Blood & Treasure

strangling the crumpet

There's obviously a astrong argument that even one blog post about the late Sir James Savile is more than enough. On the other hand, howzabout this then:

He also worked as a volunteer at Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane, where he was given his own room, and referred to the staff and patients at the hospital as “my people” and himself as “the Godfather”.

Savile once described his role at the hospital as honorary entertainments officer: “I ask them, what do you want to go round strangling crumpet for?” But his flippancy belied a shrewd understanding of inmates’ problems and how best to win their trust. In 1988 he was chosen to head a Department of Health task force to advise on the running of the hospital when it suffered a crisis of management and a nursing dispute. By some accounts, he ended up virtually running the place.

Thing is, these days even the possibility that you might be on nodding acquaintanceship terms with the Yorkshire Ripper would stop you getting a job in light entertainment. 

 

unofficially official or officially unofficial

Now this is interesting. Apparently a lot of the reporting on the Wenzhou financial meltdown is coming from a local BBS which permits anonymous postings:

Wild tales of the ruin of China’s microcosm of private lending and credit crunch — from “runaway bosses” to abandoned luxury cars, and rumored suicides to local mob hit lists — have leaked out since this spring on the site “703804.” The name, when spoken in the Wenzhou dialect, sounds something like “chitchat.”

...Much of the credible information appears to come from inside sources who have posted anonymously. Many of the stories are repeated nearly word-for-word in newspapers and other media across China, eventually making their way into international news reports.

For example, there is a throwaway line in every story on Wenzhou referring to the 80 factory bosses who’ve fled the region or gone bankrupt. That morsel of information comes directly from a 33-page ongoing “runaway bosses” thread on the forum, where readers add names and financial details daily.

The forum is run by a chap called Ye Zhe, who in passing is described as a ‘local official’, which also means a party member. Mr Ye says the site was shut down a lot in its early years but is now tolerated because the local apparat ‘have figured out that it is better to guide information than block it’.

I suppose it’s possible that Mr Ye has managed to keep his site open simply through his skill at persuading the local apparat on the general benefits of openness; though his phrase about ‘guiding information’ indicates that something slightly different is going on.

On the other hand, tempting though it is to think of this as an information operation staged by the local government, I think that’s unlikely given some of the hair raising stuff that’s coming out. Wenzhou’s brand is ‘city of millionaires’, not ‘city of executive suicides’. It may be that the local government is in such disarray – perhaps due to personal losses in the local informal banking sector, or maybe because of CDIC sniffing around – that there’s no-one in a position to crack down. To know more, we’d need to know more about Mr Ye, his role, and his connections.

Still, here’s the takeout. What we know about the state of China’s economy depends to a certain extent on what we know about its grey financial markets. What we know about China’s grey financial markets depends to a possibly larger extent on what we know about how the situation in Wenzhou is unwinding. And what we know about that depends quite substantially on a bulletin board run by a local official and depending entirely on anonymous contributors, none of whom are likely to be entirely disinterested. 

case nightmare green

Watched Margin Call the other day, which was a disappointing film, but it made me wonder; do governments have emergency plans in place for what John Lancaster calls the ATM scenario - a complete breakdown of global finance, money locked up, trust entirely vanished.  If so, what do they look like? 

the decline of the race

It was pointed out in comments already, but the gentle scorn of this Pankaj Mishra review of Ferguson's latest opus is well worth reading.

Temptations of the West is very good, by the way, as is Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.  I wasn't that taken with The Buddha in the World, though.

mgi watch: runan

A nice straightforward MGI in Runan County, Hunan.  Drunken police office crashes van, killing five (possibly more). Crowd gathers to protest police seemingly protecting their own, demand proper investigation, go on no doubt highly enjoyable riot.  

eldritch, uncanny creature made dreams come true

Jung would have had fun with the late Jimmy Savile, in particular his nightmarish resemblance to the various trolls and lubberfiends of Norse mythology; the strange, intimidating creatures who guard the gold and who have it in their power to grant arcane favours and make wishes come true, at least for those who dare approahc them in their unearthly grottos to beg favours.

