UK is a haven for foreign capital and this artificially drives up the value of the Pound Sterling

UK is a haven for foreign capital and this artificially drives up the value of the Pound Sterling.

Global imbalances: What role for the WTO?

Juan A. Marchetti, Michele Ruta, Robert Teh, 2 January 2013

Globally, large current account imbalances prevail. This column argues that they also continue to represent a systemic risk for the world economy. The WTO has a clear-cut role in the institutional effort to address these imbalances. However, this role has more to do with opening services and government procurement markets than with the often invoked trade sanctions in response to exchange rate misalignments.

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printThe world witnessed a large build-up of current account and merchandise trade imbalances, both in absolute and relative terms, prior to the global financial and economic crisis (see Table 1 and Figure 1). Current account/merchandise trade surpluses were most pronounced among the East Asian economies (e.g. China), oil exporters (e.g. Saudi Arabia) and the ‘core’ Eurozone countries (e.g. Germany). The US and the Eurozone periphery countries had large and persistent deficits. While imbalances contracted after the crisis, they remained large both in absolute terms and in relation to GDP. Even after falling from its peak in 2007, the US merchandise trade deficit amounted to $783 billion in 2011, about 5% of its GDP.

Table 1 Current account balance, selected countries: 2000-11

Source: World Economic Outlook Database (October 2012).

Figure 1 Global merchandise trade balances, 2007

Complexity and failures in global governance

A number of papers have linked these large imbalances to misaligned exchange rates – i.e., exchange rates that are above or below their equilibrium level – and proposed the use of WTO sanctions as a deterrent (Hufbauer et al. 2006, Matoo and Subramaniam 2009, Goldstein 2010). We have a more nuanced take on the issues than these authors (Marchetti, Ruta and Teh 2012).

• The relationship between exchange rates and the trade balance is far more complex than assumed in these papers.
• The persistence of the imbalances is a manifestation of a failure in global governance on a range of policy issues beyond exchange rate policy – macroeconomic, financial, and structural.
• While we agree with other authors that the WTO has a role to play in global rebalancing, we see the WTO's role rather differently.

The WTO can help reduce imbalances through greater market opening in services trade and government procurement – an issue often overlooked in the current debate. Services liberalisation could help address some of the structural factors contributing to the build-up of current account surpluses. In addition, many of the countries with large merchandise trade deficits, which have obtained the lion’s share of attention, also have significant surpluses in services trade (see Table 2). These countries can move towards greater rebalancing if given better market access in services. Moreover, investment in infrastructures, a key priority for many emerging economies in the years ahead, will represent an opportunity for rebalancing as long as increasing public spending may be accompanied by opening up government procurement markets (see Jensen 2012).

On the other hand, the often invoked WTO-triggered sanctions can be a meaningful tool for rebalancing only on condition that there is international cooperation to deal with all the contributing factors to the imbalances. We do not believe, however, that trade sanctions alone would compensate for the weaknesses in global governance in macroeconomic, exchange rate and structural policies¹.

Table 2 Services trade balance, selected countries: 2007-11

Source: WTO Secretariat and World Economic Outlook Database (October 2012).
Note: Based on balance of payments data.

What is the problem with global imbalances?

Imbalances reflect international differences in aggregate savings and investment behaviour. In the absence of market imperfections and distortions, they allow a more efficient allocation of savings globally. However, some of the identified causes of the imbalances leading up to the crisis appeared to mirror imperfections and distortions that had built up in both surplus and deficit countries. These include financial repression and poorly regulated financial markets; weak social safety nets; inflexible product, services and factor markets; large fiscal deficits; and exchange rate misalignment.

These imbalances created systemic risk in the global economy by leading to low interest rates and to large capital inflows into US and European banks, which in turn contributed to a search for yield, higher leverage, and the creation of riskier assets. Should the financial flows associated with current account imbalances suddenly reverse course, economies with large deficits will suffer disorderly currency depreciations, and financial sectors might also struggle to efficiently absorb the financial inflows that are the counterpart to the current account imbalance (Blanchard and Milesi-Ferretti 2009).

This analysis implies that the economic conditions that bred the imbalances need to be unwound. Furthermore, the existence of systemic risks means that individual countries may not be fully taking into account the cost of the distortions nor the benefits from rebalancing, which means that any solution will require international cooperation.

