Innovation Map

Posted on November 30, 2008 | Charlie Edwards | More on Leadership, Maps, Technology | Comments Off

Violence sweeps across Nigeria’s Plateau State

Posted on November 29, 2008 | Charlie Edwards | More on Africa, Cities, Conflict and security | 7 Comments

The Nigerian city Jos, the capital of the Plateau State, is the scene of some of the worst sectarian violence in recent years. Up to 300 people were killed after a disputed local election on Friday which has divided the town on social and religious fault lines. Police have imposed a 24-hour curfew and the army is patrolling the streets.

Update, 30/11, 12.40 pm (David): The death toll appears to have risen further:

Residents delivered more bodies to the main mosque in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Sunday, bringing the death toll from two days of clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs to around 400 people.

Rival ethnic and religious mobs have burned homes, shops, mosques and churches in fighting triggered by a disputed local election in a city at the crossroads of Nigeria’s Muslim north and Christian south. It is the country’s worst unrest for years.

Murtala Sani Hashim, who has been registering the dead as they are brought to the city’s main mosque, told Reuters he had listed 367 bodies and more were arriving. Ten corpses wrapped in blankets, two of them infants, lay behind him. A doctor at one of the city’s main hospitals said he had received 25 corpses and 154 injured since the unrest began. “Gunshot wounds, machete injuries, those are the two main types,” Dr Aboi Madaki, director of clinical services at Jos University Teaching Hospital, told Reuters.

The overall toll was expected to be higher, with some victims already buried and others taken to other clinics. The violence appeared to die down on Sunday. Soldiers patrolled on foot and in jeeps to enforce a 24-hour curfew imposed on the worst-hit areas. People who ventured out walked with their hands in the air to show they were unarmed. “They are still picking up dead bodies outside. Some areas were not reachable until now,” said Al Mansur, a 53-year-old farmer who said all the homes around his had been razed.

Overturned and burnt-out vehicles littered the streets while several churches, a block of houses and an Islamic school in one neighbourhood were gutted by fire. The Red Cross said around 7,000 people had fled their homes and were sheltering in government buildings, an army barracks and religious centres. A senior police official said five neighbourhoods had been hit by unrest and 523 people detained.

Update, 30/11, 4.58 pm (Alex):

For some of the backstory on violence and civil conflict in Plateau State, this 2004 article on OCHA’s IRIN website is worth a look.  While the rest of the world’s attention was focused on New York in early September 2001, the city of Jos was consumed by a week of bloodletting in which 1,000 people died. But as the article notes, that was just the beginning: over the following 32 months, 53,787 people died in retaliatory violence between Plateau state’s Christians (who are mainly indigenous farmers) and Muslims (mainly traders and livestock herders).

International Crisis Group give more of the background in their 2006 briefing on governance in Nigeria:

The constitution enshrines a “federal character” principle, a type of quota which seeks to balance the apportionment of political positions, jobs and other government benefits evenly among Nigeria’s many peoples but is distorted by a second principle, that of indigeneity, which makes the right to such benefits dependent upon where an individual’s parents and grandparents were born. The result is widespread discrimination against non-indigenes in the 36 states and sharp inter-communal conflict. In Plateau State, for example, recurrent clashes since 2001 between “indigene” and “settler” communities competing over political appointments and government services have left thousands dead and many more thousands displaced…

Update, 30/11, 16.58 pm (David): One interesting wrinkle - Henry Okah, the man John Robb has dubbed “one of the most important people alive today, a brilliant innovator in warfare”, is currently on trial in Jos. After repeated delays, the secret hearing is due to resume on Thursday…

Karachi burns

Posted on November 29, 2008 | David Steven | More on Asia | Comments Off

Poor old Karachi. Pakistan’s economy is yet again on the slide - with an IMF bailout threatening more hard times ahead (3 million job losses predicted). Mumbai’s attackers are said to have come from Pakistan’s business and media capital. And now… more riots.

For the latest, follow #Karachi on Twitter, where the topic is trending heavily. Media reports are scanty - but four people are reported dead, many more injured… This is not likely to be associated to the Mumbai attacks (see background), but it sure won’t help!

Update - Grim, grim reports of much worse riots in Nigeria too…

I love mah legacy

Posted on November 29, 2008 | David Steven | More on US politics | Comments Off

George Bush - he liberated the downtrodden, helped the sick and gave succour to the old. Yes, those are the fond thoughts the 43rd President hopes we’ll have for him:

I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.

