theglobaljournal.net: Latest activities of group #03

Geneva, laboratory of the XXIst Century

2011-04-11T22:26:23Z

Blaise Lampen, journalist and correspondent to the United Nations for the Swiss agency ATS, has just brought out his latest book. Eight years of a journal, where the writer gives us his personal view of meetings, perceptions and information received over the course of the years. Although published in French, we hope the book will also appear in English. A personal account of this quality is too rare not to be welcomed. Genève, Laboratoire du xxie siècle, by Blaise Lampen, Editions Georg

A Remarkable Women in Light

2011-03-17T18:22:27Z

Documentary tracing the life and career of iconic Muslim leader of Pakistan’s post-Soviet generation.

Bhutto directed by Duan Baughman and Johnny O’Hara

On Dec. 27th, 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the first woman in history to lead a Muslim nation, was assassinated at a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) rally in Rawalpindi. The documentary Bhutto chronicles the decades-long events leading up to that still unsolved killing and its immediate aftermath. It’s a tangled tale, with much that remains murky, but the co-directors Duane Baughman and Johnny O’ Hara have done a fairly good job of elucidating the issues, or at least clarifying the confusions.

It’s fitting that Benazir Bhutto should be the centerpiece of a major movie, since during her lifetime she had the glamorized aura of a movie star. Like a number of other high-profile figures in the political arena –most conspicuously the UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed by a truck bomb in Baghdad in 2003 and was the subject last year of a powerful documentary, Sergio– Benazir Bhutto was both historically significant and personally charismatic.

This is also true of her extended family clan, which has often been referred to as the “Pakistani Kennedys.” The Kennedy reference is double-edged: it summons up not only a vast political legacy but family tragedy as well.

Before the film’s opening credits have even finished, we are already hit with a rapid-fire history of Pakistan dating from the 1947 partition onward. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, the first democratically elected president of Pakistan, occupies much of the film’s beginning section. His execution in 1979 under the regime of Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, who staged a military coup two years before, sets the stage for Benazir’s ascension as her father’s hand-picked favorite to succeed him. She speaks repeatedly in the movie, through audio and video footage, of how her father’s death vigil prepared her for a political career.

Benazir, who was educated at Harvard and Oxford, goes into self-imposed exile in the West in 1984 after years of house arrest. Returning to Pakistan a year later to face down General Zia, she becomes, at 35, prime minister in 1988. (Two years later she gives birth while in office, another first for a female world leader).

Twenty months after her election she is dismissed on corruption charges. In 1993, at a time when the PPP captured most of the parliamentary seats, she returns in triumph for a second term as prime minister. Within three years she is ousted once again on charges of corruption. At the time of the Rawalpindi rally she was moting yet another political comeback.

All of this dizzying back and forth is punctuated by persistent violence, including the killing of two of Benazir’s brothers. In an interview, Fatima, the daughter of one of the brothers, blames Benazir’s husband Alif Zardari, now president of Pakistan, with having engineered her father’s murder.

What are we to make of such charges? Although the film directors make a pretense of even-handedness, the overall tone of Bhutto is somewhat hero-worshippy. (One of the film’s producers, Mark Siegel, was a close friend of Benazir and co-authored her final book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West.) The corruption charges that dogged Benazir’s trail are never deeply delved into, despite the fact that reporters such as the New York Times’s John F. Burns, who wrote extensively on the matter, are interviewed on camera.

What emerges from the film, nonetheless, is a portrait of a remarkable woman who, despite the charges leveled against her, both real and trumped-up, instituted social reforms in Pakistan against great odds. That she became a martyr was surely not her intention and yet, given the entwined history of her family and her country, her martydom seems in retrospect inevitable.

– Peter Rainer

Photo by Lichfield/Getty Images

The Global Competitiveness Report

2011-03-17T17:23:42Z

Going to Davos this year would certainly be a very small part of what has to be done to understand and review the magnitude of the Geneva based WEF’s business and influence. The Forum has driven the focus for 30 years, but behind this power celebrities event, the WEF is serious about its baseline « Committed to improving the state of the world ». In any mouth this would sound a little megalomaniac, of course it is, but from a WEF’s point of view, this is the minimum this organization should do. The report is a real masterpiece, with hundreds of premium contributors from many different countries: Professor, Policy Analyst, Minister, Economist, Senior Researcher…

Schwab, the Executive Chairman, always insists on “mapping out clear exit strategies to get economies back on a steady footing”. As the world still lacks a global governing body, many of the WEF recommendations will hardly find their way to national interest driven politicians, but they have at least the merit of igniting the debate on many issues with 139 economies under review in this latest edition. Reading the report reveals a very critical approach of the ideologies in motion behind the report. Taiwan scores well with a #13. Still the WEF uses the terminology Taiwan, China when China itself ranks 27. Switzerland ranks 1st, again when the US step down from #2 to #4. Russia is stable at #63. Ireland goes down from #25 to #29, Portugal from #43 to #46 and Spain from #33 to #42, with Greece, now the worst ranked among the EU27 at #83 (down from #71). At the very bottom, Chad now closes the ranking (#139) from rank #131. But this report, available from the WEF, is about competitiveness and should be looked at with perspective. Not as a still picture.

The Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011, Klaus Schwab, World Economy Forum

Donors Corner – For Severe Crises

2011-03-17T17:14:58Z

Humanitarian Appeal, 2011 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP), foreword by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, OCHA

This document contains strategic humanitarian action plans for 14 of the world’s most severe crises. Involving hundreds of aid organizations, governments, donors and other stakeholders across the world. Out of these 14 severe crises, more than 50 millions people in 28 countries need urgent aid to survive, avoid irrecoverable harm, maintain safety, and regain self-reliance. The overall appeal requirement for 2011 is up to $7.4 billion.

All the projects selected for the appeals are peer-reviewed and part of a concerted strategy that includes most major nongovernmental humanitarian organizations and United Nations agencies. Donors generally fund appealing agencies directly in response to project proposals listed in this document. The Financial Tracking Service (FTS), managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is a database of appeal funding needs and worldwide donors contributions, and can be found on: www.reliefweb.int/fts.

Renminbi Time – The Rise

2011-03-17T17:04:18Z

The Rise of the Redback, A guide to renminbi internationalisation, Qu Hongbon, Sun Junwei and Donna Kwok, HSBC

Sometimes, it is quite fascinating to read banking papers. For the HSBCspecialists based in Hong Kong, there is very little doubt about the future of the Chinese renminbi. Already the world’s biggest exporter and the second largest economy, China is likely to be the biggest by 2030. The bankers’ key point is about the under-representation of the renminbi in the global trade and capital markets. “We may be on the verge of a financial revolution of truly epic proportions”.

Demand for the renminbi as a trade settlement currency lies in emerging, not developed, economies, which already account for 55% of China’s total trade. Such a move is no guess, it is a strategy set out by the Authorities of China. They have good reasons to believe that the pressure on the US dollar is unbearable for the US itself, who are themselves turning to the Chinese government to help them rebalance trade and currencies flow. The way China looks at it now comes with a different answer: China will not play with the exchange rate which would stimulate their own inflation, a bad idea as they try to stimulate the internal demand and consumption. They would rather change the global policy of reserves currencies. The dollar cannot be at the time the reserve and withdraw the US market turmoil. With this review of two years of their own publications, HSBC comes to a clear reading of the inevitable course of the Chinese currency. And looking at the size and growth of the Chinese economy, what can an honest banker –don’t smile here– based in Hong Kong say about that? He sees a revolution in the making. For once, people should listen to him.

350 Years of Trade – The Transatlantic ‘Money’

2011-03-17T16:45:24Z

Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic Coastline. Two leading historians have created the fi rst comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of transatlantic trade. Slavery is as old as recorded History and usually it would be associated with slave trading. Unlike the traffi c in slaves in the Mediterranean world, however, the traffi c in slaves in the eastern Atlantic Islands and the Americas soon became racially based. Europeans considered only Africans or at least non-Europeans, to be eligible for shipment to the new European colonies as slaves. Both buyers (European) and sellers (African) saw the people traded into captivity on the African coast as outsiders.

The Atlas is rich in tables, maps, fac-simile, and illustrations which all put this trade into what it was: an industry. With real slave and sugar prices, with numbers of captives, routes, ships, mortality according to the length of voyage, marks, this Atlas tracks everything that comes into the infamous reality. Most of the 35,000 shipments –nearly 80% of all the voyages– had ship’s logbooks, registers, lists of sick and dying slaves…

Personal commentaries sometimes form part of the account. The former captain and future composer, after repentance, of the famous ‘Amazing Grace’, the reverend John Newton, left his description of the holds of slave ships: “The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons or a little more is calculated to purchase from 220 to 250 slaves. Their lodging rooms below the deck are sometimes more than fi ve feet high and sometimes less… The slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other like books upon a shelf. The poor creatures, thus cramped, are likewise in irons for the most part which makes it diffi cult for them to turn or move or attempt to rise or to lie down without hurting themselves or each other. Every morning, perhaps, more instances than one are found of the living and the dead fastened together.”

This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in History.

From R. Geoffroy, L’Afrique, ou Histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains: le Sénégal (Paris, Nepveu, 1814). Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / The Bridgeman Art Library.