The role of multilateral trade cooperation

The WTO's market opening efforts in services, especially in the area of financial services, and in government procurement can contribute to rebalance the global economy by reducing policy-related distortions and market imperfections in surplus countries and by providing better market access to deficit countries.

Let us give few examples.

• In the case of China, the WTO can provide a suitable forum for ending financial repression by negotiating and implementing financial sector reforms, in particular those dealing with the elimination of market access barriers (e.g. foreign ownership restrictions, limitations on business scope) and the creation of a level playing field between domestic and foreign financial service suppliers.
• With respect to Germany, a broad reform agenda, for services and for the financial sector in particular, could improve productivity growth in the services sector and enhance incentives to invest, increasing potential output and income and thus consumption.
• For Saudi Arabia, opening its domestic procurement market, combined with increased public spending, could increase imports (while ensuring at the same time an efficient allocation of public sector's resources), thus helping reduce the current account surplus.

While currency misalignments can have trade effects and, therefore, affect the rebalancing of the global economy (Auboin and Ruta 2011), the current debate on the role of the WTO dispute resolution in these matters seems to miss an important point on the nature of exchange rates. Currency misalignments are caused by a multiplicity of factors. For example, while both high foreign reserve accumulation and aggregate savings may lead to currency undervaluation, there is an essential difference between the two causes of the misalignment. The first is a policy action under the direct control of the monetary authority, while excess savings are influenced by structural conditions (such as the lack of adequate social security) that a policymaker can only change in the medium term. More importantly, correcting these macroeconomic and structural distortions uniquely through the multilateral trade system does not seem efficient from a global governance perspective.

The simple reason is that the root cause of such distortions is not trade itself. Rather, trade is simply the channel through which distortions spill-over into other countries.

The need for a broader approach

In our view, the first-best solution would be a broad international effort to coordinate macroeconomic, exchange rate and structural policies to deal with the causes of imbalances. All the policies, regulatory weaknesses and structural features that created the imbalances need to be examined. Both surplus and deficit countries need to contribute to rebalancing. While steps have been taken in the context of the G20 to identify and monitor policies that are at the root of imbalances, the failure of international cooperation so far to systematically address these problem areas reflects a ‘coherence gap’ in global governance. In the context of a broad system of rules to address imbalances, a general efficiency argument could be made for the use of sanctions to enforce cooperative behaviour. WTO-triggered trade actions on exchange rate misalignment could be one tool in this enforcement toolkit. But other tools, i.e. non-trade sanctions, need to be there as well so that enforcement is made more effective. Examples include the idea of taxes on new debt or on all new financial instruments issued by deficit countries who fail to take steps to rebalance (Krueger 2010) or financial penalties along the lines of those envisaged in the EU for surplus and deficit countries.

Operationalising WTO sanctions may require negotiations to develop a new rule or to clarify and strengthen existing ones. This is because, while there are existing GATT and GATS rules on balance of payments and exchange action, they have seldom been invoked and there is very little jurisprudence about them. Some attribute this to the legal ‘vagueness’ of the provisions (Hufbauer et al. 2006). This may explain in part why members have resorted to ‘ad hoc’ measures (e.g. anti-dumping, safeguards and countervailing duties) whose use appears to be closely linked with episodes of real exchange rate appreciation (Knetter and Prusa 2003, Bown and Crowley 2012). However, these are imperfect substitutes for an efficient exchange rate rule because other conditions are required to invoke them (e.g. the existence of dumping and subsidies) and they do not alleviate competitive pressures in third country markets.

Conclusions

To conclude, there exists a first-best policy response to the hazards posed by large and persistent trade imbalances. This first-best response consists of expanding and deepening (multilateral) institutional mechanisms that allow governments to correctly internalise the costs of existing distortions and the benefits from rebalancing. The WTO has a clear-cut role in this international effort, reducing the build-up of surpluses by contributing to making financial markets and government procurement more efficient and by deterring countries from either free-riding or defecting from the cooperative outcome.

Authors’ note: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the institutions with which they are 

....the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), were founded as a compromise that primarily reflected the American vision. There would be no incentives for states to avoid a large trade surplus; instead, the burden for correcting a trade imbalance would continue to fall only on the deficit countries, which Keynes had argued were least able to address the problem without inflicting economic hardship on their populations. John Maynard Keynes 

Increase manufacturing jobs in UK by depreciating the Pound Stering

Britain suffered from high unemployment through most of the 1920s, leading Keynes to recommend the depreciation of sterling to boost jobs by making British exports more affordable.