I’d like to be a President (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor; that led an effort to help relieve HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; that helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of the basic package; that came to Washington, D.C., with a set of political statements and worked as hard as I possibly could to do what I told the American people I would do.

(Photo under a cc license from icbulk.)

Update: The National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson is lapping this up. Yes sir, Bush has done mighty fine:

We will come, through the Obama prism, to see that Bush’s sins were largely the absence of rhetorical skills, unfortunate shoot ‘em braggadocio in 2003-4, the federal response to Katrina, and a certain administration haughtiness about the problems in Iraq between 2002-6, but not most of his policies that included prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, AIDs relief in Africa, the removal of two odious regimes, and consensual governments in their places, a framework at home to stop 9/11-type terrorism, and good working partnerships with key allies abroad such as Britain, Germany, France, Italy, India, et al, and a pragmatism in handling rivals like Russia and China. 

In short, given all that, Obama’s victory (predicated on painting Bush as a Hoover/Nixon redux), more so even than perhaps a John McCain’s, may do more for Bush’s reputation that anyone ever imagined. And the Mumbai mess (over there, not here) will only empasize all this, as an array of old 9/11-era experts who used to warn us about radical Islam, then, in the subsequent respite at home, screamed that Bush fabricated a war against terror against bogeymen, and now in their third manifestation are paraded once more out to warn us about?—why, yes, radical Islam!

Mark Abell - from Mumbai (updated x4)

Posted on November 28, 2008 | David Steven | More on Asia, Terrorism | Comments Off

Yesterday morning, many of us here in the UK heard from Mark Abell, a British lawyer, who spoke to British radio from the Oberoi in Mumbai, where he was barricaded in his room. Abell was extraordinarily calm - remarkably collected despite the danger he faced.

This morning it was a relief to hear that he’d been rescued, after long long hours in his room, communicating with others in the hotel using his Blackberry, and latterly with the British Council, who appear to have played some role in keeping in touch with UK hostages.

Abell is devastated by the experience - not so much by what happened to him, as by the fate suffered by others. In particular, he talks movingly of the death of the waitress who served him in the restaurant just before he went to his room, and of a Japanese businessman who he’d been chatting to (in Japanese) just before the attacks.

If you didn’t hear his interview with the Today programme, then make sure you listen. He’s a great guy.

We spent 48 hours, all but, with no food and little water, surrounded by explosions, gun shots, people running up and down the corridor screaming. It was grim, very grim…

The people here have been fantastic… the Indian authorities, the hotel people, they’ve just been incredibly good and kind…

The lobby was carnage. There was blood and guts everywhere. It was very very upsetting. Just before I went to my room, I had dinner in the Kandahar restaurant. I’ve now just found out that that was one of the places it started. Unfortunately…[he breaks down] the waitress who served me was one of the first to get shot….

It’s been a picnic for me. It’s all these other brave people who need acknowledgement and praise. 

Update: I just wanted to underline my gratitude for the role played by British Council staff, and by staff from the British embassy and consulates in emergencies such as these. They tend to see some dreadful things, but do their best under immense pressure.

Update II: More heroics from hotel staff:

[Prashant] Mangeshikar, 52, told Reuters that he had been in the foyer with his wife and daughter when the attackers arrived and started firing. Hotel workers ushered guests into an upstairs service area to escape, but they then came across another gunman.”He looked young and did not speak to us. He just fired. We were in sort of a single file,” said the Mumbai gynaecologist. “The man in front of my wife shielded us. He was a maintenance staff. He took the bullets.”

Mangeshikar added that the guests managed to take shelter inside a room, dragging the injured staff member, identified only as Mr Rajan, in with them. For the next 12 hours they attempted to stop the bleeding from his stomach wound. Rajan was eventually evacuated, but it is not known whether he survived.

“I’m going out today to the hospital to find out what happened to him,” Mangeshikar said. “I owe it to that brave man.”

Update III: Apparently members of the some people visiting the British Council were caught in the Taj restaurant - but have now been freed, while another British Council staff member visitor was shot in another incident at the hotel. Adrian Bregazzi speaks to the BBC World Service:

He was shot at close range by what appears to have been a teenager with an AK-47. He was left for dead, luckily for him, and managed to crawl into some bushes. He’s suffered from a huge blood loss, but is in surgery now.

