Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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Copyright The Economist

CHINUA ACHEBE’S “Things Fall Apart”, which celebrates its golden jubilee this year, is Africa’s best known work of literature. The slim novel has been translated into 50 languages and has sold 10m copies. Never once has it been out of print.

Africa was on the cusp of change when the book first came out. A handful of African countries had already become independent by 1958, but few people would have predicted then what shape change would take elsewhere on the continent. Right from the book’s very first line, “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond”, the reader is also launched into uncharted territory. Who was this Okonkwo and why was he so well known? Who was it that knew him? With a heightened diction and extensive use of allegory and metaphor, Mr Achebe gave Okonkwo, a famed wrestler, a heroic mien. But he is mostly alone in trying to defend the traditional society in which he was born, and when his efforts fail, in bitterness Okonkwo hangs himself.

The allusion in the title to Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming”—“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”—signalled Mr Achebe’s awareness that he was living at a crossroads in history, something he regards as being good for a writer and for which he has always been grateful.

The first person to read the manuscript was Gilbert Phelps of the BBC, whom Mr Achebe had met during a short visit to London. Excited by the novelty of a voice that was not a slavish copy of European literature, but something authentically African and new, Phelps sent it on to his own publisher, William Heinemann, with a note: “This is a very exciting discovery…It is full of characters who really live, and, once begun, it is difficult to put down.”

Now known as the grand-daddy of African fiction, Mr Achebe has had a more difficult life. In 1990 he was involved in a car accident in Nigeria, and has since been a paraplegic. He and his wife, Christie, live in upstate New York, where he is professor of languages and literature at Bard College.

The golden jubilee of “Things Fall Apart” was presaged by the announcement in June 2007 that Mr Achebe had been awarded the second Man Booker international prize. In contrast to Man Booker’s older and better known annual counterpart which lauds a single new book, the international prize celebrates an “achievement in fiction”. Asked what the panel had been looking for among the 80-or-so living authors whose work was considered for the prize, Nadine Gordimer, the oldest of the three judges and the only Nobel-prize-winner, gave an immediate response: “illumination”. For Mr Achebe, who has won his fair share of prizes over the years, the Man Booker was especially touching for being chosen by his peers.

Elegant in his wheelchair, dressed in his Nigerian chief’s robes and his red domed hat, Mr Achebe has been receiving accolades the world over. The celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication began in Portugal. They continued in Texas and in Nigeria, where Mr Achebe’s home village, Ogidi, dedicated the Mookoche festival, the Ibo people’s Thanksgiving at the end of the rainy season, to “Things Fall Apart”.

The festivities continued in London earlier this month where Mr Achebe was the guest of honour at a lunch at the House of Lords and then the subject of a two-day conference at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The highlight will be a ceremony early next month at the Library of Congress just before the author’s 78th birthday.

For Mr Achebe, the end of the celebrations will mark a welcome return to his peaceful life at Bard College. “I feel the pressure of the paraplegia really cuts into my day,” he says. He is anxious to get back to work. An autobiographical essay, “Reflections of a British Protected Child”, about his childhood in the British Protectorate of Nigeria, is finished and now in the hands of his agent.

His next project will be to translate “Things Fall Apart” into his native Ibo for the first time. The translation Mr Achebe is striving for is not the Union Ibo that was imposed on southern Nigeria in the early 1900s by British missionaries bent on religious conversion and the distribution of the Bible. “Even my own village has words or expressions that are not used in a village two miles away.” For a writer for whom language and literary imagination are quite inseparable, Mr Achebe’s ambition is to find the inchoate languages, varying in detail from village to village, that were the heartbeat of the Ibo nation of his birth.

Posted at 8:48 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Washington Post

Aspiring U.S. politicians dream of being FDR, but rarely do the times and the person converge. The next president will have the chance to be a 21st-century FDR.

For either Barack Obama or John McCain, the first duty will be to restore confidence. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been allotted to fix the financial breakdown. But fears have gripped the country. The new president needs not only a bold program but also the resolution to reassure…

…The next president faces another historic challenge: reintroducing the United States to the world. He could make a good start by promptly sending the vice president and the new secretaries of state, Treasury and defense to consult with countries large and small, developed and developing, on all continents. In early 1989, Secretary of State James A. Baker III visited 15 NATO allies in eight days. With four emissaries, the new president could reach 50 countries or more in his first months in office.

Those envoys should have a simple message: to listen and learn. Of course, the new team should have some initial ideas and priorities to discuss, but taking the time to hear other world leaders’ insights and concerns will prove as shrewd an investment as recapitalizing the banks…

The rise of such developing economies as China and India provides the world with multiple poles of growth that can help a global recovery. But the emergence of these big new economic players also serves as fodder for scaremongers, intent on whipping up fear about the effects on living standards in the developed world.

Some 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with almost two-thirds of the region’s population, boast growth rates that averaged about 6.6 percent between 1997 and 2007. A boom in what has historically been one of the world’s poorest regions would be a great achievement, saving many of the bottom billion and freeing untapped talent and energy.

But it will be an achievement left unrealized unless a new president, as in times past, has the vision and the courage to stand up to the challenges of isolationism at home and to offer the leadership to help make it happen…

Posted at 11:39 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Washington Post

The fashion industry has always struggled to burnish its image as something more than a vessel for insecurities, pretentiousness and superficiality. At times this struggle must seem particularly Sisyphean for editors of fashion magazines — with their wrinkle creams, in-and-out lists and miracle diets — who are trying to make a case for their social awareness and desire to do more good than harm.

A duo of small but influential Italian fashion magazines may be making more headway than the American behemoths.

American fashion magazines have always grappled with a wide range of issues, from women’s health to politics and social activism. But mostly, what people remember are the pages and pages of luxury clothes worn by gazellelike young women.

In the past year or so, the industry has been paying particular attention to the question of diversity: the lack of it on the runway, as well as behind the scenes. Glamour magazine was confronted with angry calls and e-mails after a white staff member — since departed — speaking on behalf of the publication, voiced her disapproval of Afros in the workplace during a presentation at a law firm.

In response, the magazine hosted several panel discussions bringing together a variety of viewpoints on the subjects of race, beauty and friendships across ethnic lines. This spring, members of the New York fashion community raised concerns because black models had been banished from the runway thanks to the prevailing preference for an Eastern European aesthetic. In July, American Vogue ran an article discussing diversity in the industry and also featured several black models in fashion spreads. And then there was Italian Vogue. The July edition of the magazine was called “A Black Issue” and all the editorial pages, as well as the cover, featured black models…

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Copyright FiveThirtyEight.Com

Last week, Julie Hensley made one of her thousands of phone calls on behalf of Barack Obama. A woman answered. As Hensley ran through her short script, the husband impatiently broke in.

