On track.

5

Åh Harry

Immortal Venice: Harry’s Bar on Nowness.com.

Mäktisch.

DROR

Living Large.

Principles of Geometry

Principles of Geometry on Nowness.com.

The French Electro Duo Look Back to the Future in Surreal Video Springed Dodge

No Need for Numbers.

Brothers in Arms.

C2C.

C2C - Arcades [OFFICIAL] @C2Cdjs from On And On Records on Vimeo.

Integrationskurs für Aksel.

Napkin.

The reason why you don't tuck in your napkin in your pants. You might forget it!

Somewhere, Sometime, Somehow.

Zabriskie Point, airplane harassment

Discarded Dreams Somewhere in the Swiss Alps

15 Minutes Outside Bern.

German Flip-flops.

I love the Internet.

My long lost Libyan friend added me on Skype the other day. We lost contact some years ago but when the uprising in Libya started to fill the news in Sweden I remembered that he and his family descended from eastern Libya. After trying to find a way to contact him, since he didn't answer emails I succeeded in tracking him down on a facebook account with less than 30 friends. I remember thinking - Is this even in use? I sent him a message but never actually received an answer. The account disappeared. So the other day we were in contact again. He told me about how he left his MA in Italy to go back to his family in Libya. How they were trapped in Benghazi when Gaddafi-troops approached the city. How he joined the rebellion. And then suddenly, from nowhere, he told me about this message I sent him....

"I remember your facebook message...and I remember reading it on the border between Libya and Niger)))... thank you!"

We spoke for some hours. It felt so unreal but yet so fantastic. I love the internet!


(The picture was found here)

Robert Schwartzman: All My Life

Robert Schwartzman: All My Life on Nowness.com.



Robert Schwartzman: All My Life on Nowness.com.

Filmmaker Gia Coppola Conjures a Las Vegas Love Story for Her Cousin’s New Music Video
Provided på Nowness

Genius or Insane?

The FT article of the day.
Financial Times, Paper edition, 24 August 2012.

World watches as Danes venture below zero

By Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent

Of all the many striking policy measures taken since the financial crisis, one of the most extraordinary has gone almost unremarked – the introduction of negative official interest rates by Denmark.
In an attempt to maintain its strict currency peg to the euro, the Danish central bank lowered its main deposit rate for banks – the certificate of deposit or CD rate – to -0.2 per cent last month.

The Nationalbanken felt it had little choice. Investors flocked to Denmark in search of a haven outside the eurozone – one that has no currency risk with the euro and offers cheap protection against a break-up of the single currency.
The move to negative rates is being watched closely by central banks around the world. “We have never been so popular,” laughs one Danish policy maker.
Apart from a brief move by Sweden in 2009-10, negative official rates are something of a novelty. But others may soon follow suit, with the European Central Bank recently cutting its deposit rate to zero and warning that it could go negative.
Policy makers in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have expressed interest in the idea as a potential way of forcing banks that are currently hoarding cash to start lending again.
“The Danish central bank is the first one in a small experiment of what happens when you impose negative interest rates,” says Thomas Kressin, head of the European foreign exchange desk at Pimco, one of the world’s largest bond investors.
“The popularity of the Danish krone is because of the unpopularity of the euro. Investors all over the world are looking for safe investments and are even willing to face negative interest rates for the security of knowing their money will still be there.”
So far, the economic impact of the move is largely unknown. Scandinavians take their summer holidays in July, so the central bank has little normal data to rely on. But officials acknowledge there has been a negative impact on banks, which they estimate to amount to about DKr300m (€40m).
Danish banks have about DKr200bn on deposit at the central bank. While Nationalbanken has increased the amount banks can hold on current account – where the interest rate is zero – from DKr23bn to DKr70bn, this still leaves a sizeable chunk where banks will, in effect, have to pay the central bank to look after their money.

Bank executives, as well as central bankers, are clear that lenders have to increase their loan prices to compensate for the loss, as they are unable to impose negative rates on customers.
“When we are at zero [for customers’ deposits], we can’t go any lower. We have to recover that money in other ways, so we do that by increasing our margins on loans,” Eivind Kolding, chief executive of Danske Bank, the country’s biggest lender, said this month.
Government bond yields have followed suit, complicating a normal way for banks to make money. Denmark’s two-year bond yields, which had never previously been negative, were -0.22 per cent on Thursday.
The danger is that this hurts the economy by reducing lending. But, in Denmark, this has been offset by a huge fall in mortgage rates as the official lending figure – the central bank’s headline interest rate – has also dropped, although it remains just in positive territory at 0.2 per cent.
One-year mortgage bonds being auctioned this month are expected to yield only about 0.25 per cent, according to analysts, down from the 1 per cent they fetched last year.
Mr Kolding notes that, for consumers, the cost of a mortgage in Denmark is exceptionally low. But outsiders still think the overall impact on the economy is more negative than positive.
“It is almost quantum physics,” says Mr Kressin. “All the way down to zero, monetary policy is ultra loose. But below zero, to some extent you tighten policy, because you impose a cost on the banking system.”
Nationalbanken officials are also keeping a close eye on the circulation of coins and notes. So far, as commercial banks still offer zero for current accounts rather than negative rates, there has been no move from the public to hoard cash. But central bankers concede that if the CD rate fell to, say, -1 per cent, banks might feel under more pressure to charge customers.
Denmark’s fierce defence of its currency peg means that a further move into negative territory cannot be ruled out, especially if the ECB were to cut rates further. But the small relative size of the Danish economy and the existence of the peg have led some to question how much other central banks can learn from its experiment.
“Can the ECB draw any lessons? It’s too much of a stretch from my perspective,” says Mr Kressin.
_______________________

Comment: I wonder how much of this "experiment" that results from the internal meetings in Basel Commitee on Banking Supervision... If this small scale experiment works, which it probably will, we are up for an interesting development.