Because of the unusually high overseas profits of UK financial service businesses, the UK pound is perpetually overvalued and this results in a permanent deficit on our manufactured trade with other countries, and permanent mass unemployment in areas where there is no alternative employment to that of manufacturing.

....the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), were founded as a compromise that primarily reflected the American vision. There would be no incentives for states to avoid a large trade surplus; instead, the burden for correcting a trade imbalance would continue to fall only on the deficit countries, which Keynes had argued were least able to address the problem without inflicting economic hardship on their populations. John Maynard Keynes 

Temperature, skin color, per capita income, and IQ: An international perspective

We correlated mean IQ of 129 countries with per capita income, skin color, and winter and summer temperatures, conceptualizing skin color as a multigenerational reflection of climate. The highest correlations were − 0.92 (rho = − 0.91) for skin color, − 0.76 (rho = − 0.76) for mean high winter temperature, − 0.66 (rho = − 0.68) for mean low winter temperature, and 0.63 (rho = 0.74) for real gross domestic product per capita. The correlations with population of country controlled for are almost identical. Our findings provide strong support for the observation of Lynn and of Rushton that persons in colder climates tend to have higher IQs. These findings could also be viewed as congruent with, although not providing unequivocal evidence for, the contention that higher intelligence evolves in colder climates. The finding of higher IQ in Eurasians than Africans could also be viewed as congruent with the position of Diamond (1997) that knowledge and resources are transmitted more readily on the Eurasian west–east axis.

A big fat lie?

mankind never evolved to eat a diet high in starches or sugars. ''Grain products and concentrated sugars were essentially absent from human nutrition until the invention of agriculture,'' Ludwig says, ''which was only 10,000 years ago.'' This is discussed frequently in the anthropology texts but is mostly absent from the obesity literature, with the prominent exception of the low-carbohydrate-diet books.
What's forgotten in the current controversy is that the low-fat dogma itself is only about 25 years old. Until the late 70's, the accepted wisdom was that fat and protein protected against overeating by making you sated, and that carbohydrates made you fat. In ''The Physiology of Taste,'' for instance, an 1825 discourse considered among the most famous books ever written about food, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes of obesity after 30 years of listening to one ''stout party'' after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice and (from a ''particularly stout party'') potatoes. Brillat-Savarin described the roots of obesity as a natural predisposition conjuncted with the ''floury and feculent substances which man makes the prime ingredients of his daily nourishment.'' He added that the effects of this fecula -- i.e., ''potatoes, grain or any kind of flour'' -- were seen sooner when sugar was added to the diet.
This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats ''have good staying power,'' by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neapolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. ''There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,'' he wrote, ''but the working-class women were fat.''
By the 70's, you could still find articles in the journals describing high rates of obesity in Africa and the Caribbean where diets contained almost exclusively carbohydrates. The common thinking, wrote a former director of the Nutrition Division of the United Nations, was that the ideal diet, one that prevented obesity, snacking and excessive sugar consumption, was a diet ''with plenty of eggs, beef, mutton, chicken, butter and well-cooked vegetables.'' This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825.

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? - New York Times

The Black Book of Communism

The Black Book of Communism

Black Book of Communism

The Black Book of Communism : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

How the Kremlin hijacked Labour: Diary

How the Kremlin hijacked Labour: Diary of a Kremlin insider reveals the hold Soviets had over Labour politicians
By SUE REID
UPDATED: 01:40, 6 November 2009
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The Lancashire blacksmith's son and leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain stood in front of the group of high-flying young Left-wingers at Cambridge University.
Harry Pollitt told them: 'Don't join us. Work hard, get good degrees, join the Establishment and serve our cause from within.'
It was a few years after World War II and they took Pollitt at his word. Within a decade, the Communist Party foundered (its membership peaked at 60,000 in 1945) as Pollitt's bright young devotees infiltrated the Establishment.

East meets West: Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson
They were soon exercising considerable influence in universities, the state education system, publishing houses, the legal hierarchy and the civil service.
But it was in politics that these high-flying members of the Left established their greatest power-base, both in the Labour Party and the trades' union movement.