“Ma’am, we’re voting for the n***er.” And hung up.

Hensley wasn’t having it. “I went and made a couple other calls but chafed over this absurdity,” she told us, “so I called them back, as I still had a couple questions for the wife.” This time the man answered, asked pointedly who she was, and when she replied he hung up again.

We continue to hear stories like these in Appalachia. Big Stone Gap, where Barack Obama’s southwesternmost field office in Virginia sits, gave us our latest version.

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Posted at 9:16 AM · Comments (0)

My Disappearing Shanghai work has been selected for display in the Fourth Lianzhou International Photo Festival, from December 6-12, 2008 in China’s Guangdong Province.

The Lianzhou Festival is one of China’s two most important photography shows. Naturally I am very happy that my work will show. I’m trying to figure out how I can be there…

I am looking for ways to show Disappearing Shanghai in New York next year.

Click to my all-photography site

I am posting day to day stuff that I shoot on Flickr. Click to see my Flickr stream

Posted at 10:11 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Washington Post

a very interesting take on McCain’s choice:

…As Draper tells it, McCain took Palin to his favorite coffee-drinking spot down by a creek and a sycamore tree. They talked for more than an hour, and, as Napoleon whispered to Josephine, “Voilà.”

One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten. By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive résumé, if a thin one. And she’s a natural politician who connects with people.

But there can be no denying that McCain’s selection of her over others far more qualified — and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter — suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by … what?

Science provides clues. A study in Canada, published by a British journal in 2003, found that pretty women foil men’s ability to assess the future. “Discounting the future,” as the condition is called, means preferring immediate, lesser rewards to greater rewards in the future.

The men made perfectly rational decisions, opting for the delayed, larger amount after viewing the average-looking women. You know where this is going. (Women, by the way, were rational no matter what.)

That men are at a disadvantage when attractive women are present is a fact upon which women have banked for centuries. Ignoring it now profits only fools…

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Posted at 9:12 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright China Daily

2008-10-23

Barack Obama may be leading the US presidential race against John McCain by only about 10 percent in his country, but he enjoys a much higher rating in China.

A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Wednesday gave the Democratic presidential nominee a 10 percent lead over his Republican rival.

But an online poll conducted on China Daily’s website by the US embassy, shows Obama enjoys the support of 75 percent among the Chinese.

A Horizon Research survey released Wednesday showed about 35.5 percent Chinese “pay close attention” to the US presidential race. Even among these people, Obama’s supporters exceed McCain’s by 17.8 percent,

“The most impressive thing is the Chinese people’s strong backing for Obama,” Song Zhiyuan, who analyzed the survey results, said.

“Perhaps his age, energy, and even complexion, which signify the US dream, are more appealing to the Chinese,” Song said.

Statistics show Obama was favored more than McCain by each of the target groups, which were divided according to gender, age, income and educational qualification.

Horizon Research received 2,791 effective answers to its questionnaire from people aged between 18 and 60 in seven big cities and seven towns.

“Actually, I didn’t care much about the US election before. But this year, I have been following the campaign closely because Obama, an African American, is leading the race,” said Xu Kai, 23, who works for a real estate company in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

“I want to see if a black American could become the president.” Xu said that by electing Obama the Americans could prove the US is not only a white people’s country.

Chen Shu, 25, who works for a publisher in Shanghai, said she “prefers” Obama because she knows him better. Obama became better known in China before McCain.

The Chinese media have focused on Obama ever since he took on Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential nomination. The latter, being the wife of former president Bill Clinton, is a household name in China.

Chen, originally a Hillary fan, had hoped she would become the first woman president of the US. “It’s a pity she lost the nomination to Obama. But the election is still interesting, and I like the sharp debates.”

Though McCain is trailing Obama in US public polls, he still has his supporters in China.

Sun Peng, 32, a Beijing-based travel agent, supports the Republican candidate. “He is more mature and more likely to have a better US-China economy policy.”

Neither of the candidates has spoken about their policies toward China.

But the Chinese media have reported that Obama’s references to China have been more, and his attitude tougher.

The US embassy survey shows men with good educational qualifications and high salaries are more interested in the campaign, and less educated women and the elderly are less interested.

Yu Honglan, 47, a woman office cleaner in Beijing, said she had heard about the election but knew nothing about it. “No matter who becomes the US president, he will not have much to do with my life. I’m concerned about something else that their falling economy may affect us.”

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Copyright The Washington Post

SHANGHAI, Oct. 23 — The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its top human rights prize to jailed Chinese dissident Hu Jia despite warnings from China that its relations with the 27-nation bloc would be seriously damaged if it did so.

In selecting Hu to receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European lawmakers said they are “sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China.” Hu has advocated for the rights of Chinese citizens with HIV-AIDS and chronicled the arrest, detention and abuse of other activists.

The award honors Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who fought against nuclear proliferation and was a leader in the country’s pro-democracy opposition party.

“Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People’s Republic of China,” European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering said in announcing the award.

When Hu was revealed earlier this month to be among the three finalists for the Sakharov Prize, China’s ambassador to the EU, Song Zhe, sent a letter to Poettering asking him to use his influence to make sure Hu does not win. She said honoring Hu “would inevitably hurt the Chinese people and once again bring serious damage to China-EU relations,” according to the Associated Press.

“Not recognizing China’s progress in human rights and insisting on confrontation will only deepen the misunderstanding between the two sides,” Song wrote. ..

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Copyright The New York Times

Books of the Times - A review by Howard W. French

FACTORY GIRLS

From Village to City in a Changing China

By Leslie T. Chang

Spiegel & Grau. 420 pages. $26.

Some day the manic thrust of China’s continuing dash for development will have passed, and the quest for leisure so cherished in developed countries will become as commonplace among Chinese as their current thirst for achievement.

Perhaps by then, new heroes will have emerged to help explain how the world’s most populous nation rejoined the ranks of the rich.

For now, the familiar story line credits the former leader Deng Xiaoping (1904-97) for breaking the dismal, decades-long run of misrule and foreign subjugation, feudalism and civil war, and finally the fanatical excesses of Mao Zedong.

Often lost in the telling are the invisible foot soldiers who made China’s stirring rise possible: the country’s 130 million migrant workers, the subject of Leslie T. Chang’s “Factory Girls.” This vast and ceaselessly renewed workforce has built China’s cities, throwing up skyscrapers at a rate never seen before, and has filled China’s factories, churning out ever cheaper goods in ever greater quantities to fuel the double-digit growth that has reshaped the world’s economy.

Ms. Chang, a former China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, describes this endless flow of labor from the hinterland to the booming cities of the east as the “largest migration in human history.” But she gives us something more personal as well, including an extended aside in which she explores her ancestors’ roots in China. The results are deeply affecting.

