DNE Videocast - March 11, 2011

Yet another comments experiment

I thought it might be worth a shot to try the Disqus system.

Play around.  See if it's any good.

Thanks.

Why the world needs virtuous autocrats

Why the world needs virtuous autocrats

Financial Times (UK). [Op-Ed]. Robert Kaplan 03/03/2011.

Analysis is built on distinctions. And in these times of upheaval in the Arab world, distinctions are being lost. All autocrats are not bad, as some neoconservatives are proclaiming, and should not be overthrown. The moral differences between one dictator and another are as vast as those between dictators and democrats. There is such a thing as a benevolent dictator - and we should not turn our back on all those that remain.

Vision, perceived legitimacy, the existence of a social contract and the ability to make society more institutionally complex - and thus ready for more freedom - are the distinguishing characteristics of good dictators. Libya's Muammer Gaddafi, for example, is not remotely in the same category as Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Sa'id, whose kingdom has seen violent youth demonstrations in recent days. Egypt's former Brezhnevite dictator Hosni Mubarak should not be compared to Jordan's energetic King Abdullah.

Oman's Sultan Qaboos has built roads and schools throughout the rural interior, advanced the status of women and protected the environment. He governs with a vision similar to that of many erstwhile Asian dictators such as China's Deng Xiaoping, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's more problematic Mahathir Mohamad, who lifted their societies out of poverty and made them aspiring middle-class dynamos. Like the monarchs of Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, Sultan Qaboos's legitimacy is also built on royal tradition - which cannot be said of the security heavies of north African police states, who utterly lacked tradition and were equally void of vision.

This legitimacy depends on a social contract that treats the population as citizens rather than subjects, and has as its primary goal the economic and social advancement of society. China's leaders know they must generate at least 7 per cent economic growth per year to avoid widespread unrest. Yet even if they do, the social contract peters out as the society advances: citizens, and especially the young, demand political freedoms to go along with their economic liberty.

For this reason the restive youth of China and Oman are different from those of north Africa. They have been conditioned to expect more and more from their rulers: thus when their rulers cannot quite deliver, they rebel. In Tunisia and Egypt the youth have rebelled because they have been conditioned to accept less and less, and have waited patiently for a moment of weakness in the palace in order to unleash their fury.

Libya, of course, represents a level of megalomania and social pulverisation straight out of antiquity that has few recent parallels. Colonel Gaddafi built no institutions, whereas benevolent despots do. In the Gulf states ministries work. In Tunisia and Egypt they work, albeit not as well. In Libya they barely exist. As the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington noted in the 1960s, the more complex a society is, the more institutions are needed to govern it. The dictator's job should be to make society more hierarchically complex, so that various economic classes emerge and citizens can climb from one level to the next. Development and the advancement of personal freedoms do this.

But the very success of a benevolent dictator - his abjuration of tyranny - indicates his own eventual downfall. Political freedoms must accompany a certain level of social complexity. A dictator's only respite from tragedy at the end of a successful reign is to see his people move beyond his rule without chaos ensuing. He is unlikely to get credit in his lifetime. It is only now being recognised in Indonesia that the long-standing late dictator Suharto helped to prepare his country for a decade of successful democracy. He was corrupt, but his rule was not without benefit for his people.

Sultan Qaboos must realise that in advancing Oman's social complexity as he has, the crowning jewel of his rule would be a modicum of real democracy. If he can appease the demonstrators by doing that, he could emerge as the Arab world's Lee, who brought Singapore from African levels of development into the first world. At a moment of democratic upheaval, such a thought seems out of fashion. But as the present rapture passes, it will become apparent that defeating tyranny is about much more than holding elections.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

Dinking around some more

Just trying to see if the changes I just made will only appear on a new thread...

Intense Debate experiment, Mark II

Since the spam folder is still irritating as shit but I'm having a difficult time emotionally with the notion of leaving "home", I thought I'd run this little Intense Debate experiment again.  ID is a Wordpress thingie, so I'm thinking it should give us the reliability of Wordpress commenting without leaving here?  Let's see.  Click on this post's headline to get to the comments.

The Group 'Interview'

Well, first off, it was not an interview.  The waiting room already contained 15 or so young people.  A couple of them nervously chatted, between uncomfortable silences - I work for Tescos, I work for Sainsburys, I just graduated…

We then file up to a large meeting/ lecture room; there are about 50 seats. After a further wait of 10 minutes 30 are occupied. Mostly young people; 2 of Indian extraction - male & female, 2 black guys (1 of whom shortly reveals he has 3 years exp at Sainsbury’s and an MBA from Napier), 80% are 20 – 25 years old, I’m probably the oldest there (cough41). Gent’s dress varies from suited and booted to black jeans, brown shoes and a jumper. The ladies similarly vary from sloppy coats, boots and scarves to power suits and stilettos.

A very tall guy, shirt and tie, sans jacket, strides confidently to the front of the room, he is followed by a younger man, shorter and wearing spectacles.  The tall man has a stripy tie, the shorter fellow sports a pale lilac one, and after introductions the tall chap outlines the nature of the presentation. Both are in their mid thirties.

There will be no assessments today, no questions or tests, numerical, keyboard or psychometric, this lecture is for information purposes, to let you see, and hopefully understand that we do things differently, I’m not saying my colleague or my self are better people than anyone who doesn’t fit with our organisation, just that we are different. We think that you must be a certain sort of person to work for us, but also that we can teach anyone to be that sort of person.

First we are all asked to say our names, where we have come from and what our current jobs are.   Everyone has supermarket/retail experience from 6 months part time as a student to 3- 5 years managerial. Many are recent graduates, business management, IT, information’s systems, retail management, BA’s and masters.