More...
Hitler, the German football coach and other historical 'facts' according to our schoolchildren
Just how deep the tentacles of communism reached into the heart of British government has now been revealed with the emergence of an extraordinary diary by Anatoly Chernyaev, the Soviet Union's contact man with the West at the icy height of the Cold War.
Meticulously detailed and written by hand on lined notepaper, the diary has come to light in the U.S. National Security Archive.

Michael Foot at the Labour Party headquarters on his first day as leader of the Labour Party in 1980
It tells the story of a 'special relationship' not between Britain and America - but between the British Labour Party and Soviet communists.
It was a relationship that lasted more than 30 years, right up to Margaret Thatcher's arrival as Prime Minister in 1979 and beyond.
Indeed, one of the most shocking of the diary's many revelations is how Labour leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock colluded with the Soviet communists to try to beat their 'common enemy', Margaret Thatcher.
But more worrying, perhaps, is the fact that the document shows in stark detail how the political ideology of so many of those who govern us today was shaped by the unspeakable communist creed of the Soviet Union.
The unpalatable truth is that many ministers in Government today rose through the ranks of a British socialist movement that was heavily influenced - and even controlled - by the Kremlin in Moscow.

Jack Jones before he died in April (left) and at a Labour Party conference (right)
Svetlana Savranskaya, Director of Russia Programmes at the U.S. archive, describes Chernyaev's diary as 'the single most authoritative source on Soviet policy-making in the last 20 years'.
Its explosive contents have only just emerged because the pre-1985 entries remained untranslated until now.
Chernyaev was deputy in the Soviet International Department and later an adviser to President Mikhail Gorbachev. Today, he is 88 and lives in obscurity outside Moscow.
And while many senior members of the Labour Party and union movement will be appalled at his revelations, the old KGB hand himself is delighted his memories are being published.
Transport and General Workers' Union leader Jack Jones - who received effusive praise from Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he died in April this year - was a paid agent for the USSR
Ruefully, he told this week's Spectator magazine, which publishes the diary's contents, that no Russians were interested in his past: 'This great period in the history of our country has been crossed out.'
In Britain, those on the Left who know about the depth of the Soviet influence over this country in the latter half of the 20th century, have maintained an embarrassed silence about this shameful episode in British political history.
Above all, the intimate co-operation between Moscow and the trades unions which nearly brought the country to its knees in the Sixties and Seventies has been an utterly taboo subject.
It is true that tantalising slivers of information have emerged over the years.
As the Mail revealed last month, Transport and General Workers' Union leader Jack Jones - who received effusive praise from Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he died in April this year - was a paid agent for the USSR.

Trade Union leader Jack Jones (right) with his wife and Michael Foot at the Festival Hall. Jones was a paid agent for the USSR
In exchange for information, he used to take cash handouts from his Soviet handler in London, Oleg Gordievsky, even as late as the 1980s.
But this diary reveals that the cosy relationship between the Kremlin and Labour was far more widespread than previously thought - and had been going on for years.
One of the key figures in this murky affair was Ron Hayward, the Labour Party's general secretary between 1972 and 1982, who died in 1996.
He told Chernyaev at meetings in Moscow and London that he was determined to provide a 'genuine socialist government' for Britain.
'To achieve that, he believes he must break the Labour Cabinet,' recorded Chernyaev at the time.
It is clear from the diary that Hayward envisaged a real Soviet-style system in Britain, with the Party General Secretary (ie Hayward himself) - not a Prime Minister selected by MPs - at the very top. He would refer to himself openly as the 'party leader'.
More specifically, he informed the Soviets that he wanted to develop a cadre of young activists to prepare for Communist rule.

Neil Kinnock outside Transport House at the start of his 1987 election campaign
'I am the first Labour leader in British history who is not afraid to come out alongside Communists with the same agenda', he said, boasting that he prepared like-minded young people, put them in the right places and helped them to become prominent.
In 1974, when Harold Wilson was Labour Prime Minister, Hayward smuggled Chernyaev into the heart of the Labour Party conference to try to spread the Kremlin's influence still further.
Some of those in the conference hall recognised the Russian - but did not dare admit it. Chernyaev records in his diary how he and Hayward ran into Edward Short, the Labour Party deputy leader who had been with a Labour delegation to Moscow the year before.
'He stared at us for a moment,' Chernyaev writes in the diary, 'then he pretended he did not see us. That is very English. Apparently, he instantly guessed these were Hayward's games.'
Games, of course, they were not. In those years, the Labour Party was tightly controlled (and largely financed) by its affiliated trades unions, which chose dozens of candidates for safe Labour seats.
And it was in the unions where Chernyaev's International Department aimed to infiltrate the deepest.