More Assange.

Legal myths about the Assange extradition

A brief critical and source-based guide to some common misconceptions.

By David Allen Green  
Published 20 August 2012 13:49, New Statesman

Julian Assange gives his Sunday address to the faithful from a Kensington balcony. Photograph: Getty Images

Whenever the Julian Assange extradition comes up in the news, many of his supporters make various confident assertions about legal aspects of the case.
Some Assange supporters will maintain these contentions regardless of the law and the evidence – they are like “zombie facts” which stagger on even when shot down; but for anyone genuinely interested in getting at the truth, this quick post sets out five common misconceptions and some links to the relevant commentary and material.  It complements a similar post on the leading Blog That Peter Wrote.
[Add: also now see this excellent post by barrister Anya Palmer.]
(Please note that particularly relevant in this case are the three English court rulings which are freely available on-line: Magistrates’ Court, High Court, and Supreme Court.)

One: “The allegation of rape would not be rape under English law”

This is flatly untrue.  The Assange legal team argued this twice before English courts, and twice the English courts ruled clearly that the allegation would also constitute rape under English law.
(See my post at Jack of Kent for  further detail on this.)

Two: “Assange is more likely to be extradited to USA from Sweden than the United Kingdom”

This is similarly untrue. Any extradition from Sweden to the United States would actually be more difficult. This is because it would require the consent of both Sweden and the United Kingdom.
(See Francis FitzGibbon QC’s Nothing Like the Sun for further detail on this.)
One can add that there is no evidence whatsoever that the United Kingdom would not swiftly comply with any extradition request from the United States; quite the reverse.  Ask Gary McKinnon, or Richard O'Dwyer, or the NatWest Three.
In reality, the best opportunity for the United States for Assange to be extradited is whilst he is in the United Kingdom.

Three: “Sweden should guarantee that there be no extradition to USA”

It would not be legally possible for Swedish government to give any guarantee about a future extradition, and nor would it have any binding effect on the Swedish legal system in the event of a future extradition request.
By asking for this 'guarantee', Assange is asking the impossible, as he probably knows.  Under international law, all extradition requests have to be dealt with on their merits and in accordance with the applicable law; and any final word on an extradition would (quite properly) be with an independent Swedish court, and not the government giving the purported 'guarantee'.
(See extradition and criminal lawyer Niall McCluskey for further detail on this.)
Also Sweden (like the United Kingdom) is bound by EU and ECHR law not to extradite in circumstances where there is any risk of the death penalty or torture.  There would be no extradition to the United States in such circumstances.
(See Mark Klamberg’s blog for further information on this.)

Four: “The Swedes should interview Assange in London”

This is currently the most popular contention of Assange’s many vocal supporters.  But this too is based on a misunderstanding.
Assange is not wanted merely for questioning.
He is wanted for arrest.
This arrest is for an alleged crime in Sweden as the procedural stage before charging (or “indictment”).  Indeed, to those who complain that Assange has not yet been charged, the answer is simple: he cannot actually be charged until he is arrested.
It is not for any person accused of rape and sexual assault to dictate the terms on which he is investigated, whether it be Assange or otherwise.  The question is whether the Swedish investigators can now, at this stage of the process, arrest Assange.
Here the best guide is the High Court judgment. In paragraph 140, the Court sets out the prosecutor’s position, and this should be read in full be anyone following this case:

140.  Mr Assange contended prior to the hearing before the Senior District Judge that the warrant had been issued for the purpose of questioning Mr Assange rather than prosecuting him and that he was not accused of an offence. In response to that contention, shortly before that hearing, Mrs Ny provided a signed statement dated 11 February 2011 on behalf of the Prosecutor:
  "6. A domestic warrant for [Julian Assange's] arrest was upheld [on] 24 November 2010 by the Court of Appeal, Sweden. An arrest warrant was issued on the basis that Julian Assange is accused with probable cause of the offences outlined on the EAW.
  "7. According to Swedish law, a formal decision to indict may not be taken at the stage that the criminal process is currently at. Julian Assange's case is currently at the stage of "preliminary investigation". It will only be concluded when Julian Assange is surrendered to Sweden and has been interrogated.
  "8. The purpose of a preliminary investigation is to investigate the crime, provide underlying material on which to base a decision concerning prosecution and prepare the case so that all evidence can be presented at trial. Once a decision to indict has been made, an indictment is filed with the court. In the case of a person in pre-trial detention, the trial must commence within 2 weeks. Once started, the trial may not be adjourned. It can, therefore be seen that the formal decision to indict is made at an advanced stage of the criminal proceedings. There is no easy analogy to be drawn with the English criminal procedure. I issued the EAW because I was satisfied that there was substantial and probable cause to accuse Julian Assange of the offences.
  "9. It is submitted on Julian Assange's behalf that it would be possible for me to interview him by way of Mutual Legal Assistance. This is not an appropriate course in Assange's case. The preliminary investigation is at an advanced stage and I consider that is necessary to interrogate Assange, in person, regarding the evidence in respect of the serious allegations made against him.
  "10. Once the interrogation is complete it may be that further questions need to be put to witnesses or the forensic scientists. Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be lodged with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries."

