#geog2

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We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – [Robert] Clive.

William Dalrymple, “The East India Company: The Original Corporate Raiders,” The Guardian (4 March 2015)

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Language is fun.

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Haber, the anti-hero of this awful, riveting story, embodied in his own life the two-faced, Janus-like nature of modern science, providing unimagined advances in prosperity and health on the one hand, and inconceivable tools to inflict suffering and evil on the other.

Martin Sieff, on the legacy of Fritz Haber, the German Nobel-laureate chemist whose work made possible both the prolific human life and death of the 20th Century. "Seven Billion Humans: The World Fritz Haber Made," The Globalist (2 November 2011)

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Immigration is, on the whole, good for economies; and right now, rich countries can do with all the economic help they can get. Rather than sending immigrants home, with their skills, energy, ideas and willingness to work, governments should be encouraging them to come. If they don’t, governments elsewhere will.

The Economist makes the case for immigration. I, for one, wholeheartedly agree and find anti-immigrant attitudes in the more affluent regions of the world to be a prime example of looking the gift horse in the mouth.

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Ian Goldin and Geoffrey Cameron, of the University of Oxford, summarize their case for immigration. It's an even-handed, fair-minded commentary on both the benefits and the costs to receiving societies. One big political challenge is that those benefits tend to accrue in a geographically diffuse pattern over a relatively long period of time, while the costs tend to be borne more acutely and immediately in particular locales.

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As reported today by, among others, South Africa's Mail and Guardian, McDonald's experimental introduction of the "McFalafel" to Israel is over.

Other than the fact that McFalafel rhymes with "sounds awful", I suspect this failure demonstrates a fundamental limit to "glocalization", the rather akward label for customizations of a global product or brand to better fit the tastes and traditions of a local market. Specifically, it's difficult to glocalize a national icon within its own home market. Why would Israelis, after all, choose a McDonald's version of the falafel (see below) over the abundantly available real thing? The whole point of visiting the Golden Arches is to experience a taste of the modern American global, not a sad corporate imitation of a traditional local staple. 

Glocalization that works takes a global idea and modifies it to be a little less "foreign". For example, the now-famous "California" sushi roll took something seen as exotic by an American audience and made it a bit more approachable by replacing the raw tuna with avocado and hiding the "nori" seaweed on the inside. McDonald's failed falafel experiment tried to do the opposite: rather than localize the global, it sought to globalize the local. Unless you're really creative and breathe some exciting new life into a beloved, but perhaps a bit stale, classic, that's always going to be a tough sell. McDonald's much more successful McArabia sandwich, by the way, follows more closely the California-roll model, as it's essentially an American hamburger, but featuring a spiced Kofte patty rather than plain ground beef and served on Middle Eastern flatbread instead of a conventional leavened bun.

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Earlier this week, South Sudan became the world's newest sovereign state (i.e., independent country), as recognized by the United States and the rest of the global community. Along with the 192 current members of the United Nations, Kosovo, and the Holy See (i.e, the Vatican), South Sudan brings the official, recognized count of countries to 195. UN membership for South Sudan appears to be just a formality at this point, while Kosovo's application is still blocked by Russian veto; indeed, fewer than half of the world's countries (but significantly including the U.S. and most of the EU states) recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia. As for the Holy See, it is a unique historical sovereignty—global headquarters for the Roman Catholic church—and thus not a modern "national" state appropriate for membership in the UN.

All of this is just background, though, to the main purpose of this link: a wonderful new interactive graphic from the Guardian of Africa's dynamic political geography over the last 100-plus years. It is as good a cartographic primer on Africa's changing geography of colonialism and nationalism as you'll find. Below is just a sample: where the story begins.

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The modern economy utterly depends upon credit, whether it's to allow individual students and households acquire an education or a home, an entrepreneur or large company to finance the creation or expansion of a business, or a sovereign state or other public entity (school district, county, etc.) to build infrastructure and/or provide social services. When flows of credit dry up, economic life dessicates, too.

All macroeconomic crises are credit crises to one degree or another. Never has this been more obvious than during the extended "recession" in which the world—particularly North America and Europe—has been mired for several years. Mortgaged home owners "underwater" and facing imminent foreclosure. Students saddled with debt that they'll be repaying long after graduation day. The State of California, like most of its peers in the USA, stuck in a repeating "Groundhog Day" loop of perennial impending budget disaster. The list of credit crunches goes on and on and on.

And then there is Greece. Sure, Spain, Ireland, perhaps even Italy sometime soon: these Euro-zone governments face some pretty daunting fiscal challenges themselves—and the United States isn't exactly a model of sustainable public finance either. But no sovereign debt crisis is as salient right now as Greece's, to the point that investors around the world effectively expect its government to go bankrupt; already agencies such as Standard and Poor's and Moody's have lowered their credit ratings of Greece to "junk bond" levels. This isn't good, and it threatens not just the Euro monetary zone but could send shockwaves through the entire global economy. All of this makes for very depressing summer reading, the source of much hand wringing and finger pointing among leaders and pundits, as well as for some very understandable anger on the streets of Athens and other Greek cities.

It is indeed very hard not to be pessimistic about our economic prospects. And that's the catch. As FDR famously reminded us during the depths of the Great(est) Depression, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Credit is a funny and fickle thing, prone as it is to self-fulfilling prophecies. Optimism can snowball into "irrational exuberance" and create enormous bubbles of wealth and overconsumption. An infectious pessimism, though, can melt that snowball—burst that bubble—no less quickly as interest rates spike, revenues collapse, and opportunities to restructure/refinance debt disappear.

No, we can't simply "hope" our way out of the current economic crisis. Like any good hangover, this is a time for sober reflection upon our earlier excesses—reflection that informs sincere reforms to the way we generate and spend money. But if Greece (or California, or the USA) is to be saved, as the esteemed Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs argues, it will be through leadership and policy founded upon a committed and confident optimism that dares to promise—sincerely promise—what most don't presently believe possible: Greece can and will pay off its debt, especially if stronger nations pledge their support and thus hold back the economic vultures poised to feed on and profit from our pessimism.