Her focus, as suggested by the title, are the young women who overwhelmingly staff the factory assembly lines in the new industrial supercities of the Pearl River Delta of southern China. In the course of her narrative, she builds a quiet but powerful case that through their tireless work and self-sacrifice, these women, invisible to the outside world and to most Chinese, are this era’s true heroes.

Ms. Chang’s story centers on Dongguan, a giant factory town whose population is estimated at 70 percent female, where the economy has grown at a 15 percent annual clip for two decades.

Dongguan is one of China’s hyper-dynamic new boom towns and a place seemingly without history, boasting a pseudo Ikea, pseudo K.F.C.’s and even a Hyatt hotel knockoff. Here, as in China itself, “everything is in the process of becoming something else.”

The factories are a world of brutal 12-hour shifts and minimal leave, Spartan dormitories, six-month minimum commitments enforced by the withholding of the first two months’ salary, and monthly wages that often hover in the $100 range. Fines are assessed for talking on the job, and bathroom breaks are allowed once every four hours.

Despite exploitation like this, the supply of girls willing to trade the dead-end life of the village for the cheating and discrimination of the factory appears limitless. As one chapter title puts it, to die poor is a sin.

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Copyright The Atlantic

A word is an arbitrary label—that’s the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don’t snicker: Would you ever say “Nothing has gone wrong yet” without looking for wood to knock?

Swearing is another kind of word magic. People believe, contrary to logic, that certain words can corrupt the moral order—that piss and Shit! and fucking are dangerous in a way that pee and Shoot! and freakin’ are not. This quirk in our psychology lies in the ability of taboo words to activate primitive emotional circuits in the brain…

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Copyright The Boston Review

We are all familiar with what I will call the “identity reflex.” We all hear the call of some tribe or another. We humans are a variegated lot—differing by race, ethnicity, cultural heritage, religion, and political and sexual orientation. This is, of course, as it should be. Diversity is a good thing—really.

Still, there are times when the call of the tribe just might be a siren’s call and when an excessive focus on “identity” could lead one badly astray. What is more, I firmly believe that now is just such a time.

At the close of what by all accounts has been a most extraordinary national political campaign—one in which questions of identity have played a huge role—I believe it is important to at least raise (if not answer!), in a gentle and nonpartisan way, the question of what role “identity” ought to play in our politics and in our lives.

* * *

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. A formative experience for me occurred during one of those earnest political rallies so typical of the period. Woody, who had been my best friend since boyhood, suggested that we attend. The rally had been called by the Black Panther Party and was intended to galvanize our community’s response to the killing by the Chicago police of Party activists Mark Clark and Fred Hampton during an early morning raid on their apartment in one of the city’s many all-black neighborhoods. I can remember even now how agitated about it we all were at the time. And judging by his demeanor, Woody was among the most zealous.

This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America necessarily involves an irreducible element of personal choice.

Despite this zeal, it took courage for Woody to attend. For, although he proclaimed his blackness often, and though he had descended from a Negro grandparent on either side of his family, he nevertheless looked to the entire world like your typical white guy. Everyone, on first meeting him, assumed as much. I did too when we had begun to play together a decade earlier, just after I had moved into the middle-class neighborhood called Park Manor where Woody’s family had been living for some time. There were a number of white families on our block when we first arrived; within a couple of years they had all been replaced by aspiring black families like our own. Yet, Woody’s parents never moved, which puzzled me. Then one day I overheard his mother declare to one of her new neighbors, “We just wouldn’t run from our own kind.” Somewhat later, while watching the film Imitation of Life on TV, my mother explained how someone could be “black,” even though they looked “white.” She told me about people like that in our own family—second cousins who lived in a fashionable suburb, and on whom one would never dare drop in unannounced because they were passing for white. This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America is inherently a social and cultural, not simply a biological, construct—that it necessarily involves an irreducible element of personal choice.

Evidently, Woody’s family had also been passing for white in pre-integration Park Manor. The neighborhood’s changing racial composition had forced them to choose between staying and raising their children among “their own kind.” This was a fateful decision for Woody who, as he matured, became determined not simply to live among blacks but, perhaps in atonement for his parents’ sins, unambiguously to become one. The boys in the neighborhood did not make this easy. Many delighted in teasing him about being a “white boy,” and most simply refused to credit his insistent, often-repeated claim: “I’m a brother, too!”

The fact that some of his relatives were passing made Woody’s racial identity claims more urgent for him but less compelling to others. He desperately wanted to be black, but his peers in the neighborhood would not let him. Because he had the option to be white—an option he radically rejected at the time—those without the option could not accept his claim to a shared racial experience. I knew Woody well, and I wanted to accept him on his own terms. But even I found myself doubting that he fully grasped the pain, frustration, anger, and self-doubt many of us felt upon encountering the intractability of American racism. However much he sympathized with our plight, he seemed to experience it only vicariously.

I willingly betrayed a person whom I loved and who loved me in order to lessen the risk that I might be rejected by strangers in my tribe.

So there we were, at this boisterous, angry political rally. A critical moment came when Woody, seized by some idea, enthusiastically raised his voice above the murmur to be heard. He was cut short in mid-sentence by one of the dashiki-clad brothers-in-charge, who demanded to know how a white boy got the authority to have an opinion on what black people should be doing. A silence then fell over the room. “Who can vouch for this white boy?” asked the brother indignantly. More excruciating silence ensued. Now was my time to act. Woody turned plaintively toward me, but I would not meet his eyes. To my eternal shame, I failed to speak up for my friend, and he was forced to leave the meeting without a word having been uttered in his defense…

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Copyright The Atlantic

After two years in China, there are still so many things I can’t figure out. Is it really true, as is always rumored but never proved, that the Chinese military runs most of the pirate-DVD business—which would in turn explain why that business is so difficult to control? At what point in Chinese culture did it become mandatory for business and political leaders to dye away every gray hair, so that gatherings of powerful men in their 50s and up are seas of perfect pitch-black heads? How can corporations and government agencies invest huge sums producing annual reports and brochures and advertisements in English, yet manifestly never bother to ask a native English speaker whether they’ve made some howler-style mistake? (Last year, a museum in Shanghai put on a highly publicized exhibit of photos from the Three Gorges Dam area. In front, elegant banners said in six-foot-high letters The Three Georges.) Why do Beijing taxi drivers almost never have maps—and almost always have their own crates or buckets filling the trunks of their cars when they pick up baggage-laden passengers at the airport? I could go on.

But here is by far the most important of these mysteries: How can official China possibly do such a clumsy and self-defeating job of presenting itself to the world? China, like any big, complex country, is a mixture of goods and bads. But I have rarely seen a governing and “communications” structure as consistent in hiding the good sides and highlighting the bad.