Leonid Brezhnev pictured (centre) on the rostrum of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow in 1972. Foot later referred to him as 'Comrade Brezhnev'
The regular to-ing and fro-ing between union leaders and Moscow was commonplace - even in 1980 after Mrs Thatcher's Tories were in Government.
That year, the diary says, the TGWU's deputy leader Alec Kitson turned up drunkenly at a meeting with Chernyaev in the Russian capital. He had been drinking with his Soviet trade union counterparts for hours beforehand.
'There was a f*** in every sentence that came out of Kitson's mouth,' the diary records.
But when Kitson sobered up, he and Chernyaev concocted a plan to send a team of Russians to the Scottish TUC conference 'to deliver the Soviet point of view'.
They arranged another brainwashing session with union leaders in London. Later in 1980, in Blackpool in October, Chernyaev openly attended a TGWU-sponsored drinks reception on the eve of the Labour Party conference.
The diary says that Jenny Little, then secretary of the international group of the Labour's National Executive Committee, which oversees policy-making, played a pivotal role in Chernyaev's extraordinary access.
It is clear from the diary that Ron Hayward envisaged a real Soviet-style system in Britain, with the Party General Secretary  - not a Prime Minister selected by MPs - at the very top. He would refer to himself openly as the 'party leader'
During the 1980 party conference, 'she tried to sit me down next to Jim Callaghan (the former Prime Minister who was then Labour leader), but he bypassed me as if I was a column. She herself was embarrassed'.
Party leaders such as the donkey-jacketed Michael Foot and the Welshman Neil Kinnock were at times deeply reverential to their Russian 'comrades', the diary reveals.
In 1981, Foot led a big delegation to Moscow, to discuss multilateral disarmament with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. 'Dear Comrade Brezhnev,' Foot said while holding Brezhnev's hand in both his own.
In December 1984, Kinnock went to Moscow accompanied by, among others, the young Charles Clarke and Patricia Hewitt - both to become ministers in Blair's government - to see Brezhnev's successor, the senile Constantin Chernenko.
Chernenko read his brief to them and listened indifferently to Kinnock's verbose response. However, the Russian promised he would help in the Labour Party's attempts to oust Margaret Thatcher from power.
Chernyaev notes that in 1985, Kinnock again turned to Moscow for support, sending a shadow minister to the Kremlin for advice on how to topple Thatcher, who was in her second term in office.

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Labour Party Communist agency?

A poisoned legacy from which Labour has never quite recovered
Judging only by its electoral performance, the Communist Party of Great Britain was a near-total failure in the 20th century.
3 CommentsPeter Oborne 4 November 2009

Judging only by its electoral performance, the Communist Party of Great Britain was a near-total failure in the 20th century. It only secured a tiny number of MPs at Westminster, while the party membership peaked at just over 60,000 at the height of Soviet popularity during the second world war. But this public lack of success was misleading. The communists exercised considerable secret influence in universities, publishing houses, journalism and even the civil service for decades after 1945.

Its greatest power, however, lay inside the Labour party and the trade unions. It was perhaps especially strong in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. This strength survived long after the catastrophic Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. We know that the Transport and General Workers Union leader Jack Jones — who received effusive praise from prime minister Gordon Brown when he died in April this year — was a paid agent for the USSR, and in receipt of cash handouts from his Soviet handler Oleg Gordievsky as late as the 1980s.

The merit of Anatoly Chernyaev’s diaries is that they show just how cheerful and trusting was the relationship between Labour politicians and trade union officials and Soviet Communists. Reports of the Labour party General Secretary Ron Hayward confiding in the Soviets his plans to capture the party machinery by developing a cadre of young activists may sound quaint today. Not so in 1974, when the Cold War was at its height. There was a whiff of social disintegration in the air and the nuclear-armed USSR posed an existential threat.