[I have clarified the above - as it seems that those injured were visiting the BC - probably from the UK (and probably to promote British education] - not staff members]

Update IV - Great quote from Mark Abell as he arrived back in the UK: “Without food, information became our sustenance.”

Ctrl.Alt.Shift: new departures in NGO messaging

Posted on November 28, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Communication, Influence, Public diplomacy | Comments Off

Ooh, look at Christian Aid.  They’ve launched a new site called Ctrl.Alt.Shift, which describes itself as “a community for passionate and outspoken individuals, joined in the fight against poverty and injustice”.  Why it’s good:

(1) it looks gorgeous - really fresh design and layout;

(2) it’s clearly trying to move towards a more engaged and participative approach;

(3) Christian Aid have internalised the lesson that making the conversation happen is more important than getting the credit for being the host: the only reference to Christian Aid on the whole site is on the About page; and best of all…

(4) It’s really edgy. Rather than the usual stuff about ‘more and better aid’ etc. - yawn - it focuses on issues like the cocaine trade or ladyboys in Thailand.  Indeed, such is the site’s edginess that it even has a partnership with Vice magazine, who are about as far from being the sort of organisation you’d expect Christian Aid to have as a buddy as you can possibly imagine.  (I exaggerate not: Vice’s website currently sports a how-to guide on anal sex as its top story. Christian Aid - who knew?)

Follow the money

Posted on November 28, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Climate Change, Development, Global economy | Comments Off

Not a lot of comment needed on this one, really:

Via Duncan Green.

OPEC reserves: who the hell knows?

Posted on November 28, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Global economy, Scarcity | Comments Off

The question of OPEC’s reserves looms large in the latest World Energy Outlook.  A small excerpt (with emphasis added):

The world’s total endowment of oil is large enough to support the projected rise in production beyond 2030 … Estimates of remaining proven reserves of oil and natural gas liquids range from about 1.2 to 1.3 trillion barrels (including about 0.2 trillion barrels of non-conventional oil).  They have almost doubled since 1980.  This is enough to supply the world with oil for over 40 years at current rates of consumption. Though most of the increase in reserves has come from revisions made in the 1980s in OPEC countries rather than new discoveries, modest increases have continued since 1990, despite rising consumption.

Sounds like quite a lot rides on the accuracy of those reserves estimates.  But the oil industry is a high tech business, and only a total cynic would suggest that OPEC members would inflate their reserve estimates so as to increase their production quotas - so we can trust the data, right? 

Over to Carola Hoyos and Javier Blas in the FT this morning:

When the Opec oil cartel meets in Cairo tomorrow, some of its most powerful members will argue that the key action the group must take is to keep strictly to the 1.5m barrel a day cuts that it has already announced.

Verifying whether Opec’s countries do just that is far from simple. Knowing how much each country produces is mired in politically motivated dishonesty, secrecy and, in many cases, incompetence.

The most reliable data, used even by Opec countries themselves, come not from the cartel member’s energy ministries, but from … a network of spies watching, binoculars in hand, the movement of tankers in and out of the world’s biggest export terminals.

Via Twitter: Mumbai rocked by shootings

Posted on November 26, 2008 | Charlie Edwards | More on Asia, News, Terrorism | Comments Off

If you need emergency information, try the Mumbai Help blog - it has a consolidated list of contact numbers. British nationals in Mumbai should call +91 11 2419 2288.  In the UK, call +44 207 008 0000.

Mumbai has been rocked by a series of shootings and explosions. The violence has the hallmarks of a coordinated attack. For the breaking news go to Twitter, then go to the BBC or CNN.

Below is an example of the feed from Twitter user @BreakingNewsOn, as news of the crisis initially emerged.

BreakingNewsOn

A car bomb, reportedly a taxi, has exploded at a “domestic airport” in Mumbai, Al Jazeera reports while quoting local media. 1 minute ago from web
CAR BOMB EXPLODES AT MUMBAI AIRPORT - TV. (BULLETIN) 3 minutes ago from web
Some gunmen are still holed up in buildings, police chief tells Reuters; reports of “confrontation” between police and gunmen at a hospital. 6 minutes ago from web
Police say gunmen attacked at least 7 locations with K-47 weapons, explosives; new attacks reported at cinema, hotels, hospitals; 27 dead. 11 minutes ago from web
An explosion is being reported at the Taj hotel in Mumbai where gunman had earlier opened fire - NDTV. 21 minutes ago from web

Update - Alex adds: See this Wikipedia page on the bombings, which is being updated in real time. (Same happened on 7/7 - see Charlie’s post on this a few months back.) Also a Google Map of locations under attack here, and a Flickr photostream here. But the #Mumbai feed on Twitter remains the key place to look for news (plus @mumbaiattack for a more filtered version).