There was always an odd edge to Jim’ll Fix It. At one level it was a power fantasy. The kiddies would write in with their outré yearnings. Jimmy, sat on his big red throne, casually dispensing the relevant favours. Then a medal would appear - as if by magic – from the depths of his thrones, and solemnly draped around the neck of the enthralled youth, while the parents, having been made to look thoroughly inadequate as providers in contrast to the magical powers of Sir Jimmy and his crack team of BBC researcher-gnomes, hung around grinning uneasily and shifting from foot to foot.

Good telly, as they say. The whole setup was comedy Wagner, and I’m sure generations of British kids grew up vaguely thinking that this is what happened when you voted.

the connections

Quite a bit of truth in this, I bet:

Imagine you are the Shanghai correspondent of the Daily Blah, a large newspaper chain based out of New York. You are the guy who communicates to the world, through your writing, what it’s like to live in China. You are a 28-year-old graduate of Metropolis University’s School of Journalism and you live in a fairly nice one bedroom apartment with your iPad, MacBook Air, and as much bandwidth as you can pay for.

And yet, half of the time you jump on Google to check your Gmail or check the latest football scores, you can’t get through unless you log in to your VPN first. And forget about using the latest Chrome app to integrate Twitter with G+ or access Facebook to set up a photo gallery of pics from Grandma’s 90th birthday party — not without that VPN. And even then, the speed slows down to a crawl and you end up shouting at your laptop and pounding a beer just to rein in the frustration.

And then, your editor tells you to write something, anything, about China’s Internet policies. That article just might be affected by Net-related rage. Maybe.

It reminds me of Alex Cockburn’s description (in the Golden Age is in Us) of a conversation with his brother Patrick about reporting from the old Soviet Union back in the eighties:

I remember Patrick telling me that there was one hotel from which it was hard to make calls. Dispatches from journalists lodged there used to put heavy stress on Russia’s trechnlogical backwardness. Another - I think it was the National – was noted for the petty corruption of its waiters. From there would be filed stories about the moral collapse of the country. A third hotel was on the outskirts of town and journalists staying there would brood about the degree to which Moscow, and Mother Russia herself, were cut off from the mainstream of world history.

I think it’s at least arguable that the ongoing slow strangulation of VPN networks in China has contributed to the tone (obviously, not necessarily the content) of reporting from the country, and I wonder what would happen if the securocrats provided hacks with faster, freer access. Because after all, it’s pure twenty first century thinking that a country which provides one with a pleasant, friction free online experience must be generally getting better, whatever its current problems.

there's something about Linyi

There's this place in China where they've got a blind self taught lawyer locked up under house arrest for trying to help these people who got forced to have abortions. Kind of like Erin Brockovicth, right? Except he's male, Chinese, blind, and it's about family planning rather than corporate stuff. Also, this shit's actually happening right now.  Anyway, suddenly these dudes blow in to town from Hollywood to make a buddy movie about two guys who have a 'night of debauchery they'll never forget'. Awesome, right?

in a stable, all forlorn

This Giles Fraser fellow is a bit of a legless angel:

"And I think that, in a sense what the camp does is that it challenges the church with the problem of the Incarnation – that you have God, who is grand and almighty, [who] gets born in a stable, in a tent. You know, St Paul was a tent maker. I mean, if you looked around and you tried to recreate where Jesus would be born – for me, I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp."

Dude, get back to me when you can imagine Jesus being born on the carpet tiles at Argos, unto a mother awaiting her ticket being called. 

what non-dumb money may want

I may have mentioned before that I used to work for the vice chair of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee. As such, I got a fairly useful (though now outdated) snapshot of China’s evolving opinions of the EU.

At the outset Beijing were very favourable to the project, partly because it thought the EU would be a political counterweight to the US and partly because of a more general affinity with, ahem, unification projects, rooted in both communist ideology and in the wider discourse of Chinese nationalism.

Actually dealing with the EU caused more than a little disillusion to set in. In particular, there were complaints that the EU never seemed to operate as a coherent institution. When European politicians arrived in Beijing with their EU hats on, for instance, they would constantly talk up their own country’s businesses and national level agendas. There were constant complaints about this.

So you had a dawning perception in China that the EU was just a convenient vehicle for its member states to scheme for advantage against each other and that its political and economic institutions were both cover for this and means of facilitating something which bore rather a resemblance to Communist Party factional struggle.

