War is not the answer, Marvin Gaye once observed, and only love can conquer hate. Now Citizens for Global Solutions is trying to translate this into policy by asking everyone to sign an electronic Valentine’s Day card to the Syrian people.  

I was going to write more, but I’ve decided to let the image speak for itself.

Last week I was asked to review a new book on gender and development. Since these things are usually turgid affairs, full of abstruse jargon (“registers of governmentality”, “idioms of sexualness” and “body reflexive practices” are just a few of the assaults on English perpetrated in this one) and nostalgia for the marxist utopias of yore, I was apprehensive. I envisaged long days of ploughing laboriously through paragraphs, trying heroically to decipher “essentially hetero-normative constructions”, “emergent rubrics”, and “positionalities”, and then having to pretend in my review that I’d both mastered this tangled tongue and maintained sufficient will to live to pass constructive comment on it.

But once you have hacked your way through the impenetrable forest of the introduction (which counts “decentring the traditionally unmarked male” and “normatively naturalizing potencies” among its most egregious language crimes), you emerge into a glade of sunny clarity. For Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities is no ordinary gender book – reading it will give you a new perspective on the social problems of the developing world.

The idea that gender equality is important to development is not new – efforts to educate women and girls are among foreign aid’s few relatively uncontested success stories, and microfinance programs, the development fad du jour, also mostly target women. Men, however, have largely been overlooked by practitioners and policy-makers; reading Men and Development, you begin to see what catastrophic effects this has had.

The problem lies in the expectations society has of men. In West Africa, for example, men are expected to set up a home, marry at least one wife, and accumulate and provide for children and other dependents. Those who fail to perform these duties forfeit the respect of their elders, women and their peers; they cannot become “real men”.

When the breadwinner role becomes impossible to fulfil – as it did for millions of men across Africa during the economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s – men have other facets of masculinity on which to draw in order to recover their self-esteem. Some of these alternative masculinities are positive – think of the black South Africans who responded to economic emasculation by adopting the role of fighter against oppression and joining the liberation struggle.

But many traditional expressions of manliness are socially destructive. Physical violence is the most obvious of these. Economic insecurity, as one of the Men and Development authors Gary Barker notes in an earlier paper, can prompt men to turn to violence to reaffirm their power – many South African men have joined criminal gangs, for example, while domestic violence becomes more common as unemployment rises.

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So the other day I was asked what I thought the ‘big debates’ were in development.  A dream question.  But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself stumped – and slightly depressed.

I used to spend a lot of time arguing about big issues: trade liberalisation; industrialisation; national sovereignty.  Not that I’d necessarily want to go back to those days, but the nearest thing I could think of to anything that approaches that level of disagreement today is the spat between Jeff Sach’s gang and Michael Clemens’ gang about whether the Millennium villages project is working.  And it’s not even an argument about development policy or practice, but about research methods: essentially, if the project should have used the hugely fashionable randomised evaluation methodology, and identified a control group at the start to be able to see the impact that interventions are having compared to that control group. 

Important stuff, but surely not the be-all and end-all of the potential questions raised by this project.  Who, for example, is asking about the relative importance of improvements within rural areas and movement out of rural areas for development in the long term?  Who is asking about the limits of this kind of aid-based intervention in the absence of institutional and market changes at the national or global level?  (more…)

Our colleague and friend WPS Sidhu has written a thought-provoking column about recent revelations of nuclear proliferation - from a most unusual source:

Playboy magazine is not the most obvious choice for those preoccupied with nuclear proliferation. Yet, Joshua Pollock’s article on “The Secret Treachery of A.Q. Khan” in the January/February 2012 issue has proved to be as titillating as the all-revealing photos that made the publication infamous.

The article, written in the whodunit oeuvre, uncovers that in addition to the three known customers of the Khan network—Iran, North Korea and Libya— there was a fourth hitherto unknown customer and reveals the “last country on the list: India, Pakistan’s foe.”