I come across examples every day, but let me start with a publicly reported event. Early this year, I learned of a tantalizing piece of news about an unpublicized government plan for the Beijing Olympics. In a conversation with someone involved in the preparations, I learned of a brilliant scheme to blunt potential foreign criticism during the Games. The Chinese government had drawn up a list of hotels, work spaces, Internet cafés, and other places where visiting journalists and dignitaries were most likely to use the Internet. At those places, and only there, normal “Great Firewall” restrictions would be removed during the Olympics. The idea, as I pointed out in an article about Chinese controls (“‘The Connection Has Been Reset,’” March Atlantic), was to make foreigners happier during their visit—and likelier to tell friends back home that, based on what they’d seen on their own computer screens, China was a much more open place than they had heard. This was subtle influence of the sort that would have made strategists from Sun Tzu onward proud.

The scheme displayed a sophisticated insight into outsiders’ mentality and interests. It recognized that foreigners, especially reporters, like being able to poke around unsupervised, try harder to see anything they’re told is out-of-bounds, and place extra weight on things they believe they have found without guidance. By saying nothing at all about this plan, the government could let influential visitors “discover” how freely information was flowing in China, with all that that implied. In exchange, the government would give up absolutely nothing. If visiting dignitaries, athletes, and commentators searched for a “Free Tibet” site or found porn that is usually banned in China, what’s the harm? They had seen worse back at home…

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A terrific and concise account of the Congo’s disintegration at the end of the 20th century, with very well explained historical context, and an unblinking look at the roles played by all the external actors.

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Copyright The New York Times

IF the mysterious Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter is at all remembered today, it is for her proximity to the deaths of two legendary jazz musicians. In 1955 Charlie Parker died on a sofa in her Fifth Avenue home; 27 years later Thelonious Monk died after secluding himself for years in her New Jersey house.
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Courtesy of Abrams Image/Harry N. Abrams

Thelonious Monk was among the many jazz musicians befriended (and photographed) by Pannonica de Koenigswarter, right.

Both deaths made the baroness an immediate target of tabloid headlines and a long-term subject for scurrilous gossip. Almost no one, though, beyond the insular jazz world, could possibly know her whole story: how, until her death in 1988, she championed jazz as both a friend and a generous, if rather unlikely, benefactor.

A Rothschild heiress, she offered her home to countless jazzmen as a place to work and even live, while quietly paying their bills when they couldn’t find work. She chauffeured them to gigs around New York, toured with them as a kind of racial chaperon, and was even known to confront anyone she felt was taking advantage of her friends because they were black.

“I always likened her to the great royal patrons of Mozart or Wagner’s day,” the saxophonist Sonny Rollins said in a telephone interview. “Yet she never put the spotlight on herself. I try not to talk publicly about people I knew in jazz. But I have to say something about the baroness. She really loved our music.”

The baroness first materialized in New York jazz clubs in the early 1950s like some film noir siren, right down to the raven hair and long cigarette holder. She seduced the music’s greatest figures with her friendship, the revolutionists of the bebop era: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and many others. Her illustrious family has long refused to discuss her. But now a new book, “Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats” (Abrams Image), offers a window into her personal life, providing details even her jazz intimates were probably unaware of…

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Copyright Vanity Fair

In the seven decades since his mysterious death, bluesman Robert Johnson’s legend has grown—the tragically short life, the “crossroads” tale of supernatural talent, the genuine gift that inspired Dylan, Clapton, and other greats—but his image remains elusive: only two photos of Johnson have ever been seen by the public. In 2005, on eBay, guitar maven Zeke Schein thought he’d found a third. Schein’s quest to authenticate the picture only led to more questions, both about Johnson himself and about who controls his valuable legacy.
by Frank DiGiacomo November 2008

In June 2005, Steven “Zeke” Schein was killing time on his home computer when he logged on to eBay and typed “old guitar” into the auction site’s search engine. Classically trained as a guitarist, Schein had turned his longtime passion for the instrument into a profession when, in 1989, he had joined the sales force at Matt Umanov Guitars, in Manhattan’s West Village. In the more than 15 years that Schein had worked there, he had cultivated a regular clientele that included Patti Smith, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and record producers Daniel Lanois and John Leventhal; he had also sold guitars to Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp, among other celebrities. His job had also exposed him to the painstaking, detail-oriented detective work that often goes into identifying and authenticating vintage guitars. Even when the make, model, and serial number of an instrument are apparent, pinpointing its age and value sometimes requires scrutinizing the idiosyncrasies of its construction. The design of the instrument’s tailpiece, its headstock, the number of frets embedded in its neck, its paint job or finish—all could be identifying factors.
Possibly a photo of Robert Johnson, left, and fellow bluesman Johnny Shines

The photograph bought on eBay by Zeke Schein, who believes it depicts Robert Johnson, left, and fellow bluesman Johnny Shines. © 2007 Claud Johnson.

Schein enjoyed this aspect of the business, and when he had nothing better to do, he would sometimes log on to eBay to test his knowledge against the sellers who were advertising vintage guitars on the Web site. At the very least, he found it amusing that some people had no idea what they were selling.

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Copyright Salon

Oct. 17, 2008 | DAKAR, Senegal — Back in May 2007, I served up a scathing critique of West Africa’s busiest airport, Léopold Sédar Senghor International, in Dakar, Senegal. Between the grime and the mosquitoes and the unrelenting onslaught of touts and hustlers, I declared it nothing less than the world’s worst airport.

I have since been back to Senegal. Conditions are slightly better, thanks to a new, air-conditioned departure hall, but not much else has improved. The arrivals area remains dirty and decrepit, and those who arrive or depart during daylight will notice the incredible volume of litter abutting the runways and taxiways. The grassy area south of the main parking apron, photographed here, looks like a plastic bag farm.

So with this in mind, you’d think I would have rejoiced after recently learning that a brand-new international airport is in the works for Dakar, to be built 28 miles southeast of the city. Completion of Blaise Diagne International, named in honor of the first black African elected to the French Parliament, is expected sometime in 2011. The Saudi Binladin Group, an experienced airport builder owned by the estranged family of You Know Who, is heading construction. A German company, Fraport AG, operators of Frankfurt International, will administer the facility for a contracted period of 25 years.

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I happen to think it’s a terrible idea. Or a needless one, at any rate.

As a general rule, you build a replacement airport because the existing one has run out of room or is hopelessly overcrowded. Its faults duly noted, Senghor International is plenty spacious. There is loads of room on the tarmac and it has a long (if unusually narrow), instrument-equipped runway. What it needs is a larger, more modern passenger complex. There is ample room for that as well, and obviously one could be built for a fraction of the estimated $450 million to be spent on a whole new airport.