Update, 7:43 am (David): The news keeps getting worse. Indian TV reports a fresh explosion at the Trident just a few minutes ago. It was deeply shocking this morning to hear the BBC interview a man who was barricaded inside the hotel. A few minutes later the presenters had moved onto a joke item about Christmas carols. Pathetic.

Update, 8:28 am (Alex): Summary of how mobile and social networking channels are covering the crisis - together with discussion of some of the dilemmas this throws up - here. The biggest dilemma of all: widespread concern that the attackers themselves are making use of media and social network coverage in order to anticipate what the authorities are up to.  In such circumstances, much can hang on individual users’ sense of personal responsibility on what to report - and what not to.  No such thing as a DA Notice on Twitter…

Update, 8:44 am (Alex): Coverage is starting to converge on agreement that the attackers came to Mumbai by sea, leading to much speculation and rumour about where they may have come from.  Plenty of people on Twitter, the blogosphere and (more gradually) the mainstream media (e.g. Indian Express here) are speculating that the attackers came from Karachi (in Pakistan).  This is not confirmed, though; other reports suggest that they came from Gujurat (in India). As Gideon Rachman notes, the answer to this question will be highly significant:

The development of a terror campaign with truly domestic roots would be a really ominous development. On the other hand, if the terror attacks originated on Pakistani soil, then regional tensions would spiral. How unpleasantly ironic that all this should happen, just days after the Pakistani prime minister, issued a bold appeal for peace between his country and India. One might almost believe that these attacks were designed to scupper the Zardari peace initiative - were it not for the fact that it must take longer than a couple of days to put something like this into action.

Update, 11:32 am (David): The siege of Mumbai is now into its twentieth hour. Terrorists are reported to be being interviewed live on Indian TV. IBN is claiming we’re into the endgame. Let’s hope so before night falls. The live IBN stream is here…

Update, 11:54 am (Alex): The BBC is reporting that the Indian government has asked for all live Twitter updates from the scene to cease immediately.  A tweet reading as follows is proliferating on Twitter as users re-post it on their feeds: “ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations”. Various twitterers reply indignantly that if they’re to stop posting the details, the broadcast media should do the same.  As I write, the IBN video stream that David links to above is issuing real-time updates on which floors of the Oberoi Hotel have been cleared by security forces.

Update, 14:38, (David): Switch from the Twitter feed to Al Jazeera’s comments thread and you’ll find that sympathy for those caught up in the attacks is not universal, while some suspect that the culprit will not turn out to be an Islamist group:

Maria Costa, Governador Valadares, Brazil: “While few enjoy the sight of “innocent” victims being caught up in the struggle against the imperialists and their collaborators, nobody should ever forget that these desperate acts of martyrdom are the direct result of the actions of the imperialists and their lackeys. If India wants to avoid future tragic incidents, they need to re-think their actions in Occupied Kashmir and their nuclear alliance with the Yankees.

mewrite, Banglore, India: the killing of Hemant Karkare(chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad) gives a clue who might be behind this heinous crime. Karkare was spearheading the investigations into Malegaon blasts and was instrumental in unveiling the Hindu terror network. Initially, as usual, Muslims were blamed for those blasts, & many were punished on false charges. But the recent investigations done by Mr Karkare revealed that it was actually the handiwork of Hindu terrorists belonging to Shiv Sena who with the help of some army persons conducted blasts in many Indian cities during the last few years.

proudpathan, Batley, United Kingdom: The US, Uk, Israel and laterally the Indians all lie in the same bed. These countries are upto something. What it is I don’t know. I hope the Indians don’t associate themselves too closely with these countries, otherwise the rest of the world will see them as they see the US, the UK, and Israel as being imperialistic, oppressors and occupiers and the murderers of innocent Muslims. 

Never mind the bailout details - what were they eating?

Posted on November 26, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Global economy, Off topic | Comments Off

Bloomberg has a major exclusive:

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — The deal to rescue the world’s best- known bank was pieced together by regulators over Domino’s pizza in near-empty offices one block from the White House …

In the middle of the meeting, Paulson called Bernanke, telling him that he and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, whose agency guarantees bank deposits and some debt, were still negotiating details, according to the person. Meanwhile, about 20 staffers were working at FDIC offices a block from the White House, subsisting on Domino’s pizza for dinner at around 8 p.m. and working on the deal until about 11:30 p.m., according to a person familiar with the matter.