Map 122: Slave Mortality, as percent of Slaves Leaving, and Voyage Length from Africa to Caribbean Regions, 1776–1830

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis & David Richardson, Yale University Press, £30

The Enchanted Painter – What is a portrait?

2011-03-17T16:29:18Z

It is still a wonder to me how New York & Elizabeth Peyton could give birth to her paintings. The Eighties, a time when Peyton was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York, living in the lower east side, were going one way when she was growing in the other. Eighties were stoned with punk ‘thinking’ – remember The Sex Pistols, the Queen and its fascist regime, Kurt Corbain’s intransigences, or the crude words of Rap. An era when people felt no limit, until the far away horizon suddenly and sadly encountered a short sighted future with too many drugs, too much HIV, too much too-much. How could a portraitist be born in this season of no-time to pause for a face?

Elizabeth Peyton did it her own way, bringing, in her small-format oil paintings, drawings and watercolors, a vibrant colorful palette to serve her delicate way of looking at her models. On her list, people who appeal to her, or have impressed her as historical fi gures appear: friends, artists, acquaintances and celebrities. “I think about how infl uential some people are in others’ lives. So it doesn’t matter who they are or how famous they are, but rather how beautiful is the way they live their lives and how inspiring they are for others” stated the artist in 1996 in an interview with Francesco Bonami. For Peyton, a portrait seems to be something of a journey: to be accomplished it requires pure veneration, passion, fusion. This is probably why her work is such an emotional experience.

– Orso di Pozzo

Ghost Works on Paper Elizabeth Peyton, Texts by Hilton Als, Sabine Ekmann, interview with the artist by Beate Kemfert Catje Hantze, 58€

Right: Elisabeth Peyton Giant, Tristan and Isolde (Ludwig ans Malvina Schnorr Von Carolsfeld, 1855) #3, 2010. Monotype on hadmade paper, 38 3/4 x 30 1/2 in.

Left: Elisabeth Peyton Pete and Carl, 2004. Monotype on handmade paper, 47 x 34 in.

Into the Land Rush

2011-03-17T16:05:31Z

Tessa Bunney began her journey through the craft villages on the outskirts of Hanoi at the moment the future appeared. Foreign direct investment was pouring into Vietnam, and with it whole new urban areas, privatopias of the rich and upper middle classes, were being carved out of the rice fields.

In the early 1990s the physical and social space of Hanoi was very different. In many ways it was like a river whose sediment was partly visible and partly concealed. Ancient pagodas and temples, early twentieth-century villas and imposing Indochina-style public buildings had been bricolaged as its citizens coped with war; the day-to-day need for shelter, food and entertainment, and the political projects of the prior half-century. Where villas once had yards, there were market stalls. Derelict pagodas, lineage houses and temples merged into the housing of migrants who had ‘parachuted’ onto their grounds. Collective housing areas constructed for privileged state employees burst out into space with a wild array of balcony extensions and rooftop dwellings. The informality of this construction guaranteed that scarcely any building in the central city was higher than the trees that lined the streets. From rooftops, the city looked like a forest. And under those trees? If it had a sound palette it would include bicycle bells, the scraping of bicycle chains against chain guards, the sound of the street sweepers’ brooms, water dripping off leaves, and the occasional chicken.

Fast forward to the end of the first decade of the twenty-firstcentury. Old Hanoi is scarcely visible amidst the cars, office towers and shopping centers. Over a twenty year period, the city has grown from a population of less than one million living in four urban districts, to an urban area composed of ten districts with a population of 2.2 million. Into the early 2000s, growth took place first as vacant and derelict land within the four central districts was filled in, and then as new districts were added on their borders. But as the city reached its administrative limits, pressure for the reclassification of land began to be directed to the rural communes in provinces surrounding the capital.

Until the late 1990s, conversion of agricultural land to other uses required the signature of the prime minister –such was the memory of hardship and famine. But as the economy sizzled, these memories faded.

The land rush began right at the moment Tessa entered the craft villages on Hanoi’s periphery. Unlike many who went to these villages seeking the timeless and eternal, Tessa saw the contemporary and the pressures borne by women here. Her images are beautiful and thoughtful records of that moment when change became evident in project signboards and the first waves of construction.

In May 2008, the Ministry of Construction unveiled a long-term plan to merge the 921 square kilometre Hanoi province with seven surrounding provinces to become a ‘megacity’ of nearly 13,436 square kilometers and 18 million people. Even before this announcement, land prices were skyrocketing. In 2008, for example, residential land in Hà Ðông town, to the south of Hanoi, had risen to $4,000 USD per square metre. Villagers, however, were not benefiting from this boom. In the same year, Hà Tây province was compensating farmers at a rate of approximately $7.58 USD per square metre of agricultural land, a pittance compared to the market value.