Senghor is also close to the city center. Placement of the new airport, far to the south, is a curious one. On the one hand it will make things easier for the thousands of European tourists who vacation each year at the beach resorts along Senegal’s southwest coast. On the other hand, it will require that a massive new highway be built. The existing southbound road out of Dakar is a nightmare of traffic, dust and fumes, and a driving time of up to three hours to or from the airport would be unacceptable. Construction of the new highway has already begun.

Presumably the government of Senegal sees this enormous dual project as a national investment. Big new airports mean more jobs, more passengers, more revenue; a smooth new highway can relieve some of the capital’s notorious traffic jams.

Then again, Africa being Africa, perhaps this is overly optimistic. Call it “development,” or call it a half-billion-dollar opportunity for contractors and politicians. Senegal’s president boasts that not a franc of state money will be needed. Funds will come from passenger taxes and foreign investors. I’m nevertheless reminded of white elephant airports that I’ve seen in Mandalay, Myanmar, and in Timbuktu, Mali. Oversize and underused, they are statements of hubris and deceit, monuments to money that ought to have been spent elsewhere…

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Posted at 10:26 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright Vanity Fair

Very much worth clicking the link and reading the whole piece.

…How Did We Get into This Mess?

A unique combination of ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence has brought us to our present condition.

Ideology proclaimed that markets were always good and government always bad. While George W. Bush has done as much as he can to ensure that government lives up to that reputation—it is the one area where he has overperformed—the fact is that key problems facing our society cannot be addressed without an effective government, whether it’s maintaining national security or protecting the environment. Our economy rests on public investments in technology, such as the Internet. While Bush’s ideology led him to underestimate the importance of government, it also led him to underestimate the limitations of markets. We learned from the Depression that markets are not self-adjusting—at least, not in a time frame that matters to living people. Today everyone—even the president—accepts the need for macro-economic policy, for government to try to maintain the economy at near-full employment. But in a sleight of hand, free-market economists promoted the idea that, once the economy was restored to full employment, markets would always allocate resources efficiently. The best regulation, in their view, was no regulation at all, and if that didn’t sell, then “self-regulation” was almost as good.

The underlying idea was, on the face of it, absurd: that market failures come only in macro doses, in the form of the recessions and depressions that have periodically plagued capitalist economies for the past several hundred years. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that these failures are just the tip of the iceberg? That beneath the surface lie a myriad of smaller but harder-to-assess inefficiencies? Let me venture an analogy from biology: A patient arrives at a hospital in serious condition. Now, it may be that the patient has simply fallen victim to one of those debilitating ailments that go around from time to time and can be cured by a massive dose of antibiotics. In this case we have a macro problem with a macro solution. But it could instead be that the patient is suffering from a decade of serious abuse—smoking, drinking, overeating, lack of exercise, a fondness for crystal meth—and that it has not only taken a catastrophic toll but also left him open to opportunistic infections of every kind. In other words, a buildup of micro problems has led to a macro problem, and no cure is possible without addressing the underlying issues. The American economy today is a patient of the second kind.

We are in the midst of micro-economic failure on a grand scale. Financial markets receive generous compensation—in the form of more than 30 percent of all corporate profits—presumably for performing two critical tasks: allocating savings and managing risk. But the financial markets have failed laughably at both. Hundreds of billions of dollars were allocated to home loans beyond Americans’ ability to pay. And rather than managing risk, the financial markets created more risk. The failure of our financial system to do what it is supposed to do matches in destructive grandeur the macro-economic failures of the Great Depression.

Economic theory—and historical experience—long ago proved the need for regulation of financial markets. But ever since the Reagan presidency, deregulation has been the prevailing religion. Never mind that the few times “free banking” has been tried—most recently in Pinochet’s Chile, under the influence of the doctrinaire free-market theorist Milton Friedman—the experiment has ended in disaster. Chile is still paying back the debts from its misadventure. With massive problems in 1987 (remember Black Friday, when stock markets plunged almost 25 percent), 1989 (the savings-and-loan debacle), 1997 (the East Asia financial crisis), 1998 (the bailout of Long Term Capital Management), and 2001–02 (the collapses of Enron and WorldCom), one might think there would be more skepticism about the wisdom of leaving markets to themselves.

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Copyright The New York Times

A snippet on cultural genocide:

…“This is a race against the clock, and we’re in the 59th minute of the last hour,” said a National Indian Education Association board member, Ryan Wilson, whom the tribe hired as a consultant to help get the school off the ground. Like other tribes, the Northern Arapaho have suffered from the legacy of Indian boarding institutions, established by the federal government in the late 1800s to “Americanize” Native American children. It was at such schools that teachers instilled the “kill the Indian, save the man” philosophy, young boys had their traditional braids shorn, and students were forbidden to speak tribal languages…

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Copyright Yahoo Sports

LOS ANGELES (AP)—In the wake of an incredible 2 1/2 months with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Manny Ramirez hit the road Thursday without revealing his future plans.

“I’m not talking, guys,” the 36-year-old slugger said as he entered an elevator at Dodger Stadium after packing up his belongings. “I said all I had to say yesterday. I’ll send you guys a Christmas card.”

What Ramirez said Wednesday night, after the Dodgers lost to the Philadelphia Phillies 5-1 in Game 5 in the NL championship series to end their most successful postseason in 20 years, was simple enough.

“I want to thank the fans for their great support. I think it was a great trade,” he said regarding the July 31 deal that got him out of Boston. “I just want to go home and spend some time with my family. I want to see who is the highest bidder. Gas is up and so am I.”…

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Posted at 11:32 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Pambazuka

Blaise Compaoré and Françafrique killed Thomas Sankara in the belief that they could extinguish the example he set for African youth and progressive forces across the continent. They could not have been more wrong. One week before his assassination, in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Thomas Sankara declared: ‘Ideas cannot be killed, ideas never die.’ Indeed, the history of humanity is replete with martyrs and heroes whose ideas and actions have survived the passage time to inspire future generations.

Their ideas, courage and sacrifice for the freedom and dignity of their people have made these martyrs larger than life. Thomas Isidore Sankara is one in a long lineage of African sons and daughters whose ideas and actions have left an indelible mark on the history of their continent. That is why 21 years after his death, Sankara continues to guide those who are struggling to end the domination of their continent and the enslavement of its peoples.

Sankara’s great popularity is in part a reflection of Africans’ disillusionment with corrupt leaders who are incapable of meeting the basic needs of their peoples and who take their marching orders from Western capital and institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. Sankara’s popularity is also rooted in the profound sincerity of his commitment to serving his people, his devotion to the cause of the emancipation of the Burkinabés and all African peoples. His charisma, honesty and integrity made him a hero for the ‘wretched of the Earth,’ to coin a phrase from Frantz Fanon, who was greatly admired by Sankara…

…Sankara was one of the first heads of State, perhaps the only one in his time, to condemn female excision, a position that reflected his unwavering commitment to the emancipation of women and the struggle against all forms of discrimination against women.