Eh?  The biggest bank failure yet, and we’re focusing on the food they orderered?  

But wait - isn’t this all slightly familiar?  Rewind back to the start of October, when UK officials were putting together the rescue package for Britain’s high street banks.  Here’s the Guardian at the time on the key points of the deal:

In the Treasury war room overlooking St James’s Park, central London, his chancellor, Alistair Darling, was thrashing out the details of the bail-out with ministers, lawyers and executives from the eight leading banks … 

Anticipating the long and tense night ahead for him and his team, Darling had taken matters in hand at 8.30pm, personally ringing one of his favourite restaurants, Gandhi’s in Kennington, south London, to order £245 worth of rice, karahi lamb, tandoori chicken, vegetable curry and aloo gobi.

What is it with this obsession over what officials or liquidators were munching (and what time they placed the order) as they put together bailout packages late at night?  Well, Lucy Kellaway is on hand to explain:

Newspaper articles in these tumultuous, fatal, not-seen-since-the-Great-Depression times are so tightly packed with cliché it is hard to do anything other than join in.

To get the tone right, one needs to use clichés of four different sorts. First is the geological seam of seismic shifts, landscapes, earthquakes and meltdowns. Second is the newer, more vicious, medical imagery of injected, sharp, toxic, pumped, fatal and reeling. Third is the cliché of banal detail: what time it is, what people are eating, what their complexions look like (but only if pale) followed by another look at the clock. The only mundane cliché not to have been seen once in the last six weeks is “smoke-filled rooms” as that is now illegal. The fourth sort of cliché is to declare everything the worst since 1929 or the worst in living memory.

So there you are.  Sounds like an excellent excuse for a new version of Meeting Bingo…

What to do about Guantanamo

Posted on November 26, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Terrorism, US politics | 1 Comment

This short piece from the Economist - styled as an email to Barack Obama - is worth a read:

Your promise to close Guantánamo is popular. Including a clear announcement on this in your inaugural will make for great headlines. But if you have to give a firm date for closure, kick the can at least a year down the road. Remember: W. wanted to close the place too, but disposing of the 260-odd (in every sense) inmates still incarcerated there won’t be easy.

A few dozen are small fish—not to mention innocents—who we could easily send home. But there are some whose governments don’t want them, and others (eg, those Chinese Uighurs) whom their governments might torture or execute. International law says you can’t repatriate them. We’ll ask friendly countries to take a few, but you will end up having to let most go free in the United States. Some might well return to the battlefield after all we’ve done to them. But as General Barry McCaffrey has said (we’ll keep the quote handy), it’s going to be cheaper and cleaner to kill them in combat than sit on them for 15 years.

Then there are those 80 or so really hard men. President Bush wanted to try them, and could never get the law right. So now you have to deal with them. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad has “confessed” he was the brains behind 9/11. God knows what the Pakistanis or the Agency did to him in prison. But we can’t just let him go, and we can’t just let him rot, so you have to give him and his accomplices their day in court. The first big question for you is: what kind of court? You don’t like Bush’s military commissions. But if you set up special security courts with special, meaning laxer, standards of procedure and evidence, they will be called kangaroo courts too. And if you opt for regular criminal trials or courts-martial you run the risk that they will throw out evidence extracted by waterboard. Dare you let a 9/11 mastermind walk free?

Worse yet, there’s a group the Agency is sure are dedicated terrorists but on whom we have nothing that can stand up in any sort of court. The human-rights purists say you must bite the bullet and set these unconvictables free in America. But if you follow their advice it won’t just be Republicans who will say you are putting the republic in danger. You’d theoretically have a let-out if you could let these guys go and keep them under surveillance. But the Feds claim they can’t guarantee fail-safe, indefinite 24-hour monitoring of a group this size. Can we afford to take that risk?

Safer would be to move them to the mainland, where they would be held under some kind of preventive detention devised by your legal team. We can call this “temporary”, but our base will bleat that you have closed Guantánamo only by creating a new prison where America continues to detain people convicted of no crime. And they’ll have a point. Over to you.

Britain sells Tibet?

Posted on November 26, 2008 | David Steven | More on Asia, UK politics | Comments Off

That’s what the New York Times thinks:

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks between China and the exiles to a standstill.