It’s worth reading the whole column.  But I want to know whether the publication of Pollock’s piece resulted in a big rise of sales of Playboy in news agents around the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Vienna headquarters.  Was some aspiring Hans Blix sent out in a grubby mack to purchase copies of the top shelf magazine for his superiors?   Did IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano have to flick through pages of poorly-clad minor celebrities to find the article (curiously, there is no mention of it in his “Director’s Corner”)?  Is the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has a slightly stronger pedigree on nuclear issues, going to change its approach to illustrations now?

These are all puerile questions.  But you know you want them answered.

Whatever you think of French politics – or ratings agencies – this is a super front page:

Key point:

Over the last few decades the religious Right has dominated the mainstream discussion around “morals and values” in the United States. Claiming to be the moral compass for the country, they have defined a radically conservative platform for issues including abortion, welfare, LGBTQ rights and more. The Left, for the most part, has let this happen. Rather than leading with our values and vision, progressives have focused on making rational arguments for what is “right.” No matter how skilled our analysis, we have been unable to speak to the complex and holistic experiences of everyday people, to resonate with their need to be a part of something deep in their hearts and spirits. While the Right has organized people around  fear, they have been even more powerful when they tapped into and met people’s desire for belonging. The Left has largely ignored these needs, contributing to our ineffectiveness in broad social change.

From Out of the Spiritual Closet: organizers transforming the practice of social justice.

Herman Van Rompuy is thinking positive. He is staring into his mirror each morning, and repeating to himself: ‘I am a strong, confident, powerful currency. I am A TIGER!’ He’s so positive, he’s sent out a hefty tome called The World Book of Happiness to 200 world leaders, with this extraordinary letter. I’m quoting from the letter he sent to Barack Obama:

Dear Mr President Barack

I am very happy to present you with this copy of The World Book of Happiness…with my best wishes for a ‘Happy New Year’ but also with my request to you as world leaders to make people’s happiness and well-being our political priority for 2012 [um...what about preventing the catastrophic collapse of the euro? No?]

Positive thinking is no longer something for drifters, dreamers and the perpetually naive. Positive Psychology concerns itself in a scientific way with the quality of life. At stake are not only the happiness and well-being of individuals, but also those of groups, organisations and countries. And above all, in today’s global world we can all learn from one another. It is time to make this knowledge available to the man and woman in the street….

People who think positive see more opportunities, perform better, possess greater resilience, take more often correct and sound decisions [sic], negotiate better, have more self-confidence, maintain better relations, take greater responsibility, have more trust placed in them and so on. In short, they give more hope to others because they can experience it themselves. In order to release this positive energy, people need oxygen. Society can offer this oxygen. Positive education, positive parenting, positive journalism and positive politics play a crucial role here. This oxygen we can also create ourselves by a balanced existence or a religious or philosophical rooting.

[I love this paragraph. My favourite line is 'to release this positive energy, people need oxygen', though I also like the idea of 'a religious or philosophical rooting' - 'rooting' is a slang Australian word for shagging].

Why not address women and men from all angles of their multiple intelligence? [Why not indeed!]...By addressing men and women who are on a growth path, we all become better and happier people. We then do not turn every incident into a trend and every anecdote into a general truth. [You've lost me Herman]. As a consequence our governing will stimulate self-knowledge, reflection, sense of responsibility and commitment.

Positively inclined people see everything in its right proportions. [etc etc for a few more sentences.]

Happy New Year!

Herman Van Rompuy

Chairman of the European Council

Woohoo! I love his cheery upbeatness in the face of chaos. And quite a plug for the book itself. The author, another Belgian called Leo Bormans, blogs excitedly: ‘Will Barack Obama and Angela Merkel in the near future read in the World Book of Happiness before going to sleep?’ You betcha Leo!

Now, a cynic might suggest Herman is reminiscent of the conquistador hero of Werner Herzog’s movie Aguirre Wrath of God, who dreams of ruling over new empires while monkeys swarm over his sinking raft. But that’s a cynical thought. Think positive. Think Belgian. Find a happy place!