He was a relentless advocate of gender equality and the recognition of the role of women in all spheres of economic and social life. In his famous speech of 2 October 1983, he stated: ‘We cannot transform society while maintaining domination and discrimination against women who constitute over half of the population.’

His unrelenting struggle against corruption, long before the World Bank and the IMF picked up on this issue, made Sankara an enemy of all corrupt presidents on the continent and of the international capitalist mafia for whom corruption is a tool for conquering markets and pillaging the resources of the global South.

Sankara rejected the inevitability of ‘poverty,’ and was one of the first proponents of food security. He achieved the spectacular feat of making his country food self-sufficient within four years, through sensible agricultural policy and, above all, the mobilisation of the Burkinabé peasantry. He understood that a country that could not feed itself ran the risk of losing its independence and sovereignty….

Posted at 2:39 PM · Comments (0)

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-claxton13-2008oct13,0,4633702.story

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/10/william-claxton.html

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4936102.ece

Posted at 12:56 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New Republic

College students today, showered with condoms and tastefully preserving their drunken, tonguetapping escapades on Facebook and MySpace for future in—laws and employers, have no appreciation of the sacrifices made by those who came before, the lusty pioneers of the sexual revolution. They take for granted the blowjobs and easy lay-ups made possible through the guerrilla activities of forgotten combatants in the early, undeclared stages of America’s war for erotic independence. For such uninformed fun bunnies, Philip Roth’s strange new novel may be the perfect back-to-school gift. The protagonist of Roth’s latest javelin throw is one such unsung contributor to the eventual overthrow of puritan restraint, an aspiring scholar who earns a minor footnote in the unwritten annals of oral and digital gratification. Roth’s designated patsy doesn’t actually do that much to light the fuse of the sexual revolution. In fact, he doesn’t do anything except lie there in dazed amazement while his date treats him to something special. But every person occupies the solar center of his own story, and although this character’s life may not amount to much, it’s all he has; or had.

Meet Marcus Messner, the son of a Newark butcher and a portrait of the artist as a young grump. Just as the author’s note for Indignation presents a partial litany of the many literary honors Roth has received (“He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times”), the fruits of unflagging industry and undeviating dedication (“He is the only living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. The last of the eight volumes is scheduled for publication in 2013”—eight volumes!), his teenage narrator has his nose pressed so hard to the grindstone that it shoots sparks. In contemporary parlance, Marcus is a grade queen. “Delivering orders and flicking chickens and cleaning butcher blocks and getting A’s so as never to disappoint my parents.” Disappointed his parents are not. They dote on their boy, beaming like Herschel Bernardi and Shirley Booth in an old Playhouse 90-ish Bronx-naturalism kitchen-sinker. “‘You don’t know how proud of you he is,’ my mother said. ‘Everybody who comes into the store-“My son, all A’s. Never lets us down. Doesn’t even have to look at his books—automatically, A’s.”’” Pure osmosis! …

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Copyright The Washington Post

…Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.

But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.

The government could launch a targeted program in which it takes a minority stake in troubled banks, or a broader program aimed at the larger banking system. In either case, however, the move could be seen as evidence that Washington remains a slave to Wall Street. The plan, for instance, may not compel participating firms to give their chief executives the salary haircuts that some in Congress intended. But if the plan didn’t work, the government might have to take bigger stakes.

“People around the world once admired us for our economy, and we told them if you wanted to be like us, here’s what you have to do — hand over power to the market,” said Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University. “The point now is that no one has respect for that kind of model anymore given this crisis. And of course it raises questions about our credibility. Everyone feels they are suffering now because of us.”

In Seoul, many see American excess as a warning. At the same time, anger is mounting over the global spillover effect of the U.S. crisis. The Korean currency, the won, has fallen sharply in recent days as corporations there struggle to find dollars in the heat of a global credit crunch.

“Derivatives and hedge funds are like casino gambling,” said South Korean Finance Minister Kang Man-soo. “A lot of Koreans are asking, how can the United States be so weak?” …

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Posted at 9:51 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

A very strongly argued view of the crisis as - among other things - the end of the Western dominion. A snippet:

..For the first time, the epicentre has been in the west. Viewed from Washington, London or Paris, financial crises used to be things that happened to someone else – to Latin America, to Asia, to Russia.

The shock waves [of crisis] would sometimes lap at western shores, usually in the form of demands that the rich nations rescue their own imprudent banks. But these crises drew a line between north and south, between the industrialised and developing world. Emerging nations got into a mess; the west told them sternly what they must do to get out of it..

…Owning up to the geopolitical implications will be as painful for the rich nations as paying the domestic price for the profligacy. The erosion of the west’s moral authority that began with the Iraq war has been greatly accelerated. The west’s debtors cannot any longer expect their creditors to listen to their lectures. Here lies the broader lesson. The shift eastwards in global economic power has become a commonplace of political discourse. Almost everyone in the west now speaks with awe of the pace of China’s rise, of India’s emergence as a geopolitical player, of the growing roles in international relations of Brazil and South Africa.

Yet the rich nations have yet to face up properly to the implications. They can imagine sharing power, but they assume the bargain will be struck on their terms: that the emerging nations will be absorbed – at a pace, mind you, of the west’s choosing – into familiar international forums and institutions.

When American and European diplomats talk about the rising powers becoming responsible stakeholders in the global system, what they really mean is that China, India and the rest must not be allowed to challenge existing standards and norms….

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Posted at 9:39 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright In Character

There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionable as ever), but for public apologies by politicians for the crimes and misdemeanours of their ancestors, or at least of their predecessors. I think it is reasonable to call this pattern of political breast-beating the False Apology Syndrome.

Mr. Blair, the then British prime minister, apologized to the Irish for the famine; one of the first public acts of Mr. Rudd, the Australian prime minister, was to apologize to the Aborigines for the dispossession of their continent; Pope John Paul II apologized to the Muslims for the Crusades. There are many other examples, and there are also demands for apologies by aggrieved, or supposedly aggrieved, groups.

What is this all about, and what does it signify? Does it mean that at long last the powerful are making a genuine effort to see things from the point of view of the weak, or is it, on the contrary, a form of moral exhibitionism that subverts genuine moral thought and conduct?

Let us examine briefly the apology for the Crusades as an example of the whole genre. It is not exactly a new discovery that the Crusaders often, perhaps usually or even always, behaved very badly. It is not in the nature of invading armies to behave well, even when discipline is strong, morale is high, and control of the foot soldiers is firm; it is no secret that these conditions did not exist during the Crusades, to put it rather mildly.

