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Archive for 'comparative politics' Category
Loansharking Greece and odious debt.
Posted on 10:57, July 7th, 2015 by Pablo
I do not purport to be an economist nor would I ever want to be. Theirs is a world of implicit assumptions and pseudoscience that only a brave few have challenged from within. However, theirs is also a discipline that in theory and practice can shape the fate of millions, which is why I pay more than casual attention to them. Thus it is that I came to ponder the financial situation in Greece, a place that I lived in in 2010 at the start of its downward slope towards the current moment (my wife has researched and written on matters of Greek political economy and I have an interest in Greek civil-military relations, so our stay was mutually beneficial). Here is my non-expert view of things.
When lenders charge interest on principal loaned, they prefer to have the interest paid rather than the principal. This loan repayment rationale, which is true for states, firms and individuals, keeps the debtor beholden to the lender so long as the principal remains unpaid. Over time, the interest accrued can well exceed the amount lent, which is perfectly fine from the lenders point of view but keeps the debtor permanently saddled in a cycle of interest payment unless the debtor earns additional income (revenue) that can be directed towards paying down the principal. Short of a lottery win, a pay raise or new sources of revenue, debtors on relatively fixed incomes are locked into the cycle of debt.
Greece is in that situation. Until 2008 it was servicing the interest payments on its debt to international lenders (mostly the European Central Bank, various national banks and private investors). Then the international financial crisis of 2008-09 hit, which had nothing to do with Greece per se but which drove up interest rates. With a stagnant economy and flat tax revenues, Greece quickly found itself unable to make interest payments and, in a dramatic revelation, announced in 2010 that it had been systematically underestimating its fiscal deficit in order to maintain interest payments on its debt at a sustainable rate. At that point many private investors dumped their Greek debt holdings and the IMF assumed a significant portion of them as well as some of that accrued by European public banks.
The Greeks were subsequently offered two "bailout" loans that allowed them to continue to pay the interest on their debt, which together with the principal now amounts to nearly 250 billion Euros. With interest set at approximately 4 percent annually, the figure is set to reach the half trillion euro mark in a few years. Even if interest rates were capped at zero, it is estimated that it would take Greece 81 years to repay the amount currently owed.
There are several questions arising from the Greek debt. Why, since the interest paid is now more than the principal borrowed, does not the ECB and IMF put a cap on the debt? Why did investors continue to offer loans to Greece when it turned out that the Greeks were fiddling the books, and that neither the principal or the repayment loans ever trickled down to the general public in terms of public goods and services? Why does it expect the Greek population to pay via austerity for the risky borrowing of Greek elites and the even riskier lending of European banks?
Asking the Greek people to shoulder the burden of austerity–in a country with 30 percent general unemployment and 50 percent unemployment for those under 30, with a massive brain drain of educated professionals, porous borders and deep cuts to public sector salaries, pensions and basic services–is akin to forcing the children of crack addicts to starve and swab floors in order to pay for the rehab treatment of their parents. And the outcome is just as uncertain.
Let's look at it this way. Capitalism is about assuming risk for higher reward. In the financial world, the riskier the investment the higher the interest paid on it. And just like quick finance and pawn shops are located in poor rather than rich neighbourhoods, high interest bonds are issued on "risky" countries with poor credit ratings and histories of financial instability. For "courageous" investors riding the line between high interest and junk bonds, the rewards for so-called bailouts are great. But the downside of a default is that they will have to wear losses, just as many ill-advised investors have to.
Greece is one such high risk place and those who lent to it knew this from the beginning.
With that in mind is is easy to see that the behaviour of the "troika" (the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) can be (and has been) likened to loansharking and needs to be treated as such. When people seek debt relief from loansharks, banks or credit card providers, they arrange to repay a capped sum and a payment schedule is established. The alternative is bankruptcy, which leaves the creditor with nothing. Although suboptimal from the lender's point of view, the capped payment alternative is better than nothing.
When it comes to states, the decision to cap debt is a political decision, not a financial one. That is because the stability of states is more important than the returns on risky investment, especially when ample returns have already been received, many creditors are no longer at risk and demands for future returns put state stability at peril. In the case of Greece there is a twist, in that the referendum on whether to accept austerity was the first political iteration in a multi-step process. Now that the Greeks have refused more austerity, it is the turn of the EC to make a political decision of its own.
Let's be clear: this is not a Greek crisis; it is a crisis of European finance capital. The demand for more Greek austerity is not about servicing the debt but about humiliation, punishment and deterrence of others who might dare to do the same.
The people who should seek answers are those who invested in the agencies that undertook the high risk lending strategies that have brought us to this moment. The people who are responsible for the crisis are not average Greeks but suits sitting in fancy offices in Athens, Brussels, Frankfurt and London. They are the ones who took the risk on Greece and they are the ones who need to be held to account.
This does not absolve Greeks from their own mistakes. Certainly the culture of entitlement and the pervasive corruption in Greek society needs to be addressed. But here again, this was well known to foreign creditors at the time they lent money to Greece, and for all the everyday petty corruption in Greece involving phantom war veterans and people faking disabilities, it is the Greek political-economic elite who elevated institutional corruption to an art form. Syriza proposes to confront them as well as the lower-level scams but in order to do so it must show that it can negotiate a debt payment agreement that puts the interests of average Greeks first.
There is a way out of the imbroglio that can leave Greece in the EU without undergoing more austerity punishment. In international law there is a concept known as "odious debt." Odious debts are those that are incurred by governments that do not go to their stated purposes or are ill-gotten from the onset. Under international law, odious debts are the responsibility of the incurring parties and are not the responsibility of their successors. As such, they do not have to be serviced by others if the responsible parties cannot be made to pay.
One can argue that the debt incurred by pre-Syriza governments from 1999-2008 fall into the odious debt category and should be forgiven as such. If anything the political parties in government during the time the debts were incurred can be sued for repayment (these being the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND)). Whatever happens, it is clear that Greece has not seen the purported benefits of the loans incurred by previous governments (to include the now abandoned or derelict Olympic facilities) but it has paid more than its fair share of interest on them. By any reasonable measure the remaining debt is now odious.
In the end this is a cautionary tale with minor and major sub-plots. The minor plot is about sustainable debt and the limits of debt relief. The major plot is about the perils of political union. The EU needs to understand that how it addresses the minor plot will determine the conclusion of the major one.
Bonus read: Although I do not agree with some of his observations, Brian Easton has a nice short piece on the Greek situation here.
Posted in comparative politics, Democracy, Economics, governance, History, Politics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments | Read More »
The passive revolutionary contribution to Middle Eastern unrest.
Posted on 15:25, January 15th, 2015 by Pablo
This week I attended a talk by Kiwi journalist Yasmine Ryan, currently based in Tunis. Yasmine previously worked for al-Jazeera and now freelances from her Tunisian base. Her talk was about the state of affairs in the Arab world, and more specifically, North Africa.
She had many interesting things to say but I garnered three main points from her talk. First, the the so-called Arab Spring has failed to open Arab politics in any meaningful way. Second, levels of corruption in the Arab world are so high and so pervasive that reform is virtually impossible, especially when foreign interests back the entrenched power elites. Third, state capacity (measured by public infrastructural development, enforcement of norms beyond simple repression and provision of goods and services) is woefully lacking throughout the region, something that contributes to pervasive discontent amongst disempowered groups.
Her bottom line was that although Tunisia is touted as an Arab Spring success story, it is in fact not and yet is the best of a sorry lot of post-dictatorial regimes now governing in North Africa.
As Yasmine spoke, I found myself pondering her use of words. She referred to the Tunisian "revolution" and to the "democratisation" of Arab politics. Her use of these terms reflects standard journalistic practice although she knows well that nothing of the sort has happened in North Africa. Let me explain why.