The exiles’ decision followed an announcement on Oct. 29 by David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, that after almost a century of recognizing Tibet as an autonomous entity, Britain had changed its mind. Mr. Miliband said that Britain had decided to recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. He even apologized that Britain had not done so earlier.

I haven’t followed this story - so posted without comment. Do add yours if you have one though.

“24″ rings death-knell for UN peacekeeping

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Richard Gowan | More on Africa, Communication, Conflict and security, Off topic, Public diplomacy | Comments Off

Like the UN didn’t have enough problems already… After Darfur and Congo, the blue helmets have to take on Jack Bauer. The two-hour prequel to the new series of 24, aired in the U.S. last weekend, appears to have been scripted by John Bolton:

JACK Bauer sustains the usual bumps and bruises in the long-awaited two-hour “24″ movie on Fox, but it’s the United Nations that really takes it on the chin.

The producers of “24″ evidently have zero respect for the UN. To hammer the point home, their two-hour movie - “24: Redemption,” premiering Sunday, Nov. 23 - includes a representative of a UN “peace-keeping” force who just might be the most spineless, loathsome character ever created for this show.

First, this weasel refuses to believe urgent, eyewitness accounts that heavily armed rebels in the fictional African country of Sangala are sweeping the countryside kidnapping schoolboys and forcing them to become soldiers in the rebel army.

Then, when some of the rebels come rolling up to the rural school where Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) has been helping a former Special Forces colleague (Robert Carlyle) work with orphans, the UN guy (played by Sean Cameron Michael) declares that he’ll pacify the rebels simply by chatting with them.

After catching a glimpse of them, however, he immediately runs to join the children in an underground shelter, leaving Jack to fend off the rebel group all by himself. As if that wasn’t cowardly enough, he later decides to save his own skin by telling the rebels where Jack and the children are hiding.

The producers took pains to make the UN rep look as foolish as possible, even though the impotence of the UN is not even a major plot point in this movie, whose real purpose is to set up the seventh season of “24,” scheduled to start, at long last, in January.

I’d quite like to see a version of “24″ accurately depicting the UN’s impotence: tremble as Jack Bauer attempts to get a code cable agreed by all parties, and fails. Thrill as there is a dispute over whether Mr. Bauer can take non-insured personnel in a UN 4×4. Gasp as he has holds a multi-stakeholder workshop with the World Bank and European Commission…

The Seduction of Analysis

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Charlie Edwards | More on News, Off topic | 3 Comments

Do we need to call ‘time out’ on global risk analysis?  The NIC report on global trends 2025 is one of a plethora of recent publications on global risks and security challenges from think tanks, Government departments, the defence community, NGOs, business, academia, and the media. Do we really need any more?

3 questions spring to mind:

1. Are we suffocating under the weight of all this analysis?
2. Should we consider having a period of consolidation and reflection?
3. Do we need a transformational shift from analysis to action?

How many times do we need to be told that:

  • Since the end of the Cold War, the international landscape has been transformed.
  • During the next 30 years, every aspect of human life will change at an unprecedented rate, throwing up new features, challenges and opportunities.
  • The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
  • The formidable acceleration of information exchanges, the increased trade in goods and as well as the rapid circulation of individuals, have transformed our economic, social and political environment
  • New players—Brazil, Russia, India and China will bring new stakes and rules of the game to the international high table.
  • Increase in global population will put pressure on resources—particularly land, energy, food, and water—raising the spectre of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
  • There are a set of interconnected set of threats and risks, including international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, conflicts and failed states, pandemics, and trans-national crime.

Surely it is time to complement existing analytical work with some ideas for action or even, as someone suggested earlier, divert our focus to analysing potential ’solutions’ rather than identifying the same ‘problems’ time and again. Given the vast number of reports and papers in the system, surely now is the time to consider what improvements and upgrades can and need to be made to the global system in response to the myriad of issues the international community faces.

In order to do this we need to move away from the comfortable exercise of scene setting, describing the world around us and instead take a different approach. One simple way would be to look East and see what Indian & Chinese thinkers and academics are developing. Analysis obviously plays a crucial role in thinking through issues and in policy-making but the very process of analysis can be seductive; providing us with breathing space when we actually need to be pushing on and debilitating by creating ever greater complexity which can often lead to inaction.