And in paragraph 160 of the same judgment, the High Court explains why such a requirement is not “disproportionate” as submitted by Assange’s lawyers:

160.  We would add that although some criticism was made of Ms Ny in this case, it is difficult to say, irrespective of the decision of the Court of Appeal of Svea, that her failure to take up the offer of a video link for questioning was so unreasonable as to make it disproportionate to seek Mr Assange's surrender, given all the other matters raised by Mr Assange in the course of the proceedings before the Senior District Judge.
The Prosecutor must be entitled to seek to apply the provisions of Swedish law to the procedure once it has been determined that Mr Assange is an accused and is required for the purposes of prosecution.
Under the law of Sweden the final stage occurs shortly before trial. Those procedural provisions must be respected by us given the mutual recognition and confidence required by the Framework Decision; to do otherwise would be to undermine the effectiveness of the principles on which the Framework Decision is based. In any event, we were far from persuaded that other procedures suggested on behalf of Mr Assange would have proved practicable or would not have been the subject of lengthy dispute.

 

Five: “By giving Assange asylum, Ecuador is protecting freedom of the press”

This is perhaps the strangest proposition.
Ecuador has a woeful record on freedom of the press. It is 104th in the index of world press freedom, and even the quickest glance at the examples of press abuse in Ecuador accumulated by Reporters Without Borders and Index on Censorship indicate a regime with a starkly dreadful and illiberal record on freedom of expression.
It has even recently been reported that a blogger called Alexander Barankov is to be extradited by Ecuador to Belarus, of all places, where he may face the death penalty.
Whatever the reason for Ecuador granting political asylum to Assange, there is no basis for seeing it as based on any sincere concern for media freedom either in Ecuador or elsewhere.

The way forward

Due process is important.  It is the formal means by which competing demands and seperate interests can be accommodated and reconciled in any overall litigation process.  This is why due process is an important liberal principle.
Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in Sweden.  It was upheld.
He then repeatedly challenged the European Arrest Warrant in the United Kingdom.  He lost at every stage, but each of his many legal arguments were heard and considered in extensive detail.
And in doing this, Assange had the assistance of first rate legal advice and advocacy from some of the UK's leading human rights lawyers, and he also had the benefit of having been granted bail in England in the meantime.  The extradition was fought by him all the way to the Supreme Court.
Assange has been afforded more opportunities to challenge the warrant for his arrest than almost any other defendant in English legal history.  This is hardly "persecution" or a "witch-hunt".
The English side of the process is now almost over: there is a valid European Arrest Warrant which has to be enforced as a matter of international law.
If Assange is extradited to Sweden, it may well be that the serious allegations of rape and sexual assault cannot be substantiated.  But that is entirely a matter for the Swedish investigators and for any Swedish court.  It is not an issue which can be dealt with by proxy in English litigation, and still less by heated internet exchanges.  In the event of an extradition request by the USA then Assange has the same rights under EU and ECHR law as he has in the United Kingdom, together with an additional safeguard of consent being required from both UK and Sweden.  It is difficult to see a sensible and well-based reason why Assange should not now go to Sweden.
Even taking the worries of Assange and his supporters at face value and at their highest, there is nothing which actually means the due process of a current rape and sexual assault investigation should be delayed any further or abandoned.
It is important to remember that complainants of rape and sexual assault have rights too, even when the suspect is Julian Assange.

[Postscript, 22 August:  the "temporary surrender" Zombie fact has now been exposed by legal blogger Greg Callus.  This means all the supposed legal points argued by Assange supporters have been addressed by one UK legal blogger or other.]

David Allen Green is legal correspondent of the New Statesman
__________________
Comment: Can we please go back to our ordinary lives now...  

Assange will have fun wih La Tigresa.

Thanks Javi.

Belgrade Mornings.

Giants.

Mercosur RIP?

South American integration

Mounting protectionism and the rule-breaking admission of Venezuela have fatally undermined a once-promising trade block

Jul 14th 2012 | BUENOS AIRES AND RIO DE JANEIRO | from the Economist print edition

 

IT WAS such a good idea. In 1991 Brazil and Argentina set aside decades of rivalry and, together with smaller Uruguay and Paraguay, founded Mercosur as a would-be common market. The project went hand-in-hand with a broader opening of inward-looking economies. Diplomats got to work on harmonising trade rules. Cross-border trade and investment boomed.
Yet Mercosur, like the European Union (EU) on which it was modelled, ran into difficulties. Brazil’s devaluation in 1999 caused Argentina to seek, and obtain, emergency restraints on imports from there. Politically negotiated exceptions to the block’s rules became the norm. Nevertheless, a dispute-settlement body and a small secretariat were eventually set up. In 2010 the presidents finally agreed on a common customs code, to avoid outside goods having to pay tariffs more than once.

But under left-wing governments, Brazil and—especially—Argentina have become more protectionist. They have come to see Mercosur as a fortress, rather than a bridge: outside South America, the only trade deals concluded by the block in the past decade were with Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Negotiations with the EU, begun in 1999, have languished. Although intra-Mercosur trade has continued to rise in absolute terms, it represents a much smaller share of each member’s total exports than at its peak in 1997 (see chart). That is partly because the commodity boom has lifted the group’s exports to the rest of the world. But it also because Mercosur has not evolved into the seamless single market its founders dreamed of.