"Revolutions" properly conceived are popular uprisings that lead to the armed overthrow of the state and the imposition of a paradigmatic change on society under a new political regime in the wake of the overthrow. The first key to revolutionary success is victory over the repressive apparatus, either as a result of combat or because the repressive apparatus switches its allegiances to the new sovereign contenders. The second key to revolutionary success is the scope of paradigmatic change covering political society, civil society and the economic structure of the nation-state. Needless to say, none of this happened as a result of the so-called Arab Spring.
So what did happen? Well, if revolution does not eventuate and democracy does not obtain, then other outcomes are possible. The regime being challenged can use its repressive superiority to reassert its authority and crack down on dissent, thereby quashing the seeds of popular uprising. This occurred in Bahrain, although it took Saudi Arabian troops to help repress the mostly Shiia uprising against the Sunni elite in that country. To a lesser extent it occurred in the 2009-10 election protests and the 2011-12 Arab Spring-inspired "Day of Rage" protests in Iran.
Another alternative outcome is a civil war where the challenged regime is forced into an armed struggle with rebel groups or in which the old regime is overthrown but new power contenders fight each other in order to establish their claim to being the new sovereign. The former is happening in Syria and the latter is happening in Libya. Iraq is a variation on this, with foreign intervention rather than popular unrest being the gateway (if not cause) for post-authoritarian internecine violence marshalled along sectarian lines.
A third option is for the authoritarian regime being challenged to engage in what is known as a "passive revolution." "Passive revolution" is where the regime elite adopts cosmetic changes and engages in reform-mongering to appease popular discontent but does not fundamentally alter the power elite or the institutional bases of their power. One of the cosmetic changes is electioneering rather than democratisation (which involves more than elections and encompasses institutional, social and economic life). This, sadly, is what has happened in Tunisia after the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and in Egypt after the respective ousters of Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi. In both cases the power elite underpinning the ousted authoritarian leaders regrouped under an electoral facade that allowed them to cloak their rule in a mantle of "democratic" legitimacy. In Egypt's case the scenario had a twist in that Morsi was allowed to become the first freely elected president in Egyptian history, but when his Muslim Brotherhood government pushed its Islamicist-backed constitutional project and Morsi granted himself unlimited executive powers not subject to judicial or parliamentary review, they were deposed in a military coup. The leader of the coup and then head of the Egyptian military, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is now president of Egypt.
However, for a passive revolution to work it must, along with continuing to selectively repress dissent, deliver goods otherwise not obtained by the discontented masses. Be it as a short term or longer term strategy, the passive revolutionary approach is more than political window dressing because it hinges on giving the appearance of progressive change by providing public goods and services, and material benefits, that previously were unavailable. Yet, in Egypt as well as Tunisia, none of that has occurred because of rampant corruption, lack of state capacity, and an absence of economic opportunity under the power elites that ruled before the regime changes and who continue to rule today. What has occurred is the resumption of repression of those who wish to push for a further and more substantive political opening.
This means that the root causes of popular discontent remain unaddressed, which makes the passive revolutionary approach inherently weak. It is akin to putting a sticking plaster on an arterial bleed–it may staunch some short term dissent but it cannot contain the surge of discontent over the long term.
But there is a twist to the story. It turns out that Tunisia has supplied the largest contingent of foreign fighters to the Islamic State. Egypt also has proved to be a fertile recruiting ground for jihadists, and Libya is overrun with them fighting to overthrow the central government in Tripoli. Why would alienated individuals in Tunisia and Egypt opt to join a foreign war rather than continue to fight for progressive political change at home?
I believe the answer is that those who choose to leave to fight for IS or al-Qaeda see the results of the Arab Spring for what they really are: a reassertion of the traditional status quo under different guise. Understanding the impossibility of affecting significant political, social and economic change at home, these disaffected fighters migrate to foreign conflicts in which the enemy is clear (be it the West, Israel, Iran or Shiia Islam in general) and in which their skills in the management of organised violence can be honed for future use at home should they survive combat. Should they not, they will have died for what they believe to be a good cause.
That is the crux of the "returning jihadi" problem. They pose no existential threat to the West or even stable authoritarian regimes (barring an overreaction by the state and society that makes it appear as if there is in fact a "war" between Islam as a whole and the non-Islamic world). They do not pose an existential threat to stable Muslim dominant societies such as Indonesia and Malaysia. But they do pose a potential existential threat to the passive revolutionary regimes in North Africa as well as in failing or failed states such as Yemen, Somalia and/or those in which civil war is occurring (to include Nigeria even if Boko Harum is comprised of indigenous fighters who for the most part have not traveled abroad).
That is why I see al-Qaeda and the Islamic State as regional rather than global problems–they may have a world wide impact given the decentralised nature of terrorist tactics outside of the Middle East, but their real strategic impact stems from the existential threat they pose to the Middle East itself. After all, even if they use the US, the West, Israel and/or Iran as foils for their violent ambitions, al-Qaeda and IS have their eyes focused squarely on the Gulf petrolarchies as much if not more than they do on any other territorial and political objective.
In the end, it has been the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver on its theoretical promise and popular expectations for real change that has led to the rise of IS and the spreading wave of violent unrest throughout the Arab world. After a moment that promised a thawing of old political structures and the germination of new ideas about the relationship between state and society, the region has proven yet again to be barren ground for peaceful, progressive and lasting social change.
PS: Here is something I wrote in 2011 about Tunisia and other Middle Eastern transitions. Although I do not claim any particular expertise on the Middle East or Arab world, I think that by and large my observations of four years ago have stood the test of time.
Posted in Authoritarianism, comparative politics, Democracy, elections, governance, History, Politics, Social change, Terrorism, Uncategorized | 4 Comments | Read More »
Perhaps not yet a Cuba Libre, but an opening nevertheless.
Posted on 14:55, December 19th, 2014 by Pablo
In a previous life one of the US government roles I played was as co-team leader of the OSD/JCS Cuba Task Force. That was a combined team of officials and officers from the US Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) tasked with exploring contingency scenarios for Cuba, including refugee flows (then ongoing) as well as possible civil unrest and regime transition scenarios in the wake of the withdrawal of Soviet aid to the island nation and the increasingly geriatric nature of its original leadership. My co-team leader was a Cuban American political appointee, with the idea being that my academic experience studying authoritarian regime transitions and knowledge of the Cuban approach to irregular conflict would be balanced by his sensitivity to the domestic political implications of any moves we proposed to undertake.
Although I cannot reveal much of what we did, I can say a few things about the process that has now led to a normalisation of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba.
First, almost everyone in the US government realised that the embargo was a failure. However, the Cuban lobby is on a par with the gun and Israel lobbies when it comes to single issue fixation and willingness to spend money for the cause. This made Cuba a thorny political problem for any US government trying to improve relations with it, as the usual suspects would (and still do) immediately hurl the "soft on communism" and "appeasing dictators" invective as part of their negative electoral campaigning. This placed the issue in the "too hard" basket as far as most politicians were concerned, especially given the myriad of other issues at play and the trade-offs they involved. As a foreign diplomat said in my presence when asked about the US approach to Cuba: "That is a domestic matter, not a diplomatic one."
Secondly, from the 1980s to the present day, every former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US Chamber of Commerce have repeatedly called for an end to the embargo and resumption of full diplomatic relations. One would have thought that the weight of conservative military leaders and the leading business organisation in the US would hold some sway, but in fact their views were trumped by the lobbying efforts described above. Episodic attempts have been made to launch US business initiatives in Cuba (for example, in agricultural machinery), but the legal and monetary costs of circumventing the embargo by using off-shore subsidiaries, etc. simply proved too much given the limited nature of the potential returns.
Third, as of the early 1990s the Castro brothers increasingly delegated authority to second generation leaders, who now have been replaced in large measure by third generation revolutionary cadres (people in their 40s and 50s). In fact, both the Cuban exile community as well as the revolutionary leadership have seen the physical decline of the so-called "dinosaurios" (dinosaurs) and their replacement with younger, often more moderate leaders who were not present during the revolution and who therefore do not all have personal scores to settle stemming from it. My co-team leader was second generation and not fuelled by the rabid thirst for revenge exhibited by many of his parent's generation (some of whom I got the dubious pleasure of meeting). Now that second generation's children are coming to the fore. This has opened the door for initiatives focused on normalising relations.
