natural globalisation, as manifested most topically in ash die-back here - or Dutch elm disease, or sudden oak death, or the threat to the Scots pine? Globalisation is the other side of the coin of extinctions. Man is the great globalising species. It will be us and the slugs.

Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus

Last week the UK government launched a consultation that ends on 26 October and could lead to an interim import ban by November. But what the environment minister announced as "timely" action might in fact be far too late.

In February, the fungus was found in a batch of trees sent from a Dutch nursery to Buckinghamshire. Between June and September it was confirmed in nurseries in Yorkshire, Surrey and Cambridgeshire, at a Forestry Commission Scotland woodland near Kilmacolm, and in ash trees planted in a Leicester car park. Conservationists hope it has not reached the 80 million ash trees in the wider British countryside, outside of new plantings.

In Denmark they have lost 90% of their ash, their third most common tree species after oak and beech and a crucial export for the timber industry, and expect that to rise.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/chalara

http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/Pages/default.aspx

iRecovery

J P Morgan's chief economist, Michael Feroli in a note to clients has suggested that the anticipated launch of Apple's iPhone 5 could lead to sales that could increase US economic growth by between 0.25 and 0.5 percent. "Calculated using the so-called 'retail control method', sales of iPhone 5 could boost annualized GDP growth by $3.2bn, or $12.8bn at an annual rate", thus offsetting "the downside risk to our Q4 GDP growth projection, which remains 2%".

The comment of another US economic analyst was "God help us."

The iPhone 5 is expected to retail at about $600.

Manufacturing costs are thought to be about $200,

Maybe it will save the Chinese economy as well.

iPhone prelapse: the beginnings of growth

Big it up

The combined group would be the world's largest producer of zinc, control just under a third of the coal used for power stations and trade wheat, sugar and oil in more than 40 countries around the world, putting it at the centre of the global trade in vital commodities.

Is this a good idea? Tony Blair thinks so. And so does pretty much everyone involved, provided the terms are right for them, about which some metaphorical blood is likely to be spilt. Money talks, but not always in a single language. Our ex-Prime Minister is perhaps more fluent among the state-backed investment money of the Qataris and the quasi-state money of large American banks (especially as J P Morgan pays him about $2 million a year for his advice and influence), where the revolving door between senior corporate and senior government posts is never stationary. Perhaps the hard-core accents of Glencore and Xstrata are just a little different.

Global education or the death of the individual

Murdoch himself, returning to London, spoke at a conference of chief executives. The Times recorded: "Mr Murdoch detailed a vision whereby almost all children would be provided with technology such as specially designed tablet computers. He said that through such advances, 'You can get the very, very finest teachers in every course, in every subject, at every grade, and make them available to every child in the school – or if necessary, in some cases – in the world.'

"Mr Murdoch said that News Corporation, parent company of the Times, would help to spearhead this change by growing its business in providing educational material. He said he would be "thrilled" if 10% of News Corporation's business was made up of its education revenues in the next five years."

[Joel Klein] now plays a key role in controlling the controversial management and standards committee (MSC) that is house-cleaning at News International by handing over journalists' incriminating emails to the police.

Until Murdoch's UK operation has been fully cleansed of its hacking toxicity, the way will not be open for Klein to resume his education projects, and his formerly close political links with Gove. But the end of the process of "draining the swamp", as one MSC source put it, may now be in sight.

It is all too depresingly of our time that it should be thought that encapsulated exposure to what is universally rated the 'best' should be superior than live interaction. Never mind diversity; never mind process and the lived life; this is 'world class'. How about 'life class' instead?

The New Socialist

Perhaps we should start reading The Daily Telegraph more - and more.

Promethean

Michael Roth, Europe spokesman for the opposition Social Democrats in Berlin, said Papandreou's move showed courage but he was "playing with fire".

By which he meant the exercise of democracy in times of financial crisis.

Breakfast reading

http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/09/europe-bank-debt-in-lurid-detail/

Product placement

He's worried too

Lacoste, the people who provide golfers and others with fashionably anodyne clothes decorated with a rather twee crocodile, have reportedly asked the Norwegian police to prevent Anders Breivik from appearing publicly in their garments with logo visible to photographers.