Since January 2011 Argentina has increased (to 600) the items for which import licences are not automatic—a measure accepted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that allows countries to detain imports for up to 60 days. Exporters to Argentina complain that the delays are even longer. Since February, it has required importers to swear an affidavit with the tax agency before ordering goods. That has prompted a host of complaints against Argentina at the WTO. Its Mercosur partners have not been exempted: so far this year, Brazil’s exports to Argentina are down 15% on the same period in 2011, while Uruguay’s are down by 10%. Brazil has responded by imposing some barriers on Argentine exports.
Mercosur now faces a new, self-inflicted, problem—one that could potentially break it apart. Meeting on June 29th in Mendoza, Argentina, the presidents suspended Paraguay for a year, following the lightning impeachment the previous week of Fernando Lugo, the country’s left-wing president. His ousting, by 39 votes to four in the Senate, was abrupt and misguided—but constitutional. Nevertheless, the others decided it offended Mercosur’s “democracy clause”. They went on to admit Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela as a full member of the group; Venezuela’s application had been held up for years because Paraguay’s Senate had refused to approve it.
Violating due process
All this was legally questionable. Mercosur’s rules require decisions to be unanimous, with all members given a fair hearing. The envoy of Paraguay’s new government was turned away in Mendoza. Its foreign ministry denounced the suspension as “not only illegal but illegitimate and in violation of due process”. Bernadino Hugo Saguier, the country’s ambassador to the Organisation of American States, said: “if we took a poll, 90% of Paraguayans would vote to quit” Mercosur.
What makes these decisions more perverse is that Venezuela’s democracy is as flawed as Paraguay’s, albeit in different ways. Mercosur was set up to be a group of liberal democracies advancing free trade in South America. Mr Chávez is unenthusiastic about these causes. He has variously called for a “new Mercosur”, with a dose of “political Viagra” that would “decontaminate neoliberalism” in the block, and instead “prioritise social concerns”.
Although Mr Chávez agreed in principle to adopt Mercosur’s common external tariff, his government has yet to implement this—or indeed any but one of the 131 formal decisions taken by the block so far, according to Paulo Roberto de Almeida, a dissident Brazilian diplomat. Under Mr Chávez, the state has taken over many industries, and non-oil exports have shrivelled. But Venezuela’s oil wealth has offered opportunities to Argentine and Brazilian companies, especially in government contracts. Its entry is of “strategic interest” to Mercosur, Brazil’s foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, said this week.
To a greater or lesser extent, the governments of Brazil and Argentina share Mr Chávez’s view that Mercosur should primarily serve the cause of political union, and act as a rival project to what they see as the free-trade agenda of the United States in Latin America. “The founding idea that Mercosur would be an instrument of trade liberalisation has disappeared,” says Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian diplomat involved in the block’s creation. “What we have today is a political and social forum, and micromanagement of trade.”
The decision to admit Venezuela is already prompting buyer’s remorse. Uruguay’s vice-president, Danilo Astori, called it perhaps the most serious “institutional wound” in Mercosur’s history; the country’s foreign minister also criticised the way the decision was taken.
Turning Mercosur into a political union has in practice meant that its decisions are based on the preferences of the current left-of-centre governments, rather than on long-term national interest. It also means that it is hard to spot the difference between Mercosur and the South American Union, a broader but shallower group.
This is a costly moment for Mercosur to neglect its primary purpose. In June Brazil’s seasonally adjusted trade fell into deficit for the first time since 2000, says GlobalSource Partners, a consultancy. The commodity boom looks to be drawing to a close. Credit growth is slowing; retail sales fell in May (see article). Brazil’s manufacturers are losing markets to China.
The fastest-growing part of South America is the free-trading Pacific countries (Chile, Colombia, and Peru), which have shunned full membership of Mercosur. Brazil has chosen as its main allies protectionist Argentina and Venezuela, which practises an archaic state socialism. To revive economic growth, Brazil needs to put more stress on competitiveness and market-opening trade diplomacy. Mercosur once aspired to do precisely that. A group that now consists of little more than bear-hugs and kisses among compañeros serves little purpose in a harsher world.

Welcome Russia - Today the 156th Member of WTO

Russia’s economy and the World Trade Organisation

A chance to get down to business

Does Vladimir Putin really want Russia to be a less terrible place to do business? We will now find out

July 14th 2012 | from the Economist print edition

FOR China, joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001 was a landmark on the way to becoming a global economic powerhouse. Could WTO membership do the same for Russia? This week, after 18 years of dithering and doubts, the Duma (the lower house of parliament) voted to ratify WTO entry, in principle guaranteeing Russian products access to world markets. With Brazil, India and China already members, Russia will soon become the final BRIC in the global-trade club. This offers the country a fresh chance at industrial modernisation after two decades which started with chaotic reform and ended with spiralling corruption—and were marked throughout by perilous dependence on extractive industries.
Russia urgently needs a more diversified economy. Strong energy revenues have given it expensive tastes (eg, more defence spending). The budget deficit, excluding hydrocarbon revenues, has soared from 2% in 2007 to 10% in 2011. The government now needs oil to be above $110 a barrel to balance its books; it has slipped below $100. Russia’s gas-export revenues are already under threat from the world gas glut caused by the success of new “fracking” technology (see our special report this week). New sources of oil compound the trouble.

