The Fanonite

Doug Henwood reviews David Rothkopf’s book on the Global Power Elite. This argument has already been made in a far more compelling and comprehensive manner by Leslie Sklair in his Transnational Capitalist Class.

Are we now ruled by an international elite that has left national borders far behind? It’s a fashionable view across the political spectrum that enjoys special prominence every January, when the alleged members of that alleged class hold their annual shareholders’ meeting in Davos, Switzerland. David Rothkopf, the author of “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making,” would strike the alleged from the previous sentence. To him, there’s no doubt that this superclass exists and it’s running the show.

We’ve had a series of books in recent years that amount to little more than a pornography of wealth. But the connection of wealth to actual power is rarely explored. Sure, hedge fund managers can deploy billions, and CEOs can hire and fire thousands, but what is the relation of that narrow economic power to broader political, social and cultural power?

Read the rest of this entry »

‘Simplistic and crude: it’s time central bankers recognised inflation targeting for the misguided fashion it really is,’ writes Joseph Stiglitz.

The world’s central bankers are a close-knit club, given to fads and fashions. In the early 1980s, they fell under the spell of monetarism, a simplistic economic theory promoted by Milton Friedman. After monetarism was discredited — at great cost to those countries that succumbed to it — the quest began for a new mantra.

The answer came in the form of “inflation targeting“, which says that whenever price growth exceeds a target level, interest rates should be raised. This crude recipe is based on little economic theory or empirical evidence; there is no reason to expect that regardless of the source of inflation, the best response is to increase interest rates.

One hopes that most countries will have the good sense not to implement inflation targeting. My sympathies go to the unfortunate citizens of those that do. (Among the list of those who have officially adopted inflation targeting in one form or another are Israel, the Czech Republic, Poland, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, Thailand, Korea, Mexico, Hungary, Peru, the Philippines, Slovakia, Indonesia, Romania, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Australia, Iceland, and Norway.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Nneka, singing Heartbeat. So beautiful and impassioned, it leaves you speechless. This is the kind of authenticity that MTV and the like spend billions trying to imitate; they never succeed, but inevitably dilute the art in the process. This is heartfelt; a call for justice, recognition of our shared humanity and solidarity on a personal level.

In her own words:

“I get inspired when I take a severe look at the things going on in our world today; especially in my country. How people live, suffer and endure pain, politics and religion, when I see all that man has evoked and created out of self-centeredness and devotion to material things”.

Nneka’s voice strikes an eerie balance between rage and pain which mirror’s the abrasion of two continents, Europe and Africa, within Nneka’s life so far. Nneka reiterates her humility in the face of her musical talents.

“I do not see myself as a performer but as somebody who shares her heartfelt feelings with others. I have fortunately, by the grace of God, the opportunity to sing my message to you on stage.”

Read the rest of this entry »

In a letter to the London Review of Books Slavoj Žižek dispels media myths about Tibet.

The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People’s Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the brutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans themselves. Recently, the Tibetans’ protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?

There are complications in this story of ‘good guys versus bad guys’. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India.

Read the rest of this entry »

This came out a while ago but I don’t think it was ever posted on the Fanonite. Its certainly worth a little look. Politics, consumerism, environmentalism and sustainability - some of the issues that make up the Story of Stuff.

A Bloody Oil Film. Saul Landau and Farah Hassan on There Will Be Blood.

“There Will Be Blood” implicitly warns against fanatics in an era when one form of that breed occupies the White House and other major mountebanks consume countless daily hours of TV and radio time.

“I see the worst in people,” confesses self-made oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s gritty California epic, “There Will Be Blood.” This statement alone should warn audiences that they should proceed cautiously before identifying with this protagonist. The opening of the film shows a minutes-long, no-dialogue sequence of Plainview mining for silver under harsh conditions and breaking a leg without uttering a complaint. So intensely does he feel the need to find mineral wealth that extreme physical suffering offers no obstacle. The abrasive sounds of mining and the sight of men working invoke John Huston’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” “Blood” should remind studios that audiences don’t need flashy cuts or intricately choreographed violence and special effects to get lured into the drama of a movie.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Battle for the World Economy

Here is an excellent three part series from PBS that presents a rather celebratory but interesting account of globalization.

1. The Battle of Ideas

A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently when I met Tariq Ali in London, he suggested I read Perry Anderson’s editorial in the current issue of the New Left Review. I had forgotten about the matter until I noticed this attack on the New Left icon by a member of the UK Israel Lobby on the Guardian’s blog (abiding recent convention the fellow generously concedes Anderson is not an ‘antisemite’, following it immediately with the ubiquitous ‘but’). The piece must have really hit its mark if the Britcons have had to let loose their poodles of war. I was compelled to read, and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. The analysis here is nuanced and sophisticated and well worth the read.

The contemporary period—datable at one level from the economic and political shifts in the West at the turn of the eighties; at another from the collapse of the Soviet bloc a decade later—continues to see deep structural changes in the world economy and in international affairs. Just what these have been, and what their outcomes are likely to be, remains in dispute. Attempts to read them through the prism of current events are inherently fallible. A more conjunctural tack, confining itself to the political scene since 2000, involves fewer hazards; even so, simplifications and short-cuts are scarcely to be avoided. Certainly, the notations below do not escape them. Jottings more than theses, they stand to be altered or crossed out.

i. the house of harmony

Read the rest of this entry »

Jared Diamond on how the West was won. (Thanks Dave) 

1. Out of Eden 

2. Conquest 

3.  Into the Tropics

Jared Diamond argues that it is consumption, rather than a population explosion that poses the real threat to the globe.

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences. Read the rest of this entry »