The value of land was not the only issue. Many rural households had developed longstanding strategies that incorporated agriculture with local crafts and industries. In these craft villages, work is both social and economic. With the whole village involved in the making of a particular product –some as materials suppliers, others as material processors, manufacturers and traders– work becomes part of village life. It is the atmosphere they breathe. Depending on the products, gender and age divisions of labour start to emerge. While production may be divided between men and women, girls and boys, the women generally take on the trading role. Throughout the Red River Delta, the woman with a pocket book clutched under her arm is the image of the village trader out in the market.

In many of these villages, the guardian spirit worshipped in the local communal house is the person who discovered and taught the village its craft. Out of respect for these persons, and as a source of community identity, the veneration of these craft founders has become part of the redevelopment of craft industries throughout the Delta. In fact, many of these craft village traditions go back centuries. A village with a five hundred year craft history is not unusual. A few are known to have produced their goods for a thousand years.

The problem for many now is not their craft –they have been adapting their skills for new markets throughout Vietnam’s recent economic expansion. The problem is land. With big profits to be made by acquiring low cost land from farmers and reallocating it to developers, provincial and district authorities have no interest in either preserving agriculture or developing industrial zones for local craft industries. With no place to grow, opportunities for the future appear limited to small-scale, household-based handicrafts.

This year, Hanoi will unveil its master plan to 2030. The consultants have argued for the preservation of craft villages, limiting growth within the third ring road, and preserving green space along critical flood plains. This will require a massive effort to rescind development rights on many of the 772 projects previously approved, not an easy task given the financial interests at stake. To date, only one-third of these projects have been canceled and few more are likely to be. Whether there is more or less new development, and whether it is in the green corridor or in other areas of ‘greater Hanoi’, life in these villages will never be the same.

Michael DiGregorio is the former Ford Foundation program officer for Media, Arts and and Culture in Vietnam. He is now working as a consultant.

Article by Micheal DiGregorio

A Book of Wisdom and Gaze

2011-03-17T15:55:07Z

It is very rare that a book of photography gives you the chance to slow the course of time, to the extent of bringing you to exactly where the photographer wished you to embark. Tessa Bunney’s work has succeeded. Her book is a gem of delicacy and visual intelligence.

Over the course of two six-month visits in 2006 and 2008, she has molded images of her subject with an artist’s eye. Does she know every village surrounding Hanoi? There are over a thousand within a fifty kilometer radius around Hanoi, the megalopolis of the Red River Delta, and they represent 40% of all cottage industry in Vietnam. While Bunney may not know them all, many of them have become familiar to her. She recognizes them at fi rst glance, not so much by the individual beauty of each village as by the handicraft that they produce. Some villages have been producing their artifact for centuries, others have made a more recent choice in order to supplement the income from agricultural labor. All now form part of Hanoi’s third urban belt, made up of seven new provinces with a total of 18 million inhabitants. Suddenly, each product, each village, has become incredibly close to our local corner shop on the other side of the world.

Image after image, the reader discovers where a particular product comes from, with which gestures it is accomplished, from which patched-up bed, makeshift bench or worn-out stool it has left its village hovel, to end up in our shopping basket. Tessa Bunney describes this point of departure with precision and sensitivity. There is respect in her gaze, and probably love as well, the better to awaken our perception of a world which is changing inescapably, the world of our close neighbors, right next door to us, within fi fty kilometers of our global megalopolis.

Home Work, by Tessa Bunney, Dewi Lewis Publishing, £19.99

Save Slow Journalism

2011-03-17T15:19:16Z

The Sochi project was initiated five years ago by the photographer Rob Hornstra and the writer and fi lm director Arnold van Bruggen to describe and document the Abkhaz region, situated between the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in 2008 after a short and violent civil war, and was formally recognized as an independent state by Russia.

In 2014, the Winter Olympic Games will be held at Sochi. This prospect heralds numerous changes both in the region’s economic organization and in its landscape. The marks of poverty generated by war and successive exoduses, then stigmatized by the economic crisis, ought to disappear by then...

The past history of this once-luxurious holiday resort, with its mild climate and a prevalence of mountainous and rural areas, makes this little-known region a land of rich contrasts.

Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land (EL, PL, FL) is a new chapter in this long journalistic work - which will continue until the advent of the Games. The format and thickness of the book, alternating photographs and text, give it a strong documentary character, and the sense of an open and dynamic working process.

It is a sign of the times that the Sochi project is made possible thanks to private donations. This new approach to funding seems entirely pertinent to our era, where reviews and magazines no longer have the resources to produce such long and costly projects. It is also, very importantly, a means whereby authors can maintain their commitment and editorial independence.

–Benoît Fougeirol

Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land, by Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen, The Sochi Project, 49€