As I say, this is old news. But it does provide potentially useful context for the debate over whether China is going to join the big Euro bailout and on what terms:

Any Chinese support would depend on contributions from other countries and Beijing must be given strong guarantees on the safety of its investment, according to Li Daokui, an academic member of China’s central bank monetary policy committee, and Yu Yongding, a former member of that committee.

“It is in China’s long-term and intrinsic interest to help Europe because they are our biggest trading partner but the chief concern of the Chinese government is how to explain this decision to our own people,” said Professor Li. “The last thing China wants is to throw away the country’s wealth and be seen as just a source of dumb money.”

He added that Beijing might also ask European leaders to refrain from criticising China’s currency policy, a frequent source of tension with trade partners. The US argues that an intentionally undervalued renminbi unfairly supports Chinese exports.

This has been tweeted about as ‘China blackmails Europe’, but apart from not being supported by the content of the article else, that perception is just the wrong way of looking at things. As Prof Li points out, Europe is China’s biggest trading partner. On the other hand, it has to deal with an EU structure that it believes to be institutionally untrustworthy. From Beijing’s perspective, China has become far too economically dependent on a politically ramshackle entity.

It follows from this that the price of Chinese support won’t be marginal stuff like lifting the EU arms embargo; though I wouldn’t be surprised to see that offered from the EU side as an item of good faith. What Beijing may be interested in are changes in the way that Europe functions as an entity which guarantees its loans and which ensure that more loans won’t have to be made – and maybe more widely as an entity that makes sense from Beijing’s point of view. If you’re going to stunt up $100 billion odd to bail out a company, you’re going to want a seat on the Board, if only through one or more nominees. You're going to want to have ongoing influence over how it functions.  Perhaps this is what Professor Li is hinting at.

a short course in the management of Kims

Fascinating and occasionally startlingly frank two-part interview with Zhu Feng, Deputy Director of the Centre for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, on the objectives of China's North Korea policy, here and here. A couple of things: I think he underplays the exstent to which Beijing is pushing for North Korean economic integration with China. Secondly, he's very open about the general level of exasperation felt in Beijing about Pyongyang's behaviour. This has been  known about for a long while, but the line for international consumption was always 'lips and teeth'. The magazine Strategy and Management got shut down a few years ago for leaking the opinions Prof Zhu is coming out with now. Oh, and how about this?

Would China support a united Korean peninsula under democratic rule?

Of course. A democratic North Korea may sound a little bit difficult for China, but the democratisation of North Korea will ultimately lay out the way for Pyongyang to become more included in and locked into the international system. It will also show great promise for North Korea's reintegration into the world community, following the Chinese way of reform and opening. I totally believe that only reforming and opening up North Korea will persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for international recognition, energy aid, and the lifting of sanctions. So the democratisation of North Korea is almost the equivalent of reform and opening and is welcome on the Chinese side.

 

private security semiotics

Over here. Pretty obvious scam site/skanky business, but an obviously sincere attempt to hit the spot in terms of its market. Cheap laughs, too. Dig the guy with the hearing aid.

bitten by a radioactive Dalai

The Tibetan origins of modern superheroism:

A while back I wrote a couple of posts about how Batman and Dr Strange both received their training among the magical monks of Tibet. Once they each returned stateside, however, their Tibet connections become a footnote; a quaint piece of backstory, but not much more. Not so for The Green Lama, who not only studied in Tibet, but who wraps his whole identity around the place. When he gets in trouble, he chants Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ, and the power of that mantra resonates with a monastery in Tibet and transforms him into a unstoppable crime-fighting force (image 1). Needless to say, this is a fairly unprecedented use of the mantra of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion.

The mantra also endows him with a rather fetching green outfit.

 

oppose reactionary Cowellism-Endemolism!

Gather round folks: it's prime-time rectification time.

Chinese officials share your pain and have ordered a curb on popular entertainment shows. Out go sexy dating shows and lurid programmes on crime. In come art appreciation, astronomy and weekly "morality building shows".