Before the 2007-08 financial crisis, Russia’s economy was growing at around 7% a year. Rising demand for its oil, gas and metals meant ever more revenue gushing into the treasury. The view in the Kremlin was that Russia need not worry about manufacturing—at least the non-military bits—since energy and mineral revenues would finance a leap into a services-led “new economy”. Swathes of the country’s industrial base, never terribly competitive but with plenty of potential if properly exposed to the rigours of world markets, were left to rot.
The economy’s jolt into recession in 2009, when it shrank by almost 8%, forced a rethink. Russia’s leaders began listening to those who argued that neglecting manufacturing had been a mistake. President Vladimir Putin now promises that his new factory-friendly policies will create 25m skilled jobs. If he is serious about that, he will have to abandon the crony capitalism that has enriched so many of his friends.

It takes WTO to tango
With a population of over 140m and rapidly rising consumption, Russia’s domestic market could form a solid foundation for its manufacturers to become exporters, reducing its dependence on energy and minerals. There is a fair amount of industry left in Russia that has prospects of competing on global markets, if given a chance (see article). Potential strengths include aircraft, helicopters, engines, turbines, industrial gear such as pumps and compressors and, inevitably, military equipment. With fresh investment and good management—and the competitive shock of WTO entry—Russian industry’s productivity could improve sharply.
There are signs of this happening. Some of Russia’s energy and metals oligarchs, such as Oleg Deripaska and Alexei Mordashov, are also putting money into reviving manufacturing. Foreign carmakers are pouring into Russia, building new factories and refurbishing old ones, as demand for cars booms.
However, the motive for foreign firms has typically been to get around tariff walls and Russia’s nightmarish (and corrupt) customs-clearance procedures, rather than to make the country part of their global supply chains. Russia gets much less foreign investment than many other big emerging markets. It is an especially bad place to do business, with its suffocating bureaucracy, unreliable courts (just ask BP) and organised crime. Mr Putin has kept promising to fix this, most recently setting a target of moving the country from 120th to 50th place in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” league table. Skolkovo, an attempt to build a Silicon Valley-style cluster of technology firms on Moscow’s outskirts, will be exempt from some of the country’s stifling regulations (see article).

But the state has yet to shake off its instincts to dominate industry and protect it from competition (and often loot the proceeds). Although a wave of part-privatisation is promised, the government has been going in the opposite direction, buying out Western shareholders in some Russian aerospace firms. Instead of seeing WTO membership as a way to force Russian industry to compete, the country’s lawmakers so far seem to be seeking to frustrate the club’s free-trade rules: last month they backed a plan to introduce a “recycling levy” which, in practice, would fall on imported cars but not Russian ones.
Watching these machinations, pessimists fear that WTO membership will mean rent-seeking bureaucrats merely rejigging their bad habits, leaving Russia’s crony-capitalism intact. The more optimistic view is that it will constrain the worst instincts of Putinists more than they realise. It is a first step towards a rules-based system. The club’s impact will not be perfect, any more than it has been for China. But it does point to the path Russia must take if it is to prosper.

No Viet Food.

Evening Sky - Bern

Raveheart

"We are ecstatic to bring you the newest from Galantis, the power trio comprised of Christian Karlsson (2/3 of Miike Snow), Style of Eye, the long respected producer who's most recent projects include Icona Pop and Kylie, and Carli, Sweden's dance music kid genius. The video for "Raveheart", their newest dance track, premieres today. Stacked with electrifying militant synths pulsating over a dubious baseline, this track is ripe for club play, or pretty much any reason to dance with reckless abandon (see: men dancing outside car clip). Galantis, who recently signed to Robotberget, Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg's new label (both of Miike Snow fame), are ripe on creating the most bombastic underground funk for those of us who find ourselves spastically moving our bodies in empty warehouse parties."

Impressive.

Ghostly International presents Matthew Shlian from Ghostly International on Vimeo.
"If I know what it will look like, I don't want to do it"

Happy Independence Day to All My Indian Friends

Worlds largest democracy... 65 years and counting..

Diplomatic Asylum.

Julian Assange and Diplomatic Asylum

Author: Matthew Happold

Sunday
Jun 24,2012

Matthew Happold is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg and an associate tenant at 3 Hare Court, London .

In taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange joins a long list of individuals who have sought asylum in foreign embassies.  Recent examples include Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun in the US consulate in Chengdu, and blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng in the US embassy in Beijing.  However, although embassy premises are legally inviolable, general international law does not recognise a right of diplomatic asylum.  Even if Ecuador does grant Assange asylum, the UK will not be obliged to grant him safe passage out of the country. 

In 1949, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, leader of the Peruvian APRA movement, sought refuge in the Colombian embassy in Lima.  The dispute between Colombia and Peru as to whether he could be granted diplomatic asylum went twice to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In its judgment in the Asylum Case, the Court ruled that no general rule in international law existed permitting States to grant diplomatic asylum; a legal basis had to be established in each particular case. 

Dissatisfied with the results of the litigation, American countries joined together to adopt a Convention on Diplomatic Asylum.  This Latin American tradition might, at least partly, explain the attitude taken by Ecuador.  No such treaty, however, exists elsewhere.  No general right of States to grant diplomatic asylum consequently exists, except, possibly, in cases where it is temporarily granted to preserve human life and in situations of civil and political unrest.  Despite the hyperbolic claims made by some of his supporters, such an exception would not appear to cover Julian Assange’s case. 