But the issue remains complex. The end of the Cold War and fall of the USSR actually reinforced the view in some US policy circles that an embargo could, given the withdrawal of Soviet aid to Cuba, bring the Castro regime to its knees. On the other hand, the increase in non-US foreign investment in Cuba after the Cold War (mostly but not exclusively in tourism) was seen by some in the US as making the embargo counter-productive when it came to promoting US business interests in its near abroad. Overlying these views was a persistent belief that Cuba continued to logistically and intellectually support Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups in Latin America (including those that drug trafficked) as well as rogue regimes such as North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran (to say nothing of Nicaragua and Venezuela). As a result, foreign policy opinion in the US after the Cold War remained very divided on the question of what to do with Cuba given the embargo and rudimentary diplomatic relations.
Yet given the demographic changes mentioned earlier, the question about Cuba the last twenty years has mostly been one of political timing: when is the opportune moment to make the move towards restoring normality to the bilateral relationship? Conventional wisdom on US presidential politics states that only during second terms can presidents get away with bold foreign policy initiatives, and even then they have to be popular and presiding over a strong economy in order to do so (since voters tend to ignore foreign policy issues when their pockets and bellies are full). However, owing to the perverse ideological evolution of the Republican Party, only Democrats would even contemplate doing so after 1990, which meant that it was left to Clinton or Obama to be bold (recall that Nixon opened the relationship with China and Reagan encouraged glasnost and perestroika, even if both Republican presidents did so for self-interested reasons).
I have little doubt that Clinton would have normalised relations with Cuba in his second term if he had not been hamstrung by the Lewinsky scandal, which helped turn the Elian Gonzalez saga into a Republican battle cry (Elian Gonzalez was a little Cuban boy who washed up on US shores in a raft in which his mother died. After weeks of to- and fro-ing between the US government and exiled members of the boy's family, he was forcibly repatriated to Cuba to live with his divorced father. Sensing that Clinton was wounded by the Starr investigation into Cigargate, the GOP turned the boy's ordeal into an anti-communist political circus, which effectively ended the quiet efforts Clinton's administration had initiated with an eye towards opening up the Cuban relationship).
Now it appears that Obama has seized the moment to undertake a little glasnost of his own, perhaps because he senses that he has little to lose given the disloyal nature of the opposition (which will rant and rail at anything he does), perhaps because the US economy is doing well enough for him to feel immune on some aspects of foreign policy even after the adverse results of the midterm elections, and perhaps because, like gay marriage and medical marijuana, the US public has simply changed its views on Cuba over the years. In fact, it is likely a little bit of each, as the GOP and Fake News blowhards may not want to waste political capital on a dead issue that will gain the GOP no electoral traction. As it turns out, with the exception of some posturing clowns like Marco Rubio and the braying jackasses on conservative media outlets, the reaction from the political Right has been fairly muted.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. Back when I was dealing with Cuba, the word from their side was that everything was negotiable except for two pillars of the revolution: health and education. That is to say, the vaunted Cuban health and educational systems were sacrosanct and could not be touched in any post-Castro environment. Beyond that, market forces could dictate how Cuba would re-insert itself in the global economy. With an extremely literate, healthy and underemployed work force, it would seem that Cuba would be ideal for any number of value-added export commodity production ventures (textiles and pharmaceuticals have already become targets of foreign investor interest).
The other issue, left unresolved during my time working that beat, was the role of the Communist Party. It is clear that the Cuban political elite have been watching the transitions in the former socialist world, be it the USSR, China, Vietnam or Eastern Europe. They have also watched the experiments in indigenous socialism in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. It is pretty clear that they would prefer to do a China-style transition to state capitalism under one party rule.
The trouble with that preferred picture is that it is only a partial transition, with the political regime remaining largely the same while the economy changes. That may be possible in a huge country like China but is problematic in a small country like Cuba, especially when it is so proximate to a formerly adversarial super power and has a number of expatriates with ideas about Cuba's future that do not include a dominant role for the Communist Party, much less its continued sole rule.
Thus the conundrum for the second and third generation Cuban Communist Party leadership is whether to embark on a sequential transition (first changing the economy then the political system, or, less likely, vice versa), or to go all in and mount a simultaneous transition of the economic and political systems. From the standpoint of keeping things peaceful and orderly, the best hope scenario is a sequential transition in which economic change precedes political change. Opening Cuba for business will present a formidable challenge for the Communist Patry, and the social and cultural influences that will come with diplomatic normalisation and economic opening will be hard to contain, much less stop. So whether by design or by the forced pace of change, it is likely that the Cuban political system will open up as a result of the economic transition and its superstructural ramifications.
The key is for the Cuban political elite to realise that the Chinese transition model is not possible for them given the circumstances, and that the days of one party rule will either come to a natural end or be overturned by force. In that light the best thing to do is to prepare a timetable leading up to multiparty competitive elections somewhere down the road, with appropriate guarantees put in place to preserve key revolutionary gains and to safeguard the institutional position of entities like the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). That will take some doing, and could well take a fair bit of time given the current makeup of the Communist Party leadership (in which Fidelistas still hold significant influence along with Raulistas).
The question remains as to what will happen with the two pillars of the revolution in a market-driven economy. It also remains to be seen as to how Cuban society will respond to the introduction of full market logics on the island. Things like the elimination of food subsidies and introduction of merit-based employment criteria in and outside the public serve could prove painful for Cuban society. It could also lead to criminal opportunism in what some observers have already characterized as an increasingly amoral and feral civil society no longer wedded to the revolutionary ethos of the original 26th of July movement. If one thinks of where Cuba is spatially located in relation to drug trafficking corridors, the downside possibilities should be obvious.
Even so, the resumption of full diplomatic relations is a welcome development and hopefully followed by a formal end to the US embargo (not a certain thing, given opposition by GOP majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives). There still will be many hard days ahead as Cuba comes to grip with its post-revolutionary future, but at least the range of potential outcomes will be expanded relative to those extant up until a few days ago. As for the US, it demonstrates that sometimes diplomatic face-saving on foreign policy is a waste of energy and the better self-interested choice is to admit mistakes and move on. As the old Korean saying goes: a rich uncle can afford to be generous.
Whatever its motivations, Uncle Sam just was.
Blog Link: Could Fiji Emulate Singapore?
Posted on 16:20, September 26th, 2014 by Pablo
Although we in NZ have been preoccupied with our own national election, Fiji had one a few days earlier that arguably is far more important when it comes to that country's long-term prospects. Much has been written about this foundational election and the transition from dictatorship to democracy, but in this 36th Parallel analysis I consider the possibility that Fiji may see Singapore as a developmental model worth emulating.
It is not as crazy an idea as you might think at first glance.
Posted in comparative politics, Democracy, elections, governance, History, Politics, South Pacific | 3 Comments | Read More »
Transitional Dilemmas.
Posted on 11:20, March 16th, 2014 by Pablo
Military-bureaucratic authoritarian regimes often seek to legitimate their rule and establish a positive legacy by transferring power to elected civilian authorities. However, they do so only under certain conditions and with specific outcomes in mind. One way to ensure that their post-authoritarian vision is adhered to is to run a military-backed candidate (often a retired military leader) as the "official" candidate while actively working to use their control of the election process to promote divisions and disunity amongst the opposition. The way in which the elections are governed and the process leading up to them are used by the outgoing authoritarians to produce a voting outcome that upholds the status quo under elected civilian guise.
In spite of its dominant position in such "top-down" forms of electoral transition, military-backed candidates and/or parties are confronted with several dilemmas that complicate their ability to ensure their desired post-authoritarian outcome. In this 36th Parallel Assessments brief I point out two of them as well as some other political dynamics at play in such scenarios.