This account of tactical innovation at Occupy Portland is pretty funny:

We occupied the park and set up a few tents and facilities to serve food and coffee. The police soon declared an emergency closure of the park and came out in force, with full riot gear and all the weaponry. The line of riot cops soon forced us out of the park, so someone decided that we ought to march to City Hall. It was about 9 pm on a Saturday night, so City Hall was closed, but we marched there anyway, 800 of us blocking traffic the whole way. Once there, the riot cops once again lined up to disperse the crowd. However, since City Hall was closed and there was no point in staying there anyway, someone had the idea to march down to the area of town where all the clubs were, so we took off marching again. The riot cops were trailing behind us…

After marching for 3-4 hours, we eventually found ourselves a block away from the park that we’d been forced out of, so we took it again. The riot police lined up and prepared to take the park again, but the attempt was called off and the police just left. They realized that they would have to go through the standard military procedure of clearing the park inch by inch, only to have us go back out into the streets and march again while they, one more time, trailed along helplessly- their entourage functioning as a part of the march, creating an even larger disruption to traffic (the marchers covered a city block, the trailing police took up another city block, effectively doubling the size of the obstruction to traffic)…

H/t John Robb.

“As the Declaration of Independence laid the groundwork for the [US] Constitution, so the commission’s report lays the foundation for the constitution of a space-based civilisation.”

“The commission believes it is reasonable to expect to have a human outpost on the moon in 2005 and an outpost on Mars in 2015. To fund the program, the commission suggests establishing the space budget at a constant percentage of GDP.”

The conclusion of a Star Trek fans’ convention? Nope: this is 25 years ago, and the commission in question is the US National Commission on Space, launched by the House of Representatives, and with a membership appointed by the President – including a former head of NASA, legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager (immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s book and film The Right Stuff), and Neil Armstrong. The quotes are from a rather wonderful book published shortly after its report came out, entitled The Overview Effect, which was written by Frank White – a senior associate at Princeton University’s Space Studies Institute, who was heavily involved in the commission’s work.

It’s kind of striking how much more introspective our public discourse has become over the intervening quarter-century. You just couldn’t write stuff like that today and expect to be taken seriously. Now, the shuttle program has been killed off; manned space missions haven’t been outside Earth orbit since the 1970s; and I’d probably be rash to predict that Mars will be settled within my lifetime.

All of which is kind of a shame. For as White chronicles in his book, the real point about space exploration is less the technological wizardry involved than how it changes our perspective and sense of identity. That’s especially true of the astronauts themselves – here for instance is Russell Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9:

“You identify with Houston and then you identify with Los Angeles and Phoenix and New Orleans. And the next thing you recognize in yourself is that you’re identifying with North Africa – you look forward to that, you anticipate it, and there it is.

“And that whole process of what it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change. You look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, again and again and again, and you don’t even see them. There you are – hundreds of people in the Mideast killing each other over some imaginary line that you’re not even aware of and that you can’t see.

“From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it’s so beautiful. You wish you could take one in each hand, one from each side of the various conflicts, and say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What’s important?”

But it’s also true of the rest of us. After all, the images of Earth from space that came back from the Apollo missions probably did more to shape modern attitudes to the environment than any other factor since the second world war. And at a point when we’re failing to get to grips with so many global risks - above all climate change – anything that makes us think of ourselves in more planetary terms is undeniably a Good Thing. Maybe it’s time to get excited about the Final Frontier again.

Me, I favour holding multilateral summits in space. That would really change the G Zero dynamic we’ve seen so much of lately…

Update: there’s a recent interview with Frank White here.

From Reuters, this little gem:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev caused shock and jeers on Wednesday after an obscene insult directed at political opponents appeared on his official Twitter feed.

The Kremlin chief and his more powerful mentor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have been facing growing opposition to their rule by protesters who say parliamentary elections on Sunday were not fair.

The offensive post appeared to have been retweeted on the MedvedevRussia feed at 33 minutes past midnight, according to cached copies of the feed and a notification of the post received by a Reuters reporter.

“It has become clear that if a person writes the expression ‘party of swindlers and thieves’ in their blog then they are a stupid sheep getting f****d in the mouth ” the post read.