They were, however, rather a long time ago. The Crusades were an attempt to recover for Christendom what had been lost by force, with all the accompanying massacre, pillage, and oppression that the use of force in those days implied. No one, I think, expects an apology from present-day Arabs for the imperialism of their ancestors, either as a matter of moral duty or political likelihood. We are all born into the world as we find it, after all; we are not responsible for what went before us.

Of course, we may take pride in the culture and achievements of our biological or political ancestors — indeed such pride is necessary for the preservation and development of any civilization — in which case it is only right and proper that we should also face up squarely to the less glorious aspects of our heritage. But this is a matter for genuine historical scholarship and moral reflection of the kind that leads to a determination never to repeat the crimes, not for sound-bite sloganeering. The world would be a better place if academics in the Islamic world faced up to the fact (and were free to face up to the fact) that their religion does not have a peaceful historical record, just as the world has become a better place because the Germans have acknowledged the recent historical record of their country. If large numbers of Germans, including their leaders, started to say that Germany is what it has always been, namely a land of peace, the rest of the world would have good cause to tremble.

But official apologies for distant events, however important or pregnant with consequences those events may have been, are another matter entirely. They have bad effects on both those who give them and those who receive them.

The effect on the givers is the creation of a state of spiritual pride. Insofar as the person offering the apology is doing what no one has done before him, he is likely to consider himself the moral superior of his predecessors. He alone has had the moral insight and courage to apologize.

On the other hand, he knows full well that he has absolutely no personal moral responsibility for whatever it is that he is apologizing for. In other words, his apology brings him all kudos and no pain…

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Posted at 11:16 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright Atlantic Monthly

A snippet. Well worth reading the entire piece.

In January, Christian Lander—a 29-year-old Toronto-raised, McGill-educated Ph.D. dropout who worked as a corporate communications manager in Los Angeles—started a blog called Stuff White People Like. By February, the site was a runaway hit, garnering 30,000 hits daily. By March, it was getting 300,000. SWPL—which catalogs the tastes, prejudices, and consumption habits of well-off, well-educated, youngish, self-described progressives—was refreshing because it’s everything a blog, almost by definition, is not. Rather than serving up unedited, impromptu, self-important ruminations on random events and topics, the tightly focused, stylishly written, precisely observed entries eschew the genre’s characteristic I (though Lander in fact writes nearly all of them) and adopt a cool, never snarky though sometimes biting, pseudo-anthropological tone.

The considered but undeveloped entries provide ample fodder for a penetrating book, in which Lander could have defined and explored the ramifications (cultural, sociological, political) of his subject, or at least addressed some of the controversies and misconceptions his site has engendered—many of which are provoked by its title. Instead, publisher and author have chosen not to monkey with success. Leaving aside the delightfully off-kilter photographs and the too-cute flowcharts and quizzes, this all-but-instant work (book deal in March, publication in July) is an assemblage of Lander’s blog essays—including those available on the site when the book went to the printer plus 75 new ones, about the same length as the originals. Even if the book is frustratingly skeletal, perhaps 20 of the 150 total entries should have been cut, and while Lander is a terrific writer, rigorous editing would have made them all sharper. But the book—by virtue of both the new entries and the ease of reading Lander’s observations seriatim—reveals the author to be a weightier and angrier cultural critic than his fans and detractors apprehend.

Lander’s White People aren’t always white, and the vast majority of whites aren’t White People (he doesn’t even capitalize the term). But although Lander’s designation is peculiar, he’s hardly the first to dissect this elite and its immediate predecessors (see for instance Mark E. Kann’s Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica, Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism, Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, and David Brooks’s Bobos in Paradise—Brooks calls these people variously “bourgeois bohemians,” the “educated elite,” and the “cosmopolitan class”). Lander, like many of these writers, traces this group’s values to the 1960s, and there’s clearly a connection between a politics based on “self-cultivation” (to quote the Students for a Democratic Society’s gaseous manifesto, the Port Huron Statement) and what Lander defines as White People’s ethos: “their number-one concern is about the best way to make themselves happy.” That concern progresses naturally into consumer narcissism and a fixation on health and “well-being”: Lander’s most entertaining and spot-on entries dissect White People’s elaborate sumptuary codes, their dogged pursuit of their own care and feeding, and their efforts to define themselves and their values through their all-but-uniform taste and accessories (Sedaris/Eggers/The Daily Show/the right indie music/Obama bumper stickers/uh, The New Yorker).

So why call this group “White People”? Lander is almost certainly being mischievous. After all, dismissing something or someone as “so white” has long been a favorite put-down among those who like to view themselves as right-thinking, hierarchy-defying nonconformists—that is, White People. Recall those ads extolling “the new face of wealth,” which contrast male, stone-faced WASP bankers with attractive, far less formally—though far more expensively—clad women, quasi-hipsters, and assorted exotic ethnics. The women and hipsters may be white, but they’re not white—they’re members of the cool-looking pan-ethnic tribe, a tribe defined by economic and social status and by cultural and aesthetic preferences rather than by ethnicity. When I interviewed Lander on the telephone in July, he acknowledged that White People are in fact “desperate to define themselves as other than white.” Indeed, he rightly places “diversity” and “tolerance” highest on the list of virtues prized by White People (as did Brooks for Bobos). Of course, this group shuns the suburbs (sterile, bland … white—a view that hasn’t advanced much since Malvina Reynolds’s contemptuous “Little Boxes” of 1962) while it embraces certain neighborhoods as “authentic” (Williamsburg, Echo Park, the Mission) and spurns other enclaves and cities (say, Astoria, Reseda, Concord). Lander’s White People approve of the kind of diversity that affords them the aesthetic and consumer benefits of what they like to think of as urban life—that is, the kind that allows them to

get sushi and tacos on the same street. But they will also send their kids to private school with other rich white kids so that they can avoid the “low test scores” that come with educational diversity.

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Posted at 11:23 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Washington Post

A snippet

…In other words, this crisis — which, last Monday alone, wiped away more value from the market than the Congressional Budget Office estimates has been spent to date in Iraq and Afghanistan — is not important merely because it represents the most profound global ideological watershed since the fall of Soviet communism. It is important because it is a harbinger of massive global threats that fester within the system. And our leaders, from the president on down, have been caught as flat-footed by these new dangers as they were complacent and complicit in their hatching.

We now know that the costs to the U.S. government associated with this crash will surpass those associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also know that all such government cost estimates tend to be on the low side. We further know that the U.S. economy recovered quickly after 9/11 and that we are in the midst now of a global downturn that may last for many months and perhaps years. We know that there have been vastly more job losses — 600,000 recorded thus far this year in the United States — than were associated with the 9/11 shocks, and that the global job-loss totals that a recession is likely to bring will be measured in the millions. Among the poorest, the likely shocks to emerging markets caused by the United States’ inability to spend freely will take a devastating human toll.