Although the analysis is framed broadly, it may be of particular interest to those interested in the elections scheduled for September in Fiji.
Posted in Authoritarianism, comparative politics, Democracy, elections, foreign policy, governance, History, Politics | 5 Comments | Read More »
Blog Link: The Transition Tango in Fiji.
Posted on 11:35, October 3rd, 2013 by Pablo
Over at 36th Parallel Assessments I explore some of the dynamics that are and will be key factors in the political transition to free and open elections in Fiji scheduled for mid 2014. Unique circumstances in Fiji notwithstanding, the success of a transition from military-bureaucratic authoritarianism to freely elected government (if not democracy) hinges on some key factors, particularly the interplay between regime and opposition hard- and soft-liners. The essay explains how and why.
Posted in Authoritarianism, comparative politics, Democracy, governance, Politics, South Pacific | 5 Comments | Read More »
El Chavismo sin Chavez.
Posted on 12:23, March 6th, 2013 by Pablo
I am sure that there will be plenty of eulogies, some fawning and some harsh, for Hugo Chavez. Since I spent a good part of my academic career writing about Latin American politics, to include the nature of national populists such as Chavez and a bit about his regime itself, I am well aware of his shortcomings and strengths. It is in the nature of national populism to be redistributive, mass mobilizational and increasingly authoritarian. As a left-wing variant, the Chavez regime was all of those things, and the fact that the US supported the 2002 coup against him only cemented the increasingly authoritarian direction of the regime. But his authoritarianism was mass rather than elite-based, and it was this mass support that carried him through three terms and four elections. He was no tin pot despot. His rule was a bit more complicated than that of, say, Robert Mugabe, who took a popular national independence movement and turned it into an armed clan-based kleptocracy.
The Achilles heel of national populism is the personalist nature of executive rule. Peron, Vargas, Cardenas and Chavez–all increasingly concentrated power in their own hands, thereby removing institutional checks and balances as well as clear lines of authority and succession. That could be the undoing of the Boliviarian experiment.
After the 2002 coup Chavez purged the military and civilian state bureaucracy of professionals and populated the upper ranks with acolytes. This decreased the efficiency and capabilities of state agencies, both armed and unarmed. He increasingly relied on Cubans for behind the scenes leadership of his internal security services, including his personal bodyguards. He played divide and conquer with his parliamentary counterparts at the same time that he re-jigged the constitution to increase the length of his presidential terms as well as the electoral prospects of his political party. He populated the judiciary with supporters and increasingly restricted freedoms of public expression and the press. He trained and armed supporter militias organized along the lines of the Cuban Auto-Defense Committees. Some of these have been accused of intimidating and assaulting members of the political opposition.
He used inclusionary state corporatist mechanisms of interest group administration that bestowed favor and patronage on supportive groups and excluded or punished non-supportive groups (which thereby polarized civil society organizations). This allowed for top-down direction of the thrust of state policy and funding directed at civil society, but it also gradually surpressed independent and autonomous expressions of grassroots interest.
All of this was justified on the grounds that he faced a disloyal opposition aided and abetted by hostile foreign powers, the US in particular. Although there is an element of paranoia in those claims, there is also a large grain of truth to them. The hard fact is that just the appearance of socialist inclinations on Chavez's part sent the US into knee-jerk opposition, something that was particularly acute under the Bush 43 administration and was not undone once Obama was elected.
Chavez did much good for Venezuela, particularly in the fields of health, education, welfare and community organization. During his time in power infant mortality rates dropped and literacy rates increased dramatically. The percentage of Venezuelans living in poverty dropped from 50 percent to below 30 percent in ten years. Rural hospitals and schools were built where there previously were none. His regime kept the price of domestic petrol cheap (as it could as a major oil-producing and refining nation), which allowed the poorest segments of the population to weather rises in the price of imported commodities.
In spite of the claims of his detractors, he won four elections handily and relatively cleanly in the eyes of most international election observers. His tenure marks a major historical moment in Venezuelan life, and his legacy will be indelible on it. Whatever his authoritarian tendencies, he was no Pinochet or Somoza. Although his regime selectively repressed the opposition, it did not systematically torture or kill. Nor did it expropriate all private wealth, although it did seek to raises upper-income taxes, nationalize some strategic assets and prevent capital flight via financial controls. Needless to say, this earned him the emnity of Venezuelan elites and their foreign supporters.
He was a close ally of the Cuban regime, but given the common hostility of the US, that was born as much out of necessity than it was out of ideological affinity (truth be told, Raul Castro always thought of Chavez as a buffoon but Fidel was flattered by his attention and both were grateful for his cheap oil supplies. The Cubans worried that he would provoke a confrontation with the US that would suck them in and destabilize them).
He expanded Venezuela's diplomatic, economic and military relations (towards China, Russia and Iran in particular, but also with other Latin American states) so as to counter-balance the traditional US-focused obsequiousness of his predecessors. He was the motor force behind the solidarity market Latin American trade bloc known as the Boliviarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which among other things rejected IMF and World Bank financial prescriptions. He had significant Latin American popular and governmental support, which was mirrored in international media coverage.
He is alleged to have cultivated relations with Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
He presided over the deterioration of Venezuela's core infrastructure, to include its oil production facilities (in which foreign investment dried up in response to his nationalization policies), as well as a dramatic rise in violent crime (Caracas has one of the highest murder rates in the world). He did not stop corruption but merely shifted it in favor of those who wear red berets. Venezuelan consumption of Scotch whisky, already the highest in the world when he assumed power in 1999, increased steadily from then on. He was unable to curb the Venezuelan obsession with female plastic surgery and beauty queens. So not all is well in the Boliviarian Republic. I shall leave it for others to debate the trade-offs involved and the pros and cons of his regime.
On balance, in the Latin American scheme of things Hugo Chavez was a relatively moderate caudillo (strongman) with a staunch independent and redistributive streak and majority popular support until the end.
The real problem at the moment is that his movement has no natural leader to succeed him. Moreover, he was the ideological glue of the regime: it was his vision, his praxis, the drew the course of events. With him gone the ideological basis of the regime is subject to interpretation by contending personalities and factions within the Boliviarian movement. His designated Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, has no independent power base, much less broad support within the Party. He has a serious rival in Diosdado Cabello, a former Army colleague of Chavez's who is the head of the National Assembly. Cabello has support within the military, whereas Maudro's support comes from within the union movement and public bureaucracy. Yet neither is visibly stronger than the other, so the backroom maneuvering and in-fighting has begun in earnest (and in fact began when Chavez returned to Cuba for surgery last December).
To this can be added the opposition, which rallied around the figure of Henrique Caprilles Radonski in the October 2012 elections that saw Chavez elected for the fourth time. A presidential election is supposed to be held 30 days after the public announcement of Chavez's death (March 5). Riding a wave of grief, unity and solidarity, Maduro is the favorite to win that election if he is a candidate. It will be interesting to see if Maduro can maintain his grip on power before or after the elections in the absence of support for his mandate, however electorally affirmed. One thing is certain: Maduro is no Chavez, and everyone knows that.
Caprilles might not run in the immediate elections so as to delegitimize them and allow the Boliviarian in-fighting to proceed unimpeded and without a common political enemy to focus on. Whatever happens over the short-term, the bigger question is whether the Boliviarian experiment can outlive its creator. Can there be Chavismo without Chavez? Given the dynamics at play within and without the Boliviarian regime, the odds are not entirely favorable.
For the time being we will be treated to the grand spectacle of a Venezuelan state funeral, where the streets will be awash in red and the dignitaries will include a who's who of US adversaries and critics, Hollywood leftists and very few heads of state from the developed capitalist world. As for Chavez–will his afterlife smell of sulphur or of something more pleasant?
Blog Link: A "Guarded" Democracy in Fiji.
