From The Globe and Mail:

The idea of Muang Thai, “the land of the free,” has for years been expressed in its most extreme form as the freedom to exploit nature, environment, women, children. Yet conventional wisdom had it that a shared sense of identity would keep the social fabric from fraying beyond repair. This, too, has become a highly questionable proposition, particularly with ailing KingBhumibol Adulyadej apparently unable to intervene. It appears that Buddhism, the monarchy and the country’s long history as an independent regional player with a distinct language and culture are no longer enough to contain Thailand’s underlying fissures.

The Washington Post has a short review of three new books lamenting the possible end of Western democratic capitalism. The rise of China is but one challenge – citizens in West are also becoming more and more disinterested in freedom and more and more interested in holidays and sports cars.

Why this is posed as a battle between Western democracy and authoritarianism is somewhat befuddling. It seems much easier to see it as a defeat of democracy by capitalism. The tension is certainly not new, we’ve just recently forgotten about the tensions.

Duncan Green has a review up of a new book on cash transfers, currently all the rage in social welfare thinking in the South. Cash transfers–simply giving money, at times without conditions–too the poor, is positioned as a truly ‘Southern’ solution to poverty. And one that, incidentally, seems to work. In general, people who need money use money well, and create demands for services from hospitals and other service providers, not to mention demands for food and small consumer goods. Green’s own employer has tested cash transfers in Vietnam with interesting results. Some questions remain about who pushes for cash transfers and why.

James Ferguson spoke about cash transfers a couple of years ago during a visit to U of Toronto. Nothing published yet, but this interview seems to sum up at least part of his argument nicely:

I think it’s partly about labor. For so long, there was this sort of terror of undermining the incentive to work, because what you needed to do was to get poor people (and this holds particularly in South Africa), and force them to work. Get them off their land and get them into the mine. Get them into the wage labor market so that their wage labor could be exploited and put to work. And we’re now looking at a world where there are loads of people willing to be exploited: there are actually loads of people willing to offer their labor yet there are no takers. So I think one of the things that may be going on is that poverty technocrats are starting to say, ‘Well, maybe undermining the motive to work is not such a problem because we don’t have jobs for these people anyway’. That’s one of the things I’m thinking about at least.

Capital does not need the poor. So why keep them in the labour pool anyway?

Everybody invested a lot in legislating Aid Accountability in Canada. But it seems to be treated as a reporting exercise rather than something that would change what kind of aid Canada gives and how it gives. From the CCIC:

Landmark Legislation Suffers from Lacklustre Implementation: “Two years after passing the Official Development Assistance (ODA) Accountability Act the government has failed ‘to fulfill the Act’s spirit and the intention of parliament’ according to a report released May 18, 2010″

(Via Canadian Council For International Co-Operation.)

So I was a little snarky tweeting a couple of days ago about Bono and Geldof on the Globe and Mail. One viewer asked why we still needed White Men (TM) to speak for Africa, to which they responded with some humming and hawing, with Bono professing that he likes Africa so much that he has ‘gone native’ (which I guess makes him an African and thus able to speak for the continent?)

Now I have a great deal of respect for both of them – they don’t have to put all of this work into an important cause. I’ve been a Bono fan since his White House prayer breakfast, and his use of the “J” word. And a lot of the sour grapes that celebs get from development ‘experts’ is just that. On the whole, the two of been good for development.

At the same time, it doesn’t help for them to skirt the question. Why is it that we have two White Guys who specialize in singing editing a special issue of the Globe and Mail on Africa? They don’t have to shut up, but they could use their celebrety currency to turn attention not only to the problems and potentials of a continent, but also to share the stage to African leaders and activists. I don’t follow either Bono nor Geldof closely, but I cannot think of an interview given in a ‘rich’ country by either of them that included an African expert or celebrity alongside them. Why not?

And, no, Jeff Sachs and Angelina Jolie most certainly do not count. Even if they have gone native as well.

I always feel a bit dirty when I agree with our friends at Aid Watch (which happens more than I would like to admit). But the overall tone of this post is spot on:

Curriculum and course materials proposed by the central “Secretariat”
for development practice are housed in Columbia’s Earth Institute. Will
the new programs produce students with a standardized,
narrowly-prescribed view of how to approach development problems? Or
will the melding of disciplines encourage critical thinking and help
straddle the theory-policy divide, making global cooperation run more
smoothly and international aid more effective?

Kay seems to conveniently ignore the spread of Transition Towns, Slow Food and other movements that, taken together, are cobbling together a rather distinct political philosophy from the ground up. What ties these tother is that they don’t know where they are going – A Postcapitalist political philosophy that drives the right and the left bonkers.

Aid watch documents how various maps of the Horn of Africa documents the gradual impact of colonialism on the region.

The Map History of an Unhappy Place, 1829-present: “ Among the forces at work changing the map are Europeans’ increasing knowledge of the area, the expansion of European colonial control, European border changes, and Ethiopian expansion. Somehow it led to the present mix of tragic mess, cultural richness, and potential for hope.”

(Via Aid Watch.)