Some wag was on Twitter earlier this week, observing that if, during the 1980s, the media used to refer to Sinn Fein as “the political wing of the IRA”, then these days we should be referring to Britain’s coalition government as the political wing of the financial services industry.

Sounds like a cheap shot? Then have a look at yesterday’s FT, which has a full page analysis article (£ – or free blog post here) documenting an interesting fact about where the Conservative party gets its funding from:

“In the past decade, a dramatic shift has occurred. Super-rich hedge fund managers have become the biggest single interest group to bankroll the UK’s current main party.”

Wondering what effect this has on policy? Here’s Tim Montgomerie, editor of ConservativeHome.com and the Tory world’s blogger-in-chief:

“The City’s influence is that top Tories spend a lot of time in the company of people to whom the City matters. If the party was reliant on northern industrialists, it would be a different party.”

Or try this observation from “one of the 10 biggest hedge fund donors”:

“There probably aren’t many votes in cutting the 50p top rate of tax – but among those that give significant amounts to the party, it’s a big issue, and that’s probably why it’s a big issue for the party too.”

Remember that “terrible phrase”, Winning Hearts And Minds (WHAM)? Using development programs as a tool for counterinsurgency? PRTs and Money as a Weapons System? So last decade, right? Well it’s back, and there’s some new evidence to show that it might actually work – for certain things, and when done right. From Afghanistan, of course. It’s only taken 10 years.

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Under President Romney, 310m Americans won’t have any shared interests with any of the 6.7bn other people who insist on living in less exceptional countries:

I believe America is an exceptional and unique nation. President Obama feels that we’re going to be a nation which has multipolar balancing militaries. I believe that American military superiority is the right course.

President Obama says that we have people throughout the world with common interests. I just don’t agree with him.

Mitt – the man who would say anything to be President.

‘Euroscepticism’ is firmly back on the political agenda following last week’s battle in the House of Commons over whether to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.  Labour and Lib Dem opposition to the motion ensured its defeat, but an unprecedented 81 Tory MPs defied the party whip to vote in favour, revealing sharp differences of opinion within the Conservative Party.

Where is the public in all of this?  Media coverage of this issue generally gives the impression of a nation that is deeply Eurosceptic.  Opinion polls indicate that much of the population regards the EU with apathy at best and antipathy at worst.  A YouGov poll for Chatham House in June of this year asked respondents to rank international institutions according to how positively they viewed them (with 10 being extremely positive and 0 being extremely negative).  The EU scored lowest with a mean score of 4, coming in below the oft-maligned IMF and World Bank.  Recent Eurobarometer surveys have found similarly low levels of satisfaction with the EU, with just 35 per cent agreeing with the statement that EU membership has benefitted the UK, compared to 54 per cent who disagree.

However, public attitudes are more nuanced than the topline figures suggest.  First, over the last decade, Europe has fallen steadily down the list of issues that voters say they are concerned about, and now sits consistently near the bottom when compared to the economy, crime, immigration and others.  There have also been considerable fluctuations in the relative proportions of those who say they would vote to take Britain out of the EU if given the choice, indicated by the results of a series of Ipsos-MORI polls.  In October 2011, 41 per cent said they would vote yes in a referendum on staying in, versus 49 per cent who said they would vote no and 10 per cent who were undecided.  Yet in 2007, a majority of 51 per cent would have voted to stay in, against 39 per cent who would have voted to get out.  It would appear that public opinion is fairly malleable then, responsive to both swings and roundabouts in the economy as well as the rhetoric of political leaders.

We held an interesting debate on these issues at IPPR earlier in the week – the first in a new series of events about the next phase of the European project following the Euro crisis – chaired by the Economist’s David Rennie and with contributions from Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, Conservative MP Douglas Carswell, Ben Page (Ipsos-MORI) and Olaf Cramme (Policy Network).  It fairly quickly became a conversation between the two Douglases, although compared to the tone of media commentary on this issue, the discussion was refreshingly civil.  (more…)