In the words of the King:

A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark

Quote of the day

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Mark Weston | More on Global economy | Comments Off

A city acquaintance of mine on Facebook “certainly didn’t expect to be at home today and for the foreseeable future.”

Grim times.

Next year’s battle of the summits

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Alex Evans | More on Cooperation and coherence, Europe, Leadership | Comments Off

As Gideon Rachman notes, the fact that the G20 has now staged a summit at the level of leaders rather than finance ministers - which by my reckoning made it a de facto L20 - means that “the venerable old G8 has a real challenger on its hands”.

In addition to the advantages that Gideon counts off - the G20’s novelty, its inclusion of emerging economies, the fact that the G20 has the earlier summit (G20 in April vs. G8 in July), the Berlusconi factor - there’s also the fact that Gordon Brown (who’s chairing the April G20) is already gearing up for a big push to make a success of the G20 and get the ball rolling in earnest on a Bretton Woods II agenda (c.f. David and my paper on this if you missed it).

Even before you consider the G20,  there are some big question marks over the G8.  What has it really delivered over the past decade since it enlarged from G7 to G8?  My count would go something like this: debt relief; the Proliferation Security Initiative; the Global Fund on AIDS, TB and Malaria; and the Financial Stability Forum.  Four credible initiatives, yes - but not much of a tally for ten years’ worth of summits, and also notable that none of these areas really involved any serious domestic implementation commitments.

Part of the problem here is the limited bandwidth of the ’sherpa’ system that prepares the summit agenda before heads meet in the summer.  As I noted in a Guardian piece back in July, sherpas have pretty busy day jobs (like Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, or Private Secretary to the PM), which rather curtails their capacity to tee up major global deals as well.  It’s a case in point of the problem with moving issues to the leaders’ level: yes, you get the big picture, but at the cost of moving issues to the most over-stretched parts of governments. Hardly surprising that you’re more likely to end up with a media-friendly ‘initiative’ rather than a comprehensive long-term framework.

And perhaps it’s here that we come to what may be the real ace up the G20’s sleeve: its roots in the world of finance ministers. Like leaders, finance ministers have the big picture.  But unlike leaders, they also have big departments that already cover most of the global waterfront (apart from a few hard security areas like arms control) - and hence a great deal more analytical capacity for getting to grips with complex issues like climate change, trade and reform of the global financial system.

True, foreign ministries have big departments with lots of capacity too - but they have no way of forcing coherence on the rest of their governments when it comes to implementation.  Finance ministries, on the other hand, have a decisive advantage: while herding cats may never be easy, it’s a whole lot more manageable if you control the catfood.

Admittedly, the G8 has a Finance Ministers’ variant too - which has arguably achieved more in recent years than the leaders’ G8.  But co-ordination between the two G8 bodies hasn’t stood out as a strong point.  With the G20, Gordon Brown has a chance to forge a different, more effective relationship between the finance ministers’ and leaders’ levels; indeed, it would be hard to imagine someone better qualified to do so, given that as well as spending a decade as Finance Minister, Brown was chair of the IMFC for so long.

Old-fashioned nonsensical spy drama!

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Richard Gowan | More on Conflict and security, Europe | Comments Off

In these days of spies having to roam around the Middle East trying to communicate in Arabic, Farsi, etc. it’s nice to know that there is somewhere that spooks can indulge in a bit of Cold War-type nonsense. Ah, Kosovo:

Three men held by police in Kosovo for throwing an explosive device at the headquarters of the EU’s special representative (EUSR) in the capital Prishtina are agents of the German federal intelligence service, the BND, according to Germany’s Der Spiegel. The newsweekly reported on 22 November that the three had been arrested by local police on 19 November on suspicion of having caused the blast, in which the building was damaged. Nobody was hurt in the explosion. An international official in Prishtina said the matter was “too hot” to discuss.

A judge reviewed the evidence against the three men on 21 November and ruled that they could be held for 30 days while prosecutors put together a case. They are likely to be charged with terrorism, which could carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The three men said that they were inspecting the blast site. One of them, according to this version, entered a building next door following the blast in order to take photographs, while police allege that he planted an explosive device. The building houses the International Civilian Office, ICO, whose head – the Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith – also serves as the EUSR. The prosecutor alleges that the three Germans wanted to delay the build-up of the EU’s judicial and police mission, Eulex, which hopes to begin operating in December.