Posted on 11:15, January 17th, 2013 by Pablo
The rejection of the 2013 draft constitution by the Baimimarama regime in Fiji (a constitution drafted by a panel of international jurists and partially funded by New Zealand), has led to speculation as to whether the promised 2014 elections will be held. What has not been mentioned in press coverage of the constitutional crisis is an end-game that is neither dictatorial or democratic: elections leading to a "guarded" democracy. In this analysis I outline some reasons why the prospect of a guarded democracy in Fiji should be considered to be very real.
Posted in comparative politics, Democracy, elections, governance, Politics, South Pacific | 1 Comment | Read More »
Political Fratricide.
Posted on 08:11, November 21st, 2012 by Pablo
In light of recent events involving the NZ Labour Party, it is worth pondering the phenomenon known as political fratricide and its sub-set, party fratricide.
Political fratricide is the tearing apart of a political movement or organization due to internecine differences amongst political allies or the ideologically kindred. It is fratricidal in that erstwhile brothers and sisters in political arms turn on each other over differences of ideas, strategy and tactics to the point that the movement can no longer sustain itself as a coherent political entity. The original movement is purged of dissenters by the dominant, and often increasingly authoritarian faction. Clear examples are provided by a myriad array of Left movements that fracture and split over ideological hair-splitting and matters of praxis. This weakens their broader appeal, segments them into marginal factions, and therefore diminishes their overall import in the political debates of the day. The more intense and acrimonious the political fratricide, the less likely a movement will recover its original shape and play an effective role in mainstream politics. In most instances that means permanent marginalization.
Party fratricide is a sub-set of this phenomenon. It is characterized by increasing cleavages, factionalization and fragmentation within political parties over any number of issues, including issues of leadership. Party fratricide results in the elimination or purging of losing factions. It is due to either of two reasons. One is irreconcilable differences within the Party on core beliefs. In this instance the very nature of the Party as a political entity becomes the subject of angry internal debate to the point that it can no longer function as a coherent whole. That forces splits and defections by discontented Party members that ultimately results in the formation of new Party off-shoots. As with the case of political movements, this dilutes the electoral strength of the original Party, which may or may not be replaced by one of its off-shoots as the preferred vehicle for the marshaling of a given political cause or belief system. Although the original Party may survive, its core belief structure will be modified by the defections and emergence of ideological competitors holding different conceptualizations of the original beliefs that once bound them together. That has the overall effect of diluting support for the belief system itself because the increased number of disputed interpretations resultant from the fratricidal process muddles popular interpretations of what the "pure" belief really is.
The second cause of Party fratricide is an absence of core values. In this instance, which often is seen in "catch-all" parties that seek to appeal to the widest array of interests possible, the absence of an ideological core leads to the narrow pursuit of segmented interests and policy implementation by a variety of internal factions. That in turn sets the stage for tactical opportunism, be it in the trading of favors via pork-barreling or log-rolling, or in regular shifting of support for policy positions or party factions based upon self-interest and the contemporary dynamics of the Party at any given moment. People of ideological principle finds themselves isolated and outflanked by the tactically astute who are less rooted in ideological conviction. The more this occurs the more likely that bitter personal antipathies develop within the Party as ambitious individuals joust for leadership roles in an evolving informal or subterranean contest that parallels the formal rules of Party leadership contestation and selection. Since there is no one central belief system to which all adhere, the field is left open for cunning tactical opportunists to hold sway in internal party debates.
This appears to be what has happened to the Republican Party in the US, and it shows signs of occurring in the Australian and British Labor/Labour parties. It seems to be what happened to ACT. These parties contest power not out of a core belief system but because of the platform of temporally shared policy interests that they represent. Although that may suffice to win power or office, it also is a source of constant internal tension that has the potential to explode into outright conflict should personal animosities or policy differences turn irreconcilable.
Party fratricide does not necessarily spell the death of the Party but is a sign not only of deep division within it, but of fundamental weakness. After all, if a Party cannot unite around a common set of objectives, leaders or beliefs in the face of a coherent and well-organized opposition, then it is less a political Party than an amalgam of sectoral interests forced together by political circumstance and shallow ideological affinity.
All of this is quite obvious. The question for the day is whether a Party that is exhibiting signs of fratricide can pull back and regroup in a manner that retains its coherence and effectiveness as a political interlocutor. One way may be to rehabilitate, resurrect or recruit again those that have lost favor or been relegated by the internecine battles (many a political Laxarus has been returned to the fray in NZ and elsewhere). There are a number of other means for re-constituting a coherent political platform and leadership cadre that enjoy the support of the Party membership as a whole. Thus the solution set to the problem may be as varied as it is difficult, but for one NZ political party at least, it is also absolutely necessary.
Posted in comparative politics, Democracy, governance, Politics | 9 Comments | Read More »
A surfeit of services.
Posted on 09:23, September 17th, 2012 by Pablo
My yearly sojourns to the US provide a regular opportunity to garner a snapshot of the state of the union, at least from my limited perspective. This year I returned to my old stomping grounds in the desert southwest and to the home away from home in South Florida. After a wet monsoon season the desert was lush and the 360 degree skies saturated with cumulus, cirrus and stratus cloud. It was great to hear Norteno music and Spanglish spoken in the street.
My son joined my partner and I for a trip to the old mining town of Bisbee, where we stayed at the haunted Copper Queen (est. circa 1880) and had a long night on the town that ended up in some biker/metalhead dive bar. It was great. I highly recommend the Arizona desert to New Zealanders interested in a dramatic contrast in landscapes and Western cultures.
South Florida has been less pleasant. There is a palpable tension in the air marked by hostile attitudes and unbelievably aggressive, to the point of criminally reckless, driving. The region is known for its fast pace and shallow materialism, but in this trip there is something darker about it. Some of this can be attributed to the election campaign, in which some of the local attack ads are truly astounding in their ferocity and disregard for decency (the issue is large: one-third of the US Senate, the entire US House of Representatives, and most local offices are in play). There is a buffoon Republican named Alan West running for the US Senate, and his ads make the Swiftboat and Willie Horton attack ads look tame. He says nothing about what he proposes and spends most of his time defaming his Democrat opponent. Seeing that Romney is set to lose the presidential race, the right wing talkback and television outlets have ratcheted up the hysteria and vitriol to the point that even John Stewart or Stephen Colbert cannot parody them adequately. In a word, the place is nuts.
This condition of political anomie may be compounding the sense of frustration and anger felt by an increasingly divided–the word "polarized" does not do justice to the chasm between the US right and left–polity that more than anything else is diffident in its regard for politics. Both the Republican and Democratic conventions were not as well attended and not as widely viewed by TV audiences as in previous years, and it appears that the election abstention rate is going to be very high this year. People appear to be cynical, bitter and lacking in hope for the future regardless of who wins in November. All in all, this is the sorriest state of mind I have found the US to be in since my move to NZ fifteen years ago.
That is the backdrop to the subject of this post. As readers will know, the focus of the 2012 US election begins and ends with the economy. Platitudes are proffered and panaceas are prescribed. Words like "competitiveness" and "innovation" are bandied about like lollies. But there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of a root cause of the American economic malaise: its reliance on services.
The US is a country dominated by the service sector rather than true productive enterprise. Think of the variety of services now on offer: wealth and asset managers; financial advisors; PR and other "communications strategists;" personal trainers; life coaches (of which there are half a million in the US); pain management specialists (aka pill doctors); landscapers; floral designers; escorts; private alarm and security companies; fishing, hunting and tour guides; real estate agents; internet and in-store movie suppliers; credit card purveyors; nail and hair "artists;" wedding planners; a zillion types of mental health counselors and ambulance chasing lawyers; insurers; car, cat and dog groomers; dog walkers; bird, cat, dog and horse whisperers; DJs; car valets; (for-profit) drug and alcohol rehabbers; tennis instructors; beauty consultants; fashion stylists; liposuction specialists; motivational speakers; management and risk consultants; self-help gurus; personal assistants and agents, accountants; home delivery services; website designers–the list is as varied as it is endless. While one might argue that all retail sales are a service, my point is that in the US the extent of service provision is on its way to infinite, and this infinite progression dominates its economy.