The new edict from the state broadcasting watchdog is expected to come into force on 1 January. Provincial channels will be allowed to show no more than two entertainment shows in the "golden time" between 7.30pm and 10pm, according to a report on the Chinese NetEase website. Particular types of programmes, such as dating shows, will be strictly limited; no more than 10 talent contests will be permitted nationwide per year, and each must be of a different kind.

The sinosphere is all atwitter about the reimposition of Maoist popular culture. I'm not seeing Mao here. What I'm seeing is Britain consolidating it's place as world leader in the production of how to wipe your own arse television with an export drive. I'm seeing How Clean is Your Hutong. I'm seeing Shanghai Supernanny. I'm seeing fat tongued housewife moistener Jamie Oliver presuming to teach the Chinese how to fucking cook with a load of cultural cadres grinning away behind him. Oh, God, make it stop.

 

bless you, google

My day is made better by discovering that I accidentally pissed off crazy people. 

farewell the trumpets

Remember Iraq? Prior to US withdrawal, there's a rounding up of the usual suspects:

Iraq has arrested at least 240 former members of Saddam Hussein's banned Baath Party and ex-military officers over what some senior officials described as a plot to seize power after U.S. troops withdraw at year's end.

While several officials characterised the round-up which began this week as the foiling of a specific plot, others said it was a precautionary measure before the U.S. withdrawal, nearly nine years after the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam.

The 'banned Baath party' and 'ex-military officers' were a mainstay of the Sons of Iraq, for those who remember them. Having helped craft the exit strategy, they seem to have been disposed of. 

 

this year we are mainly stealing protein

The Green Benches has discovered something interesting:

This year we have stepped up our rates of stealing protein. I have written before how consumption of protein (especially fish) had fallen 25% since the recession but it seems we are making up that shortfall by robbing Cheese, Fish, Meat and Baby Milk. Interestingly, chocolate, spices and alcohol are also in the top items we have tended to steal.

Overall, says Dr Clarke, a billion’s worth of goods are going to go walkabout this year, 64% of which will be down to retail shoplifting (rather than, say, employees banging things out the back door). Dr Clarke’s point is that much of what people are stealing consists of what they can no longer afford but nonetheless need to have. I wouldn’t be surprised, though I suspect that there’s a secondary market for baby milk. Also, protein food items tend to be less bulky than carbohydrates like loaves or bags of frozen chips. And then there’s the reward factor. If you’re taking the risk of robbing, you want to come away with something with a bit more oomph than a bag of pasta.

Annals of judicial understatement

(Richard J.)

In a similar way, I think it is at least arguable that, if Ms Jones was indeed authorised by Global Marine to pay £4.5 million to a Cheshire  car  dealer for the ostensible purpose of purchasing the insurance [1], the transaction assumes such a strange complexion, and so many obvious suspicions are raised, that the ability of the claimant to rely on the unvarnished terms of the Undertaking must be put in question, and the full facts of the matter need to be carefully scrutinised at trial[...]

[1] [for the proposed purchase of a partly built deep water oil drilling and processing vessel known as "MPF-01" or "the Dalian Developer". The drillship was apparently going to be one of the largest vessels of its kind in the world, capable of drilling in water depths of up to 3,000 metres and with a storage capacity of up to 1 million barrels of oil.]

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2011/2685.html

Because I can

(Chris W) Max Manus was hero of the norwegian resistance in WW2. Good at sabotage, apparently. I tell you this partly because I'm a fan of the Norwegian resistance, but mostly because I'm aboard an aeroplane named after him, somewhere over the North Sea. Point for discussion: why put money into high speed rail when the same cash spent on better wifi would probably meet the productivity criteria even of the DoT's 'cost model'?

beijing noir

A cracking little story of greed, sex, and murder in Beijing  with a side order of media gagging on top.  To get a sense of how common this is and the media environment here, consider what the coverage of this story would look like if it happened in London.  Here it's a small story on pg. 2 of the Metro section.

You've got to wonder about the hold on the "assistants" too, haven't you?  I mean, you're a civil service worker, and one day your boss comes to you and is like "Fred, can you do me a favor?  I need you to help me kill someone ..."

Ah, he was in charge of the local chengguan at one point.  So, people pretty used to beating people to death and disposing of the bodies.