These diaries indicate that, by the 1970s, an alternative government was in place, handpicked by Moscow to take over the apparatus of the British state once the Cold War was lost. There would be a Soviet-style power split: real power would rest in the chairmanship and the bureaucracy, with the politicians simply the front men. Some of the Labour men the Soviets were grooming were paid agents, others fellow travellers. Yet even front-rank politicians were pathetically anxious to reach some kind of understanding with the Soviet regime.

Even today we still do not possess anything like a clear picture of how far this penetration stretched. The lure of Moscow is recent. It remains quite staggering how many aspirant Labour politicians were either members of the communist party or, like the Justice Secretary Jack Straw, influenced by the CP at a time when it was controlled by Moscow. The former defence secretary John Reid, for example, was a CP member well into the 1970s, while Peter Mandelson was an influential Young Communist.

Indeed the New Labour government which has governed Britain since 1997 cannot be understood unless these communist influences are taken into account. Many of New Labour’s characteristics — its deep suspicion of outsiders, its structural hostility to democratic debate, its secrecy, its faith in bureaucracy, embedded preference for striking deals away from the public eye, its ruthless reliance on a small group of trusted activists — result from the early CP training of Reid, Mandelson and others.

So today’s revelations in the Spectator are not a recondite exercise in ancient history. They have a great to tell us about our very recent past and how Britain is still governed. Yet Soviet infiltration of the Labour movement remains a neuralgic subject on the left. One of Jack Jones’s brightest protégés was Gordon Brown. And when I approached Downing Street to ask the prime minister whether he would withdraw his outspoken praise for Jones in the light of the recently disclosed fact that he was a KGB asset and long-term traitor, the Prime Minister dithered and dawdled. At length Downing Street came back with a robust ‘no comment’.

A poisoned legacy from which Labour has never quite recovered » The Spectator

Trade union spies and traitors?

Jack Jones was not alone among trade union leaders in his pro-Soviet sympathies during the period of overweening trade union power in the 1960s and 1970s. Others named by Frolik include Ted Hill (Lord Hill of Wivenhoe) of the Boilermakers, Ernie Roberts and Hugh Scanlon of the AUEW (Engineering Union, second in power only to Jones’s T&G), and Richard Briginshaw, leader of the largest print union.

We came close to losing our democracy in 1979 » The Spectator

Spies and traitors

Category:Spies on the British Left - Eurêka

Obama's mum's name and address.

Valerie Zelpha Helen Sarruf - London W2 - full address - 192.com

Iranian radiation disaster?

Isfahan residents evacuation order | Washington Free Beacon

Co-ordinated twitter hatespeak

The Islamic Institute of Counter Zionist American Psychological Warfare! - Jihad Watch

IQ and Religion

IQ vs. Religiosity

Bargain retirement

http://bit.ly/WemQP6 Retire on the cheap – and still get endless sun! Research shows you can live on less than a grand a ... #MailOnline

Fructose worse than other sugars?

Revealed: fructose 'may spur overeating' - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent

Africa: Where black is not really beautiful

By Pumza FihlaniBBC News, Johannesburg

Nomasonto Mnisi says her skin colour is "a self-esteem issue"

Continue reading the main story

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South Africa is marketed to the world as Mandela's rainbow nation, where everyone is proud of their race and heritage. But for some black South Africans there is such a thing as being too black.

A recent study by the University of Cape Town suggests that one woman in three in South Africa bleaches her skin. The reasons for this are as varied as the cultures in this country but most people say they use skin-lighteners because they want "white skin".

Local musician Nomasonto "Mshoza" Mnisi, now several shades lighter, says her new skin makes her feel more beautiful and confident.

She has been widely criticised in the local media and social networking sites for her appearance but the 30-year-old says skin-bleaching is a personal choice, no different from breast implants or a having nose job.

Continue reading the main story

Nomasonto Mnisi: Before & After

“Start Quote

Part of it is a self-esteem issue and I have addressed that and I am happy now”

Nomasonto MnisiMusician

"I've been black and dark-skinned for many years, I wanted to see the other side. I wanted to see what it would be like to be white and I'm happy," she says candidly.

Over the past couple of years Ms Mnisi has had several treatments. Each session can cost around 5,000 rand (£360; $590), she tells the BBC.