International law is clear that diplomatic premises are inviolable, so Assange remains outside the reach of the UK authorities so long as he remains within the Ecuadorian embassy.  In the past, some such stays have lasted years.  Haya de La Torre remained in the Colombian embassy in Lima for five years; whilst Cardinal Mindszenty, who took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest following the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, was only permitted to leave the country in 1971.  Once he leaves the embassy, however, Assange can be arrested and detained by the UK authorities under UK law, regardless of how Ecuador may have determined his request for asylum. 

In addition, it may be that Ecuador is legally obliged, if requested, to surrender Assange to the UK authorities.  According to the International Court of Justice in Haya de la Torre, although (contrary to Ecuador’s contentions) the granting of diplomatic asylum is an intervention in a State’s internal affairs, diplomats are not obliged to assist in the course of justice in their host State.  However, the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which both Ecuador and the UK are parties, requires that diplomats respect their host State’s laws and regulations.  The Convention also provides that diplomatic premises should not be used in any manner incompatible with the functions of the mission as laid down in the convention (which does not include harboring fugitives from justice) or general international law (which, as shown, does not recognize a general right to grant diplomatic asylum). 

The current law would thus seem to argue that a person seeking diplomatic asylum should be surrendered if he is accused of a criminal offence and a warrant for his arrest has been issued by the competent authorities.  This would appear to be the case, at least potentially, with Assange.  Even excluding the outstanding Swedish request for his extradition, the police have stated that he is in breach of his bail conditions and thus liable to arrest. 

It does not appear, however, that the UK authorities have made a formal request for his surrender to Ecuador.  How matters will develop remains to be seen.  It may be that the UK government will simply play a waiting game.  One thing seems certain, however: Julian Assange is unlikely to be visiting Ecuador any time in the near-future.

Summer.

One World?

 (I found this great article in the Economist archive. Still true even though its from '97. )

____________________________________________

One world?

The growing integration of national economies is said to have changed the way the world works. But our first in a series of articles on globalisation shows that its extent can be exaggerated—and that it can be reversed

Oct 16th 1997 | from the print edition

FOR good or ill, globalisation has become the economic buzz-word of the 1990s. National economies are undoubtedly becoming steadily more integrated as cross-border flows of trade, investment and financial capital increase. Consumers are buying more foreign goods, a growing number of firms now operate across national borders, and savers are investing more than ever before in far-flung places.
Whether all of this is for good or ill is a topic of heated debate. One, positive view is that globalisation is an unmixed blessing, with the potential to boost productivity and living standards everywhere. This is because a globally integrated economy can lead to a better division of labour between countries, allowing low-wage countries to specialise in labour-intensive tasks while high-wage countries use workers in more productive ways. It will allow firms to exploit bigger economies of scale. And with globalisation, capital can be shifted to whatever country offers the most productive investment opportunities, not trapped at home financing projects with poor returns.
Critics of globalisation take a gloomier view. They predict that increased competition from low-wage developing countries will destroy jobs and push down wages in today's rich economies. There will be a “race to the bottom” as countries reduce wages, taxes, welfare benefits and environmental controls to make themselves more “competitive”. Pressure to compete will erode the ability of governments to set their own economic policies. The critics also worry about the increased power of financial markets to cause economic havoc, as in the European currency crises of 1992 and 1993, Mexico in 1994-95 and South-East Asia in 1997.

In this section

The aim of this series of schools briefs is to look in detail at these controversial arguments on each side of the globalisation debate. But it is necessary first of all to examine what precisely is meant by globalisation, how far it has proceeded, and whether the phenomenon is as new as it is generally held out to be. Some of the answers are surprising.

Old news

Despite much loose talk about the “new” global economy, today's international economic integration is not unprecedented. The 50 years before the first world war saw large cross-border flows of goods, capital and people. That period of globalisation, like the present one, was driven by reductions in trade barriers and by sharp falls in transport costs, thanks to the development of railways and steamships. The present surge of globalisation is in a way a resumption of that previous trend.
That earlier attempt at globalisation ended abruptly with the first world war, after which the world moved into a period of fierce trade protectionism and tight restrictions on capital movement. During the early 1930s, America sharply increased its tariffs, and other countries retaliated, making the Great Depression even greater. The volume of world trade fell sharply. International capital flows virtually dried up in the inter-war period as governments imposed capital controls to try to insulate their economies from the impact of a global slump.
Capital controls were maintained after the second world war, as the victors decided to keep their exchange rates fixed—an arrangement known as the Bretton Woods system, after the American town in which it was approved. But the big economic powers also agreed that reducing trade barriers was vital to recovery. They set up the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which organised a series of negotiations that gradually reduced import tariffs. GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995. Trade flourished.
In the early 1970s, the Bretton Woods system collapsed and currencies were allowed to “float” against one another at whatever rates the markets set. This signalled the rebirth of the global capital market. America and Germany quickly stopped trying to control the inflow and outflow of capital. Britain abolished capital controls in 1979 and Japan (mostly) in 1980. However, France and Italy did not abandon the last of their restrictions on cross-border investment until 1990. This is part of the reason why continental Europeans tend to worry more about the power of global capital markets: America has been exposed to them for much longer.
Two forces have been driving these increased flows of goods and money. The first is technology. With the costs of communication and computing falling rapidly, the natural barriers of time and space that separate national markets have been falling too. The cost of a three-minute telephone call between New York and London has fallen from $300 (in 1996 dollars) in 1930 to $1 today. The cost of computer processing power has been falling by an average of 30% a year in real terms over the past couple of decades (see chart 1).