It is not known what was the police response, but this clearly exposes a grave gap in international intellectual property protection legislation. It is to be hoped that world trade authorities will take rapid and effective action. Unless global corporations can control who associates themselves with their brands and how (and not only in such high-profile cases as this) the value of these brands, so important to the material and spiritual well-being of us all, will be undermined and social stability and growth will be betrayed.

We need a rapidly formalised and effective system whereby in purchasing any branded product we assent to terms under which the brand-owners can control when we should and should not display their goods to any group of more than three people, in what circumstances, in association with what other products and with what standards of personal appearance and conduct. This must be made to stick; get the legal draughtsmen onto it now.

I wonder, did they ask the crocodiles?

Which hole did we leave the money in?

Knighted for services to digging

‘Sir’ Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising/publicity/media conglomerate, which he is perpetually promising to return to a UK tax base (returning the compliment of his knighthood), but not just yet (like the uncle who rewraps your Christmas present each year), has announced yet another bumper set of financial results. He points out that western corporations are sitting on several trillion dollars worth of ‘largely unleveraged’ assets, and that, by way of quaint illustration, Apple recently boasted greater assets than the US Treasury. Rather than invest in productive capacity (guess why), according to Sir Martin, those corporations are reinforcing their brands, thus accounting for WPP’s current success.

So western business have no faith that economies are set to grow but are spending to try to hijack business from their competitors and ensure that their brands are the last to drop off the public’s shrinking shopping list.

Sir Martin, however, still backs the UK government’s economic policy of cutting the deficit ahead of all else. It’s just as you do with any company, he explained, you get the balance sheet right first… Some may find it depressing that not only so many businessmen but also so many politicians profess to believe that the principles for running a national economy are indistinguishable from those for running a private company, or even a household budget.

Meanwhile banks, despite their plunging share values (and who holds bank shares apart from other banks and financial/ investment corporations?) have some largish amounts of money too (albeit not large enough). ‘The US banks are not lending but not because they don't have the money. The Big US banks have $1.7 trillion on overnight deposit in the NY FED. Most of that is QE money. It is doing nothing for anyone except the banks. US tax payers 'gave' it to them and the banks are now being paid interest on it ... by the tax payer.’



The only show, or hole, in town

‘Hopes that the Bank of England could unleash a new round of quantitative easing to rescue the ailing economy were boosted on Thursday when a member of its monetary policy committee said there was "undoubtedly scope" to restart the recession-busting policy if necessary.’ The member in question is said not yet to think it is necessary but today in the US and elsewhere all eyes are turned to Jackson Hole, former beaver trapping location, in the hope that Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, is about to announce the third round of US quantitative easing. Opinion is by no means unanimous that QE3 is either desirable or possible but ‘David Blanchflower, economics professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and a former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, believes that QE3 is the "only show in town" for the Fed.’

It has been pointed out that, with the fantastic concentration not only of wealth but of influence and financial decision-making in a very few hands, western economies are becoming effectively not ‘free-market’ but planned and directed economies, essentially similar in structure to the Soviet economy before the collapse of communism.

Banks to go

Société Générale
Bank of America
...

Lookout

I hope people anxious to understand what is going on day by day in the economy and the 'markets' and how to interpret their newspaper headlines (UK "bank shares rally", "US stocks soare,") are following golem XIV thoughts, the insider's outsider.

Street games

It seems we can no longer play that game of our innocent childhood, ‘kicking the can down the road’. The game now is 'lengthening the fuse on the bomb', a new kind of 'chicken'.

A commentary on the agreement among political factions in the USA for raising the debt ceiling, carried by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, attacked the "madcap farce of brinksmanship" and warned that the deal "failed to defuse Washington's debt bomb for good, only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer".

No doubt the Financial Health and Safety Agency will be on to this dangerous practice soon. Meanwhile the Chinese are trying to take their own precautions.

‘China is the world's second largest economy and the largest holder of US debt. It has more than $1tr of treasuries in its foreign exchange holdings, valued at around $3tr.’

Zhou Xiaochuan, ‘Chinese economist, banker, reformist, bureaucrat and governor of the People's Bank of China since December 2002’, added ‘that China would continue seeking to diversify its reserves. The challenge it faces is finding suitable alternatives.’