The basic problem of reliance on services as the core of economic activity is that making money through facilitation is not equivalent to being productive. Nor is working hard synonymous with productivity. Americans work the longest hours and take the shortest vacations of all OECD countries. By that standard they should be light-years ahead of the democratic capitalist world in terms of real productivity. But they are not. That is because hard work and income earned in services does not, in the larger scheme of things, add real value to productivity. It may make the national quality of life better, but it does not advance the overall condition of the productive apparatus. It is the economic equivalent of silver–it is nice and attractive, very malleable, easy to buy, wear and replace, but is no substitute for the economic iron required to build and progress a nation.
What is noteworthy about the US service sector is that, at over 75 percent and growing, it is steadily occupying a bigger and bigger percentage of the national GDP (agriculture is less than 2 percent and manufacturing is at 20 percent). The creative genius involved in the proliferation of services is matched by its relentless rent-seeking: in South Florida television ads are dominated by ambulance chasers (who prefer the term "personal injury lawyers"), pill-pushers and geriatric care providers who offer relief and compensation for a myriad of ills previously unheard of or for which personal responsibility used to suffice.
The majority of US college graduates, be they from two or four year colleges, receive degrees in areas other than science or engineering (business, education and liberal arts degrees are the majority of those granted in the US). Since the bulk of undergraduates do not go on to graduate school, this leaves a labor pool full of people who cannot actually produce or add value to anything other than by virtue of their slick talk and quick uptake on the job. Since most people coming out of US universities and colleges are neither particularly articulate or quick on the uptake, their default option is to join the legion of personal service providers.
No that all services are of the silver variety. Some of these are important, such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, doctors, firefighters, police and lifeguards (I shall defer from elaborating on the public versus private aspects of the service sector, but note that what are considered public services are basically considered to be core functions of government, many of which are being privatized and downsized in the current fiscal environment). Many services are linked via supply chains to the manufacturing and research sectors. Others, such as the information technology services that spawned Google, Facebook and Twitter, create wealth but do not always really produce anything tangible or contributory to the value-added project (which in part explains the lukewarm stock market reaction to the Facebook public stock float). The vast majority of US services are, needless to say, even less contributory to the national productive apparatus.
The critical and deleterious aspect of the services domination of the US economy is that it is moving the country away from the production of real value added assets, much of which is increasingly monopolized in terms of ownership anyway. Add to that the overwhelming influence of the financial service sector, and what is left is a country that buys more than it makes (and what it makes are increasingly capital goods as much as consumer durables and non-durables), and in which people increasingly use services rather than do things or rely on themselves.
The social division of labor created by service sector dominance in the US appears to produce two distinct cultural characteristics. First–and this is very evident in South Florida and a subject that I have addressed in previous posts–is a culture of blame-assignment and responsibility-shifting where nobody is personally accountable for the consequences of their actions. Even hardened criminals commonly use the excuse that their teachers, counselors and psychiatrists failed them in the lead-up to their crimes, and in many instances this suffices to mitigate their culpability and reduce their sentences. They are not alone in this. In fact, there is an entire service industry comprised of counselors, insurers and lawyers that profits from shifting blame and responsibility, criminal or not.
The second aspect is the increasing compartmentalization and personalization of service work, which in turn produces an erosion of horizontal solidarities brought about by common insertion in the productive process. Much of the service sector is characterized by individual entrepreneurial or material pursuits. The individualization of service work, often aided by stay-at-home technologies that facilitate the rendering of such services, removes the associational and emotive ties that are part of the working experience in mass productive enterprise. This atomizes and alienates individuals as social subjects, as their material fortunes no longer depend on common identifications and sense of purpose (which occurs whether the workforce is organized or not precisely because it is a collective enterprise).
Social group associations, service group size and individual immersion in non-work related collective undertakings such as sports and churches mitigate against a complete return to survivalist alienation, but they do not fully overcome the dissociative effects of the nature of service provision. The effect of this is to reduce the ties that bind people together, which helps explain the turn to shifting blame and responsibility onto others.
Needless to say, I am only extrapolating from what I am seeing in the US during my limited time here. I recognize that generalizations are fraught and speculation based on fraught and fragmentary generalizations are to be suspected. So take this appraisal as an opinion, nothing more. Moreover, the US remains the largest national economy in the world, the largest trading nation, and the largest manufacturing economy. Its information technology, robotics, telecommunications and aerospace industries are world leaders. Its automobile and construction sectors are on the rebound. It is by no means weak in spite of what I have outlined above.
Even so, the trend is disturbing (at least for those with an interest in the US). For small countries not intent on projecting power or devoid of natural and human resources, reliance on services as the mainstay of the economy is acceptable if not advisable. Competitive advantage in services may counterweight a lack of comparative advantage in productive resources.
However, it seems to me that if a large, militarily aggressive country with a global reach relies on services as its engine of economic growth rather than on value-added production, than it will find it increasingly difficult to hold the its position over time. I might be wrong and, like (but better than) the USSR, the US can continue to ride on the production associated with an immense military-industrial corporate complex that spins off technological innovation and civilian applications as a matter of course even as the overall presence of value-added manufacturing as a component of GDP decreases. But if that is the case, it seems a risky proposition for sustained growth and global prominence given that an increasing percentage of the inputs to that type of production are derived from external rather than internal sources.
Meanwhile the life coaches continue to facilitate personal self-realization, realtors hustle properties, lawyers litigate and asset managers channel money made from services into other services. Wall Street and Washington both believe that ongoing reliance on services for economic growth is sustainable and desirable. In broad economic terms, that is like equating a merry-go-round with a wheel. It is that merry-go-round that Obama, Romney and other US politicians are trying to fix.
Posted in comparative politics, Economy, Uncategorized, USA | 10 Comments | Read More »


text:
Some petrol stations have already put up the price of unleaded petrol by up to 10p a litre after cheaper stocks of fuel ran out.
The AA said it expects a litre of unleaded petrol to rise by a further penny this week, with the average price predicted at about 142.5p. The timing could not be worse for families planning long motoring journeys this Easter.
The price rise has been caused by petrol stations being forced to buy in more expensive fuel on the wholesale market and by additional charges for extra deliveries. About one in five garages ran out of fuel last week.
In some cases petrol stations have attempted to profiteer from shortages with one garage in the Midlands, according to the AA, hiking up the price of a litre of unleaded to 154.9p.
"Panic buying has speeded up the rise in the cost of petrol," said Luke Bosdet, an AA spokesman. "Petrol stations are having to buy more expensive petrol more quickly.
"We have had substantial rises this week and there is another penny in the pipeline to work its way through."
The price rise means the cost of filling up a large family car with a 70-litre tank – such as a Ford Mondeo – will be almost exactly £100.
The Government has been widely blamed for sparking last week's panic buying, ahead of a possible strike by fuel tanker drivers, after urging motorists to fill up and even hoard petrol in jerrycans.
The Government changed its advice to motorists on Saturday in an attempt to quell a third day of panic buying. It said it was no longer urgent to fill up because Unite had ruled out any strike action before Easter, and warned against queuing for fuel.
Nevertheless, there remained reports of drivers yesterday using "desperate and dangerous" attempts to store petrol while long queues were reported in Coventry, Leeds, parts of the home counties and Liverpool, where motorists waited for up to an hour.
Some forecourts rationed drivers to as little as £10 each while others imposed a minimum £25 spend to deter those who already had plenty of petrol.
In South Wales, one woman tried to fill two, one-gallon glass bottles with petrol but the pump nozzle was bigger than the neck causing petrol to be spilt on the ground. At a BP service station in Portsmouth, a driver was ordered to stop trying to fill up two-litre, plastic milk containers.
In an attempt to end the chaos, David Cameron has now seized personal control of the government's handling of the fuel crisis after civil war in Whitehall served to increase the panic.