All too good to be true, surely? The plot thickens:

Germany’s Bild newspaper reports that sources close to the intelligence community say that the BND has ruled out the involvement of any of its employees in the attack on the EU office. The sources told the paper they believe it is much more likely to have been extremists in Kosovo who oppose the involvement of foreign organizations in their country. The arrest of the Germans is, they conclude, the result of a power struggle within the Kosovo leadership, with the anti-European faction having prevailed over those who wanted to see the three men released.

Well, they would say that wouldn’t they? I’ll be sorely disappointed if this “anti-European faction” isn’t the work of some GDR-trained double agent.

Monday’s map returns

Posted on November 24, 2008 | Charlie Edwards | More on Maps | Comments Off

Land Grab. From the Guardian:

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

Click on the map to enlarge.

From the department of big numbers…

Posted on November 24, 2008 | David Steven | More on Global economy, US politics | Comments Off

$7.4 trillion… $7.4 TRILLLION - that’s what Bloomberg calculates the US government has now pledged to the bailout.

What’s worse than a bad bank?

Posted on November 24, 2008 | David Steven | More on Global economy | Comments Off

The Citibank rescue is being described as a ‘good bank/bad bank‘ deal. Not so, says Paul Kedrosky:

Here is the gist:

  • Citi will carve out $300-billion in troubled assets, which will remain on its balance sheet:
    • The first $37-$40-billion in losses on those assets will go to Citi
    • The next $5-billion in losses will hit Treasury
    • The next $10-billion in losses will go to the FDIC
    • Any more losses will go to the Fed
  • There will be no management changes at Citi, because, you know, they are all fine and upstanding people who have done nothing wrong.
  • There will be some compensation limitations, but those have not yet been made clear.

To be clear, this is not a “bad bank” model. Assets are not, apparently, being taken off the Citi balance sheet and put into another entity walled off from the Citi biological host. Instead, they are being left on the Citi balance sheet, but tagged and bagged for eventual disposal via taxpayers.

He dubs it the ‘fucked bank’ model.

Update: John Carney likes the deal (not):

Citi shovels a steaming pile of $306 billion of crap assets into a corner of its balance sheet. It gradually writes down their value. Citi takes the first $29 billion of losses, and taxpayers take the next 90% (about $250 billion). In exchange, taxpayers get $27 billion of Citi preferred stock.

Would Warren Buffett have made that deal? No way.

At the very least, there should be a sliding scale for taxpayer ownership: The more the value of the crap assets deteriorates, the more of the company the taxpayers own (and the government should be assessing the value of these assets, not Citigroup). Because as it is, Citi has an incentive to write the whole pile off tomorrow for a song. (This would actually be good for the economy, but not for the taxpayer’s “investment”).

By the way, there is no guarantee that this taxpayer largesse will save Citigroup. $306 billion of assets sounds like a lot, but it’s only about 15% of Citi’s massive asset pile (10% if you count the stuff that was so hideous that Citi shoveled it off the balance sheet long ago). Presumably Citi could keep having to take writedowns on assets outside of the bailout’s $306 billion, weakening the company’s capital and eventually possibly forcing yet another bailout.

So taxpayers may get yet another chance to get hosed.

Update II: This from the WSJ is ominous:

In addition to $2 trillion in assets Citigroup has on its balance sheet, it has another $1.23 trillion in entities that aren’t reflected there… Among the off-balance-sheet assets are $667 billion in mortgage-related securities.

So there’s many more toxic assets still to be owned up to (read Felix Salmon’s take). Meanwhile, the Economist points out the obvious:

One thing that we know will be fun is watching Mr Paulson defend the purchase of $100 billion of Citi’s junk, while simultaneously arguing that Detroit shouldn’t get a dime from TARP.

Update III: Shareholders like the deal - initially at least. Commentators from left and right think the US government got ripped off: Krugman:

A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more. Amazing how much damage the lame ducks can do in the time remaining.

Arnold Kling:

The one sector that definitely needs to contract is the financial sector. Maintaining Citi as a zombie bank is not really constructive. I would feel better if it were carved up, with the viable pieces sold to other firms and the remainder wound down by government. In my view, getting the financial sector down to the right size ought to be done sooner, rather than later.

My questions: (i) How long before another bank wants the same kind of deal? (ii) Is there anything Paulson can now do to rescue his credibility? (iii) How long before the scale of Citi’s problems are fully understood?

Some answers/guesses: (i) Two weeks. (ii) No - he’s changed direction too many times. (iii) Between 2 and 5 years.

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