The second driving force has been liberalisation. As a result of both the GATT negotiations and unilateral decisions, almost all countries have lowered barriers to foreign trade. Most countries have welcomed international capital as well.

Although liberalisation has proceeded at different speeds in different places, the trend is worldwide. Only a handful of renegades still try to isolate themselves. Over the past decade, trade has increased twice as fast as output, foreign direct investment three times as fast and cross-border trade in shares ten times as fast (see chart 2).
The trend towards globalisation is clear. But its extent can be exaggerated. Consider in turn the markets for products, capital and workers.

One measure of the extent to which product markets are integrated is the ratio of trade to output. This has increased sharply in most countries since 1950. But by this measure Britain and France are only slightly more open to trade today than they were in 1913, while Japan is less open now than then (see chart 3).
Another gauge of the degree of product-market integration is the extent to which prices converge across countries. In theory, free trade should push prices together as competition forces high-cost producers to lower their prices. Studies show, however, that large divergences in price often persist for long periods. Laptop computers and Levi's jeans, for example, are consistently cheaper in America than in Europe or Japan. This reflects a variety of factors, including tastes, transport costs, differences in taxes and inefficient distribution networks. But some of the difference is due to the persistence of import barriers.
Product markets are still nowhere near as integrated across borders as they are within nations. Consider the example of trade between the United States and Canada, one of the least restricted trading borders in the world. On average, trade between a Canadian province and an American state is 20 times smaller than domestic trade between two Canadian provinces, after adjusting for distance and income levels. For all the talk about a single market, the Canadian and American markets remain substantially segmented from one another. For other countries this is truer still.
The financial markets are not yet truly integrated either. Despite the newfound popularity of international investing, capital markets were by some measures more integrated at the start of this century than they are now. During the 30 years before the first world war, when most currencies were tied to gold, huge sums flooded from Western Europe into North America, Argentina and Australia. The net outflow of capital from Britain (ie, its current-account surplus) averaged 5% of GDP over the period 1880-1913, reaching almost 10% of GDP at its peak. In comparison, Japan's notoriously “excessive” current-account surplus has averaged only 2-3% of GDP over the past decade.

Foreign direct investment, involving control of businesses or property across national borders, is no new phenomenon either. Today, it equals about 6% of the total domestic investment of rich economies. In the decade before 1914, by contrast, direct investments of British capitalists abroad were almost as big as their direct investments at home. Chart 4 shows that European countries' stocks of outward direct investment are much smaller in relation to their GDPs than in 1914.

Home work

While product and capital markets have become increasingly integrated, labour markets have not. Tens of millions of people currently work outside their home countries. Yet labour is less mobile than it was in the second half of the 19th century, when some 60m people left Europe for the New World. Even within the European Union, which gives citizens of any member state the right to work and live in any other, only a small proportion of workers ventures across national borders. Language, cultural barriers, and incompatible educational and professional qualifications all combine to keep labour markets national.
This does not mean that globalisation is just a myth. In some new and different ways the world economy is becoming more internationally integrated than it was at the turn of the century.
For one thing, large parts of the world did not participate in the pre-1914 global economy. Today, more economies than ever before have opened their borders to trade and investment. Not only developed countries, but developing countries in Asia and Latin America have embraced market-friendly reforms.
A second difference is that whereas 19th-century global-isation was driven by falling transport costs, it is now being driven by plunging communication costs. This has created new ways to organise firms at a global level, with closer international integration than in the past.
Cheap and efficient communication networks allow firms to locate different parts of their production process in different countries while remaining in close contact. Modern information technology also reduces the need for physical contact between producers and consumers and therefore allows some previously untradable services to be traded. Any activity that can be conducted on a screen or over the telephone, from writing software to selling airline tickets, can be carried out anywhere in world, linked to head office by satellite and computer. Even medical advice or education can now be sold at a distance over telecoms networks.
A third difference is that although net flows of global capital may be smaller than in the past, gross international financial flows are much bigger. For example, daily foreign-exchange turnover has increased from $15 billion in 1973 to $1.2 trillion in 1995. Cross-border sales and purchases of bonds and equities by American investors have risen from the equivalent of 9% of GDP in 1980 to 164% in 1996.
As yet, the world economy is still far from being genuinely integrated. In future, however, new technology is likely to encourage further integration. The Internet and its companion technologies, for example, are expected to help to make markets more transparent, allowing buyers and sellers to compare prices in different countries. Telecommunication prices will fall even more sharply over the next decade.
So technology will continue to power the globalisation train. This poses a challenge for governments. By allowing more efficient use of world resources, globalisation should boost average incomes. However, the costs and the benefits will be unevenly distributed. Many people—notably unskilled manufacturing workers in rich economies—will find the demand for their labour falling as the jobs they used to do are performed more cheaply abroad. This raises the risk of a political backlash against free trade and capital flows.
Could the trend towards globalisation be reversed a second time? Doing so might be more difficult than before. New technology and new types of financial instruments make it tricky for governments to impose effective capital controls. Likewise, the growth of multinational firms that can switch production from one country to another would make it harder to erect effective trade barriers.
New technology also creates distribution channels that protectionist governments will find it hard to block. A French government that wanted to shelter its film industry from American competition by restricting imports may find it impossible to stop foreign films being beamed by satellite or passed over the Internet. Foreign films will be able to squeeze through electronic windows that cannot be closed.
Another reason to suppose that globalisation is more durable this time around is that free trade is built upon firmer institutional foundations than earlier in this century. At that time, free trade proceeded largely through bilateral treaties rather than multilateral institutions such as the WTO. Withdrawal from the WTO would not be done lightly.
Nonetheless, past experience shows how quickly faith in markets and openness can be overwhelmed by big economic shocks, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Faced with another severe downturn, some governments may still be foolish enough to try to use protectionism and capital controls to shield workers and firms from global forces. That would also shield economies from powerful sources of growth.