Coalition sources said 10 Downing Street moved to "lock down" the official response to the crisis after Government agencies put out wildly differing advice to the public.
Whitehall knives were out for Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, who initially sparked panic buying last week by advising households to hoard petrol – "maybe a little bit in the garage as well in a jerrycan".
Mr Maude's comments were branded potentially dangerous by the AA and the Fire Brigades Union.
A senior coalition source said on Saturday night there had been "open disagreement" between Whitehall departments over what to tell motorists.
"Francis made the decision to say what he said – that was not something that others agreed with," the source added.
"There was simple disagreement between various parts of the government about what should be proposed."
Insiders said the situation was not helped by having three Whitehall departments – the Cabinet Office, under Mr Maude, the Department for Transport, under Justine Greening, and the Department for Energy, under Ed Davey – all involved in handling the government's response.
"There was no clear chain of command until the Prime Minister effectively took charge on Friday," the source said. "Number 10 have now locked it all down."
Tensions between departments were visible last week when Mike Penning, the junior transport minister, said Mr Maude had made a "mistake" in his advice and had misunderstood the size of a jerrycan, which is 20 litres.
A Department for Energy spokeswoman admitted his comments had had an 'unfortunate effect'.
At one point, with drivers queuing up for petrol ahead of a strike which still has yet to be called, the Cabinet Office was citing Mr Maude's advice while the Department for Transport website was advising drivers to carry on as normal.
Mr Davey then added to confusion by telling motorists to "get a full tank and don't let it go down too far."
The source said: "It was total chaos – as bad in terms of disagreements between departments as it has been under the coalition. Francis seemed determined to go his own way."
The confusion in government has surprised both the fuel delivery firms and Unite, who go into conciliation talks at ACAS on Monday.
Both pointed out that the dispute has been rumbling for more than a year with ministers well briefed on the subject for some time.
"Ministers should have known and should have been prepared. That would be a good conclusion to draw," said an industry source, astonished by the mixed messages sent out by government prompting last week's panic.
Len McCluskey, Unite's general secretary, said: "The government cannot plead ignorance, they could have helped solve this a long time ago."
Some Labour MPs have called for Mr Maude to quit after Diane Hill, 46, from York, set fire to her clothing as she decanted petrol from container to another in her kitchen. Mrs Hill, who remains critically ill in hospital with 40 per cent burns, has undergone a skin graft operation.
A family spokesman said: "At the moment we don't really know how she is doing. The hospital is keeping her unconscious and she has had skin grafts."
Bernard Jenkin became the first Conservative MP openly to accuse ministers of provoking panic buying to divert attention from political problems elsewhere.
"My feeling is this was to try to take people's minds off donors, the Budget and pasties – and the Government added to the heat on this," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics East programme.
"But really there should not have been any move to encourage people to buy more than they normally buy without consulting the industry first. I think that was the mistake."

subset: commoncrawl


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Originally Posted by Gerald C Koch
You don't need a tripod to steady a camera there are several other methods.
o lean against a wall
o use a beanbag on a horizontal surface
o use an easy to carry monopod
o use a 1/4 inch coarse thread eyelet screw in tropod hole and a length of cord under your foot to steady camera
o tuck your elbows into your body and hold your breath
None of these are as effective as a tripod. They are last resorts.


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Top industries to find jobs in 2013
by Louise Garver - Jul, 2013
No matter where you are in your career or job search, these statistics are worth your attention. Jobs cut in March 2013 were 30% higher than a year earlier according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a job placement company. The length of periods of unemployment between jobs is also on the rise. So, what industries are looking for and hiring employees? Health Care Given the aging baby boomers, health care leads the...
3 Tips to Amp Up Your Summer Job Search
by Adrienne Erin - Jul, 2013
Although the job search can be an arduous process year-round, there are a few things you can take advantage of when searching in the summer months! Here's the motivation you need to stop daydreaming about laying out on the beach and start sending out your resume. 1. Start Early When you are searching for a job in the summer, you are not only going up against the people you were competing with last spring. You have a who...
Reflections on the Summary of Qualifications-Objective Debate
by Kristen Carter - Jul, 2013
You stumble upon a job that could possibly jumpstart your career, but you must first update your resume and tailor it to the specific vacancy announcement. The age-old question when it comes to resume writing is whether to use an objective statement or an executive summary. In the past, no resume was complete unless an objective was included at the top of the document. As times change, resume practices are also updated. Thus,...
Executive Job Seekers: Top 4 Things Recruiters Will Check
by Louise Garver - Jul, 2013
Where do recruiters go today to get a well-rounded view of an executive job seeker? Before you are even considered as a candidate, a recruiter wants to see that you look competent online. How do they determine that? 1) Reading your LinkedIn profile, 2) browsing your Facebook page, 3) looking for a blog or website, and 4) checking if you are tweeting (which shows that you at least know what tweeting is). Going social in a jo...
You Will Get Googled… Are You Afraid?
by Joshua Waldman - Jul, 2013
I like to tell my clients they will be Googled just as surely as it will rain in Portland tonight. Do you know what they will see when they find you? Online reputation management is a critical piece of your job search. There is just no getting around it, no matter what field you are in. Quick story: When I Googled my name a year ago, I was a convicted felon and a prolific New York gynecologist, either simultaneously or...
How to Find a Job in a New City: Three Tips
by Rich Jones - Jun, 2013
One of the most common job search questions I get is how to find a job in a new city? It's a struggle I know well. You have the skills or ability to do the job if given a chance. You're willing to relocate. You'll even take a less than savory salary because you want the experience. But every application you submit disappears into the belly of the internet beast — only to occasionally be burped up as a rejection message. Th...
How to Target That Job You Really Want
by Jessica Holbrook Hernandez - Jun, 2013
Not since the Great Depression has finding work been more difficult. But if there's a job that you really want, you shouldn't give up hope. There are a number of ways to make yourself more employable and to target the job you've always dreamed of. Here's a basic guide to landing not only an interview but also to securing the perfect job: Fixing Your Resume Before you can even think about interviews and job applicati...
How to impress hiring managers
by Miriam Salpeter - Jun, 2013
How can you impress hiring managers? If only you knew how desperate some hiring managers are for you—or anyone—to be the right candidate for the job, you would be surprised! No one wants to interview endless disappointing candidates only to go back to the drawing board without a hire. It's not very difficult to stand out from the crowd of applicants, because many job seekers fail to follow the most basic job search rules....
5 Reasons You're Not Getting Responses to Your Job Applications
by Cathy Francois - Jun, 2013
If you're a jobseeker and after a period of about 60 days you haven't gotten any responses from employers, something might be wrong. The following are possible reasons why and tips to increase your job application response rate. 1. You don't qualify. Plain and simple, you do not meet the requirements. In today's competitive job market, do not waste your time applying to anything that comes your way hoping an employer will...
Bad credit in job search: what to do?
by Miriam Salpeter - Jun, 2013
Did you know employers may want to check your credit before they hire you? While companies are more likely to be concerned with credit when the job specifically involves managing money, credit could come into play as a factor for anyone who will be handling money. The concern is that people in the midst of financial problems may not be the most responsible when it comes to handling an employer's money. Many people have been...
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NASA has pushed back its timeline for testing the manned version of the Orion crew capsule by two years, to 2023.
NASA is set to test the SLS engine a sixth time with a 535 second burn, and you can watch it live.
NASA released new information on its plan for an asteroid retrieval mission today, but the concept faces stiff resistance from the GOP. NASA argues that this mission is critical to its long-term Mars objective.
NASA's new solid rocket booster could help launch missions to Mars, and it's a big one.