To the uninitiated that sounds remarkably close to saying that the Chinese have woken up to find that their wealth is in fact worthless and they can see nothing else of value to buy instead.

Xinhua 'added that "runaway debt addiction...[could] jeopardise the well-being of hundreds of millions of families within and beyond the US borders".'

'Some Chinese economists warned spending cuts could affect China's growth by slowing the US recovery. "US consumption will be definitely hurt a lot by the austerity deal and we can no longer count on the once-biggest foreign market in the future," said Ding Yifan, a researcher at the Development Research Centre under the State Council.'

You can tell it is serious because Barclays head honcho, Mr ‘Spare a Bob’ Diamond has wheeled himself out of the counting house to warn us all that if this country were to get up to such shenanigans it would be curtains for us, and maybe even him, though his curtains are more heavily braided and bomb-proof than most of us can afford. So keep up the good work, Mr Osborne (scion of those well-known curtain-traders to the gentry, Osborne and Little).

Luxury goods

The other big problem is in the private sector, with few industries that are able to pay their way in the world. Jason Manolopolous, who is author of a new book called Greece's 'Odious' Debt, says that for years Greece was buying more from the rest of the world than it was selling. "We were buying BMWs from the Germans and selling them tomatoes."

For now, those days are well and truly over. In Athens' upmarket shopping district of Kolonaki, boutiques that used to have waiting lists for designer handbags have shut. One sign says the owners have relocated – to Rome. In one clothes shop, with racks of discounted Calvin Klein and DKNY, the manager, Sav, explains what's happened: "In this crisis, the middle classes have been hollowed out." That is just what happened in Buenos Aires during its crash last decade.

A dangerous idea





Mark Blyth: Austerity' the history of a dangerous idea


 
As Mark Blyth says, we have been here before - in the 1930s - and, for a sign that the comfortable assent of the middle classes to the disposition of power and advantage in our society is eroding, read the remarkable article a day or two ago in the Daily Telegraph, vigorous supporter of the sanity of the status quo, by its editor, Charles Moore (Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge) headed 'I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right'. I applaud his sentiments, but there is no guarantee that when such a sense of grievance spreads it will normally express itself in such generosity and evenness of spirit. The 1930s, in those parts of Europe that felt aggrieved (and who now does not feel aggrieved?) saw a public conflation of the spirit and motives of the once respectable popular 'right' with the exercise of state power and direction of the 'left'. Localism is not always warm and cosy.


L'affaire RM

"I'm not throwing innocent people under the bus" I might get my phone hacked.

Appropriately for the empire of a man whose empire sought to cow and suborn politicians, so much about the creaking News Corporation echoes the highest levels of political dynamics. It is a nice irony that 7 per cent of a company that depends for its generation of cash on the manipulation of popular sentiment is owned by the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the Saudi government, better known for its sympathy with money than its sympathy with people. Another bit is owned by our Church Commissioners (for the time being).

It is instructive to see how rapidly corrupt bedfellows in the murkier chambers of power can fall out. Politicians are now tumbling over themselves to snatch their underclothes back on, and even the Metropolitan Police seems (heavy emphasis needed there) to be rediscovering its public duty. Is there a lesson here for international bank executives?

And in the US ‘experts’ are covering the situation with their usual perspicacity. It's all about ensuring a smooth take-over of control by James. "It is a problem for succession. That is the key issue in the US, not the ins and outs of who hacked whom over in England," said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University. Presumably his equivalent banking professor was saying “The key issue is who gets to be the next CEO of Goldman Sachs, not who lent what to unemployed rednecks to buy their collapsing shacks.”

The famed ‘establishment hating’ intimate of prime ministers, as he flits from here to there in helicopter, private jet, yacht or chauffeur driven car, is as out of touch with mundanity as fin de régime Tony Blair (who, it is revealed through a Freedom of Information request, telephoned him on 11th, 13th and 19th March 2003 before troops went into Iraq on the 20th; Mrs T could draw a discreeter veil and, apparently, not mention the patriarch even once in her memoirs). The great man is reported as saying, "I'm not throwing innocent people under the bus." Does he recall that image of the London bus with its roof blown off or even know that his journalists hacked survivors’ phones?