By all the metrics available to us, then, the current financial crisis easily exceeds the post-9/11 war on terror in economic terms. Human costs are harder to measure, of course, and the tolls of both events have been devastating. But the financial crisis will certainly touch many more people in many more countries than did 9/11. And even greater crises may loom ahead, thanks to our unwitting creation of a financial Frankenstein’s monster of unregulated, risk-laden, global derivatives markets.

As the dithering U.S. governing class is grappling with the disposal of “toxic assets” in the U.S. economy, the world is moving on to debate what is widely seen as a toxic ideology: a form of market fundamentalism that promotes inequality…

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Posted at 9:56 AM · Comments (0)

Bits of two FT columns:

Gideon Rachman :
…I have just spent the past two weeks in China and India - and it is clear that the thought has occurred to many people there. Whatever the long-term economic impact on Asia of America’s financial crisis, a psychological shift is already evident.

The success of the Beijing Olympics in August and the failure of Wall Street in September has been a boost to Chinese self-confidence.

Pan Wei, director of the Center for Chinese and Global Affairs at Beijing university, mused aloud to me that: “My belief is that in 20 years we will look the Americans straight in the eye - as equals. But maybe it will come sooner than that. Their system is in chaos and they need our money to rescue them.”

India is poorer than China and does not feel the same sense of strategic rivalry with the US. But in India as well, the old inferiority complex towards the US is eroding.

At Infosys, a Bangalore-based information technology company that has become the symbol of India’s economic revolution, a senior manager says that one of the reasons that the group has built a plush US-style headquarters - with expansive lawns, libraries and gymnasiums - is “so that our people don’t feel over-awed when they visit American companies”.

Far from being over-awed by American business at the moment, senior Infosys executives are watching events on Wall Street with a certain wry amusement. One board member notes that his company’s London offices are in Canary Wharf, right next to the headquarters of newly bankrupt Lehman Brothers, and jokes: “The good news is that Lehman Brothers had a lease for four years. The bad news is that it was insured with AIG.”…

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…It is fascinating to look back at the Financial Times of 30 years ago, just before the US and the UK embarked on their years of liberalisation and deregulation. The similarities between 1978 and 2008 are striking, as if the two years are bookends to the fantastic stories in between.
Britain in 1978 was presided over by a prime minister mocked for his failure to call a general election. James Callaghan had “lost the authority to govern”, Margaret Thatcher, the opposition leader, said after Callaghan announced that he would not, as expected, go to the country in the autumn.

There was an unpopular and apparently ineffectual president in the White House, although, 1978 not being an election year, Jimmy Carter still had more than two years in office.

The leader of Zimbabwe was squabbling with the opposition about forming a coalition government, although the country was called Rhodesia then and the two protagonists, Ian Smith and Joshua Nkomo, were eventually eclipsed by Robert Mugabe.

It was not all gloomy, then as now. The FT reported “euphoria in the fine arts salerooms”, with record auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and told women that the look at the Paris fashion shows that year was “straight and narrow”.

The difference then was that no one realised how bad things were about to get. Thirty years ago today, the FT’s editorial was headlined “A brighter background”, saying that UK prospects looked reasonable, provided “we get through the winter without too much economic bloodshed”.

A little over three months later, Britain was plunged into its icy winter of discontent, with half-empty supermarket shelves and rubbish piled in the streets, as road hauliers, hospital workers, school caretakers and many others went on strike.

A few months after that, President Carter delivered his famous “malaise speech”. He never actually used the word “malaise”, just as Callaghan did not say “Crisis? What crisis?” But Mr Carter did say the US was undergoing an ordeal “deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession”. It was a crisis of confidence that is “threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America”.

It was an extraordinary speech. What US president today could get away with saying “we’ve learnt that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose”? Mr Carter did not get away with it either. The US was soon headed by Ronald Reagan, Britain by Mrs Thatcher, and the Anglo-American revolution was under way. People were assured there was nothing wrong with piling up material goods, or homes, and they set about it using borrowed money.

New York and London, exuberant, creative and open, sucked in the world’s brightest, creating financial instruments so sophisticated that few outside Wall Street and the City could understand them. We now know that many of those inside the banks did not understand them either.

Mr Steinbrück said last week: “The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system.” Is he right? I do not think so. The locus of business power may shift. It already had before this crisis, with Lenovo of China buying IBM’s personal computer business and Tata of India taking over Jaguar.

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Posted at 9:00 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New Yorker

A snippet from a beautiful piece that appeared in April 2008 and somehow escaped my notice until recently:

…No musician has ever roiled the jazz establishment quite as much as [Ornette] Coleman. Musical history is filled with jeering audiences and critics, but not many musicians have inspired personal violence. In Louisiana, in 1949, Coleman was summoned from a bandstand and beaten bloody by a mob which also destroyed his saxophone. A decade later, when he arrived in New York to play at the Five Spot, in Cooper Square, the drummer Max Roach came to listen and, as Coleman tells it, ended up punching him in the mouth. But musicians with a grounding in the classical avant-garde were more encouraging: Leonard Bernstein declared him a genius, Gunther Schuller wrote a concerto with him in mind, and John Lewis, the pianist and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, touted him as the most important jazz figure since Charlie Parker.

The object of this furor is a preternaturally gentle man who speaks, with a modest lisp, in visionary metaphors and bold assertions. Those assertions came initially, between 1958 and 1960, in a series of provocative album titles: “Something Else!!!!”; “The Shape of Jazz to Come”; “Change of the Century.” His double-quartet album, “Free Jazz,” ornamented with cover art by Jackson Pollock, made him, along with Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, the most radical and divisive member of a movement that set aside fixed meters, harmonies, and structures. His phrase “free jazz” became the war cry of an entire generation.

Although Coleman performs to packed stadiums at European festivals, he remains unknown to most Americans. Perhaps the chief impediment to greater popularity is the very quality that centers his achievement: the raw, rugged, vocalized, weirdly pitched sound of his alto saxophone. Considered uniquely, radiantly beautiful by fans, it is like no other sound in or out of jazz. Within the space of a few notes—a crying glissando, say, or a chortling squeak—Coleman’s sound is as unmistakable as the voice of a loved one. Even now, in a far noisier and more dissonant world than 1959, listening to Coleman can be a bracing experience for the uninitiated. Coleman’s attitude toward intonation is unconventional. The classical composer Hale Smith once spoke to me of Coleman’s “quarter-tone pitch,” by which he meant that Coleman plays between the semitones of an ordinary chromatic scale. The core of Coleman’s genius, Smith felt, is that, however sharp or flat he is from accepted pitch, he is consistent from note to note. Coleman hears so acutely that even when he is out of tune with the rest of the musical world he is always in tune with himself…

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