Shortly after Apollo 11, Wernher von Braun, one of the fathers of rocket science, proposed that we develop a reusable Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) rocket to colonize the Moon. Today, NASA engineers are still struggling to pick up where he left off. An interesting technical report that NASA prepared for the Space 2013 Conference and Exposition has recently been released. In it, we can find some of the latest, and oldest, ideas for a NASA-made nuclear thermal rocket that would take us back to the Moon.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to look out the window of a spacecraft that's returning to Earth? Well, wonder no more: NASA has released some video footage captured out of the windows of the Orion capsule as it returned to Earth during its test flight a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it's sensational.
During the launch and flight of Orion, the various video feeds and photos — though amazing and live — were fairly grainy and low-resolution. Now, a few days later, we have fantastic footage from the launch of Orion and the Delta IV Heavy, the Earth as seen by Orion during its orbits, and a video feed from a US Navy ship of NASA's new capsule hurtling through the atmosphere and then splashing down gently in the Pacific Ocean.
At 7:05am Eastern time (12:05pm UK time) this morning, NASA's Orion spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. This will be the first test flight for Orion, which will ultimately take NASA astronauts to Mars. Below, you can watch a live video feed of the launch — and trust me, with the Delta IV Heavy being one of the most powerful rockets ever built, you will want to watch this launch.
Early tomorrow morning, Thursday December 4, NASA is scheduled to perform the first test flight of the new Orion spacecraft. The entirety of NASA's human space exploration plan hinges on Orion — if the series of test launches go off without a hitch, Orion, eventually powered by the massive new Space Launch System rocket, will land humans on an asteroid in 2025, and then Mars around 2030. But first, let's discuss the first test launch taking place tomorrow morning.
NASA has announced that it has finished construction of the first Orion spacecraft. Orion, which is scheduled to take its first test flight aboard a Delta IV rocket on December 4, will be the first spacecraft to have the capability to take humans into deep space beyond the Moon, to land on asteroids, Mars, and who knows what else.
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Apple facing long, important legal day on Friday
updated 09:45 pm EDT, Thu August 8, 2013
ITC decision, hearings on Samsung and DOJ e-book case
Tomorrow will mark a busy and important day on several legal fronts for Apple, as it awaits a much-watched International Trade Commission decision on its complaint against Samsung. In addition, two separate but important federal court hearings will be held on Friday; one related to another Apple-Samsung matter stemming from the first trial, and another where Apple will get to argue the deficiencies of the Department of Justice's proposed settlement over the e-book price-fixing case. Apple plans to appeal the DOJ verdict.
The ITC matter revolves around four Apple patents (that are not standards-essential) the company says Samsung has infringed. The preliminary ruling agreed strongly with Apple's contention, and a follow-up investigation by the ITC's own staff not only concurred with the initial finding by Judge Thomas Pender, but added that a sales ban on the accused products would not harm the public interest, since most of the products aren't sold any longer and there are plenty of alternative options for buyers on the Android platform.
Curiously, the full ITC panel did not consider consumer choice a factor when it ruled that Apple's iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (among other, older GSM-enabled products) could be barred from sale for infringing a standards-essential patent (SEP), in contradiction to its own previous rulings on SEP-based sales injunctions. The Obama administration was forced to overturn the ban, citing concerns that sales injunctions on disputed SEPs would lead to mass abuse of the patent system by SEP holders who would use the threat of lawsuits, sales bans and other measure to "tie" SEP licenses (which should be licensed under FRAND guidelines) to non-SEP patents as Samsung has done in the case in question.
If the full ITC final decision in Apple's complaint includes a sales ban -- even though the case revolves around genuine non-SEP patent infringement -- Samsung and South Korea will likely call on the Obama administration to overturn the ban or be accused of "favoring" the US-based Apple. The first of the two federal court hearings on Friday also deals with sales bans and patent infringement, this time stemming from the US court trial between the two companies that ended with Apple being awarded more than billion dollars in damages.
Following that trial and Apple's complete victory on the charges, Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple any sales injunctions on the infringing Samsung products -- saying that one small portion of a product found to be infringing a non-SEP design still wasn't enough to prompt banning the product. Apple feels the double-standard created by Koh's ruling is unfair, and is appealing that portion of her decision.
The third hearing is related to Apple's recent loss against the DOJ on charges that it conspired with book publishers to raise prices on e-books and break Amazon's monopoly on the market. The iPhone maker is appealing the decision, and may have strong grounds for an appeal based on Judge Denise Cote's prejudicial statements prior to the start of the trial.
In the meantime, the DOJ has proposed a settlement to avoid an appeal -- but with terms that seem unusual and even comical to long-time judicial observers. Apple has called the settlement offer "draconian," and the book publishers have piled on-- complaining that they previous settled with the DOJ and yet are the ones being punished in the proposed settlement. Judge Cote will hold a hearing on Friday to examine the proposal and the arguments against it, though she is unlikely to rule on the matter on the same day.


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May 20, 2011
i want to suck these sexy feet while fucking her..cute tits btw
Thanks for helping us associate the correct Pornstars to this video!
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Hey everyone, it's Candy Strong, and if you click on this gallery you can watch her as she finger herself backstage in her's shaved and delicious pussy. You can also have a look at her beautiful legs, hot toes and sexy soles. She wish you were there with her to lick those gorgeous feet!
Tous les commentaires (7)
i want to suck these sexy feet while fucking her..cute tits btw
Fuck me baby.
mamacita q rricos estan
i came to this hard


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An alphabet soup of letterforms discovered on our travels through France - bon appétit!
Degrees in German & French, trained as a graphic designer. Worked as a designer in publishing and then film and television, working 23 years for BBC Television Design. Appointed Professor of Motion Graphics at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne Germany. Retired in 2004, since when I have been pursuing my interests in sculpture and photography.
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A Little Book of Letters 3 Published October 31, 2013
A Little Book of Signs Published January 25, 2013
A Little Book of Letters 2 Published November 19, 2012
Painting with Light Published October 23, 2012
A Little Book of Graffiti Published April 25, 2012
A Little Book of Shadows Published April 05, 2012
A Little Book of Letters Published February 20, 2012
A Little Book of Windows Published February 17, 2012


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Publications (2)0.69 Total impact
Article: Ionic Strength Dependence of Formation Constants and Complexation of Glutamine with Dioxovanadium(V)[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The dependence of L-glutamine protonation and its complexation with dioxovanadium(V) on ionic strength (I) is reported in sodium perchlorate solution as a background salt. The measurements have been performed at 25 0.1C and various ionic strengths in the range 0.1 to 1.0 mol/l, using a combination of potentiometric and spectrophotometric techniques. The overall analysis of the present and the previous data dealing with the determination of stability constants at different ionic strengths allowed us to obtain a general equation, by which a formation constant determined at a fixed ionic strength can be calculated, with a good approximation, at another ionic strength, if 0.1 I 1.0 mol/l (NaClO4).Russian Journal of Coordination Chemistry 01/2003; 29(6):408-413. DOI:10.1023/A:1024034227434 · 0.48 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The stability consts. of the complexes of thallium(I) ion with some sulfur-contg. amino acids (L-cysteine, N-acetyl-Lcysteine, and L-methionine) were detd. in aq. soln. in the range 1.4 £ pH £ 10.5 at 0.1 mol dm-3 ionic media and 25 °C, using a combination of potentiometric and spectrophotometric techniques. Sodium perchlorate soln. was used to maintain the ionic strength. The compns. of the formed complexes were detd. and it was shown that thallium(I) forms two mononuclear 1:1 species with cysteine and methionine of the type TlHL and TlL- and only one mononuclear 1:1 complex with N-acetylcysteine of the type TIL-. The logarithms of the cumulative stability consts., bxyz, of the complexes, [(metal ion)x(H)y(ligand)z], are logb111 and logb101 = 11.03, 11.41 (for cysteine), 0.37, 2.19 (for methionine), resp., and logb101 = 2.93 for N-acetylcysteine.Main group metal chemistry 01/2003; 26(1):39-47. DOI:10.1515/MGMC.2003.26.1.39 · 0.21 Impact Factor
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Shahid Beheshti University
Teheran, Tehrān, Iran
- Department of Chemistry