Tallman asks us what we know about the org. Many facts and figures are proffered.  All out off date we are assured, many more stores, a whole extra country, growth is our strength. A, b, c keep it simple, x, y, z, “..and something we call Productivity…” said with loving capital letter and the air of an intimated sexual suggestion by the seated shorter man. In fact,  Tallman moves along, we have a short film that explains many of the unique facets of our glorious firms modus operandi. 

It was about here my eyes started to glaze over.  A film with budget advert production values and a cast of ‘volunteered’ employees explaining the basics of bulk discounting and centralised decision making/planning/systems follows. I miss a lot of this as I’m boggling that they are blatantly using the theme tune from a major TV series as the inspirational music, the sample is less than 20 seconds, perhaps this is how they get away with it?

So, different, efficient, flexible (you need to be, we aren’t at all) lets get down to a typical day.  Starting at 7am, you, perhaps with up to two teammates, but mostly you will stock the shop.  Two pallets of veg, freezer cabinets, ambient, food, drink, household and special promotional lines, all must be transferred from their cages in the warehouse to the store.  In less than an hour you must charge the tills, and have the doors open to receive your first customers, where other operations have a cash manager, a produce supervisor, a personnel officer, here you take on each of those roles as necessary, in the same way that within half an hour you may take on the mantle of complaints tsar, till jockey, shelf stacker and toilet cleaner. The seated, lilac tie one tells how he regularly cleaned the toilet at his store, a fact, he assures us, that rocks other supermarket managers, wide eyed, in their seats.

After providing cover for lunches, monitoring stock levels on the floor and compiling orders it’s time to replenish the shelves and begin checking for short dated produce, of which there will be very little, thanks to our automated stock system, this wonder of the 1980s achieves such a level of refinement in a Europe wide offering, the same baked beans or smoked squid from Portugal to Greece, the same store layout, and themed week, from  Italy to Norway.

Tallman admits that sometimes his words tumble over themselves, such is the speed with which he seizes each second as an opportunity to serve the organisation that took him under it’s wing a mere decade and a half ago, although the time passes so quickly it barely seems like six months.

Has anyone heard negative reports of working with us? The seated one manages to interject, Tallman echoes the question.  Someone mentions a story they have seen in Wikipedia. Tallman smirks and acknowledges the story and others, ‘Plenty to read on the Internet.’ is accompanied by what in a mortal could almost be interpreted as a genuine smile, and it lasts perhaps 0.02 seconds.

All long in the past. Tallman admits that it used to be about the most willing to work 100 hour weeks becoming the shining stars, with many falling along the way, that staff turnover was way over 100%, but that has been addressed by head office and now everyone works a set 47 hour week, although the vaunted flexibility expected from all members of the team, means that you might have to cover sickness and holidays, hours over 53 a week will be offset with time in lieu. I think that was the deal, Tallman’s spiel was now tumbling from his lips with the starry eyed zeal of a true fanatic, and accelerating towards unintelligibility.

The questions peter out, it seems the bases have been covered, the 47 hour week is implemented in five 11 hour shifts, with unpaid breaks (subject to availability and team cohesion, and productivity).  Potentially plus six hours unpaid overtime - flexibility, productivity. It is hard physical labour, less manager, more gang master, running a cash rich business for a German trust fund, all the profits are reinvested, mostly to fuel the organisation’s expansion.  There were hints that the company makes considerable profits from interest on cash holdings.  And it was blatantly underlined that the speed of the distribution system and the muscle of the massive buying power meant that a cabbage, say, that was in a field yesterday could be sold tomorrow, money in the bank, but the farmer won’t be paid for 90 days…

Tallman’s final words return to his first statements, this is a hard physical job, it is five 11 hour days, days off are 2 out of seven, could be Mon & Wed more likely than Sat & Sun, it is not for everyone, and 25% he predicts will not take up the offer of a second interview.  I’ll be in that quarter.

Debunking the Islamisation Myth - Edmund Standing

Am putting up a link to this paper as it's well worth a read. Preface to the paper below.

I am an atheist, a secularist, and an anti-fascist. I have no interest in defending Islamic religious

beliefs, nor the Qur’an (quite the opposite, in fact). I also have no time for those who seek to

understand’ Islamism or downplay the abhorrent nature of religious fascism. That said, I am also

committed to a rational and just approach to my fellow human beings, seeking to treat them in the

same way, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and so on. To think Islam as a set

of beliefs is false and potentially dangerous is not the same thing at all as thinking that all Muslims

are inherently dangerous or that I should view them as qualitatively different to other human

beings.

In the post-9/11 West, we have seen the worrying growth of a paranoid, bigoted approach to

Muslims which increasingly views them as an undifferentiated mass, as an inherent Other, and as a

powerful fifth column conspiring to destroy the West and enslave it to Sharia law. This approach to

Muslims shares much in common with the approach to Jews found amongst those who believe the

Protocols of Zion is an authentic document, and the ‘Islamisation’ myth is increasingly looking like

a Muslim-themed variant of Protocols belief.

In Britain, militant anti-Muslim bigotry has now reared its head in the form of the English Defence

League, an organisation founded with the explicit aim of combating ‘Islamisation’. The EDL is an

organisation that has been set up to fight a mythical enemy and, in failing to find this enemy, it

seems inevitable that the next phase of the campaign will be to target Muslims as a whole, and

there are strong indications that this is already happening. The ‘Islamisation’ myth, then, urgently

needs debunking, and this report is my contribution to that effort.