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On the brink of a new age of rage

Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage. The Spanish unions have postponed a general strike; the bloody barricades and the red shirts might have been in Bangkok not Berlin; and, for the moment, the British coalition leaders sit side by side on the front bench like honeymooners canoodling on the porch; but in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage. Historians will tell you there is often a time-lag between the onset of economic disaster and the accumulation of social fury. In act one, the shock of a crisis initially triggers fearful disorientation; the rush for political saviours; instinctive responses of self-protection, but not the organised mobilisation of outrage. Whether in 1789 or now, an incoming regime riding the storm gets a fleeting moment to try to contain calamity. If it is seen to be straining every muscle to put things right it can, for a while, generate provisional legitimacy.

Act two is trickier. Objectively, economic conditions might be improving, but perceptions are everything and a breathing space gives room for a dangerously alienated public to take stock of the brutal interruption of their rising expectations. What happened to the march of income, the acquisition of property, the truism that the next generation will live better than the last? The full impact of the overthrow of these assumptions sinks in and engenders a sense of grievance that “Someone Else” must have engineered the common misfortune. The stock epithet the French Revolution gave to the financiers who were blamed for disaster was “rich egoists”. Our own plutocrats may not be headed for the tumbrils but the fact that financial catastrophe, with its effect on the “real” economy, came about through obscure transactions designed to do nothing except produce short-term profit aggravates a sense of social betrayal. At this point, damage-control means pillorying the perpetrators: bringing them to book and extracting statements of contrition. This is why the psychological impact of financial regulation is almost as critical as its institutional prophylactics. Those who lobby against it risk jeopardising their own long-term interests. Should governments fail to reassert the integrity of public stewardship, suspicions will emerge that, for all the talk of new beginnings, the perps and new regime are cut from common cloth. Both risk being shredded by popular ire or outbid by more dangerous tribunes of indignation.

At the very least, the survival of a crisis demands ensuring that the fiscal pain is equitably distributed. In the France of 1789, the erstwhile nobility became regular citizens, ended their exemption from the land tax, made a show of abolishing their own privileges, turned in jewellery for the public treasury; while the clergy’s immense estates were auctioned for La Nation. It is too much to expect a bonfire of the bling but in 2010 a pragmatic steward of the nation’s economy needs to beware relying unduly on regressive indirect taxes, especially if levied to impress a bond market with which regular folk feel little connection. At the very least, any emergency budget needs to take stock of this raw sense of popular victimisation and deliver a convincing story about the sharing of burdens. To do otherwise is to guarantee that a bad situation gets very ugly, very fast.

So we face a tinderbox moment:, a test of the strength of democratic institutions in a time of extreme fiscal stress. On the one hand, we should be glad that the mobilisation of public energy in elections can channel mass unhappiness into change. That is what we must believe could yet happen in Britain. Elsewhere the outlook is more forbidding. In the sinkhole that is the eurozone, animus is directed at unelected bodies – the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – and is bound to build on itself. Those on the receiving end of punitive corrections – in public sector wages or retrenched social institutions – will lash out at their remote masters. Those in the richer north, obliged to subsidise what they take to be the fecklessness of the Latins, will come to see not just the single currency but the European project as an historic error and will pine for the mark or franc. Chauvinist movements will be reborn, directed at immigrants and Brussels diktats, with more destructive fury than we have seen since the war.

The same kind of pre-lapsarian romanticism targeted at an elitist federal authority is raging through the US like a fever. The best way to understand the Tea Party, which has just scored its first victory with the libertarian Rand Paul defeating the choice of the official Republican party, is to see it as akin to the Great Awakenings and the Populist furies of the end of the 19th century. There are calls to abolish the Federal Reserve or in some cases Social Security, fuelled by the conspiratorial belief that it was an excess, not a deficit, of government regulation that brought on the financial meltdown. Claims that Washington has been captured for socialism are preached on rightwing talk radio as gospel truth. As they did in the 1930s with Father Coughlin, the radio demonisers are pitch-perfect orchestrators of hatred for listeners in bewildered economic distress.

Against this tide, facts are feeble. When Senate Republicans succeed in briefly blocking financial regulation by representing it as an infringement on liberty rather than as a measure minimally needed for the security of the commonwealth, you know the truth needs help from the Presidential Communicator-in-Chief. He is back on the stump, but as with the case for healthcare reform, his efforts are belated and cramped by misplaced obligations of civility. But if his government is to survive the November elections with a shred of authority, it will need Barack Obama to be more than a head tutor. It will need him to be a warrior of the word every bit as combative as the army of the righteous that believes it has the constitution on its side, and in its inchoate thrashings can yet bring down the governance of the American Republic.

 By Simon Schama

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