Unlike many in the country, she uses high-end products which are believed to be safer than the creams sold on the black market but they are by no means risk-free, doctors say.

Costly beauty

Ms Mnisi says she does not understand the criticism about her new appearance.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Thomas FessyBBC News, Dakar

An ad campaign for a skin-whitening cream that promises results in 15 days has ignited fierce debates on Senegalese social networks since September.

"Khess Petch" - loosely translated from the local Wolof as "All White" or "All Light"- printed on huge placards all around town portray a woman "before" and "after" she'd used the cream - she is seen black and then fair white.

Nearly 2,000 people signed an online petition to bring the adverts down, and soon after, a counter-campaign "Nuul Kuuk" was set up defending Black skin pride.

Doctors at the main dermatology hospital service in Dakar say they receive an average of 200 women per week in cases related to the use of skin-whitening products.

Reports have been broadcast on television about the risks of using whitening creams following the huge controversy.

Many women with bad skin damage have sought to encourage others to stop using these products.

"I bitterly regret having done that to myself," a 51-year-old woman told me. "But girls and women with fairer skin would always seduce more men," she said.

She wears a scarf to hide a long stain and spots that the products left on her skin. "It is ugly and it itches," she says.

The health minister eventually met with Nuul Kuuk activists who were told that current laws couldn't forbid ads campaign for these products, which are labelled as cosmetics.

The ads for Khess Petch are now down, but other creams have just started their own campaign.

"Yes, part of it is a self-esteem issue and I have addressed that and I am happy now. I'm not white inside, I'm not really fluent in English, I have black kids. I'm a township girl, I've just changed the way I look on the outside," she says.

The dangers associated with the use of some of these creams include blood cancers such as leukaemia and cancers of the liver and kidneys, as well as a severe skin condition called ochronosis, a form of hyper-pigmentation which causes the skin to turn a dark purple shade, according to senior researcher at the University of Cape Town, Dr Lester Davids.

"Very few people in South Africa and Africa know the concentration of the toxic compounds that are contained in the products on the black market and that is concerning. We need to do more to educate people about these dangerous products," says Dr Davids.

He says over the past six years there has been a significant increase in the number of skin lighteners flooding local markets, some of them legal and some illegal. This is what prompted their research.

Local dermatologists say they are seeing more and more patients whose skin has been damaged by years of bleaching - most of the time irreversibly.

"I'm getting patients from all over Africa needing help with treating their ochronosis. There is very little we can do to reverse the damage and yet people are still in denial about the side-effects of these products," says Dr Noora Moti-Joosub.

In many parts of Africa and Asia, lighter-skinned woman are considered more beautiful, are believed to be more successful and more likely to find marriage.

The origin of this belief in Africa is not clear, but researchers have linked it to Africa's colonial history where white skin was the epitome of beauty.

Some have also suggested that people from "brown nations" around the world tended to look down upon dark-skinned people.

'I don't like black skin'

The World Health Organization has reported that Nigerians are the highest users of such products: 77% of Nigerian women use the products on a regular basis. They are followed by Togo with 59%; South Africa with 35%; and Mali at 25%.

Studies have found that men are also beginning to bleach their skin

South Africa banned products containing more than 2% of hydroquinone - the most common active ingredient in in the 1980s. But it is easy to see creams and lotions containing the chemical on the stalls here. Some creams contain harmful steroids and others mercury.

While skin-lightening creams have been used by some South Africans for many years, they have become more common recently with the influx of people from countries such as Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are even more widespread.

In a bustling African market in the centre of Yeoville in Johannesburg, it is skin lighteners galore.

Walking through this community is like walking through a mini-Africa: you can find someone from any part of the continent here.

I notice that many of the women have uncharacteristically light skin faces while the rest of their bodies are darker.

Some even have scabby burns on their cheeks from the harmful chemicals used to strip the skin of pigmentation.

They don't want to speak openly about why they bleach their skin, or even have their pictures taken.

Psychologists say there are also underlying reasons why people bleach their skin - but low self-esteem and, to some degree self-hate, are a common thread.

But skin-lightening is not just a fascination and obsession of women. Congolese hair stylist Jackson Marcelle says he has been using special injections to bleach his skin for the past 10 years. Each injection lasts for six months.

"I pray every day and I ask God, 'God why did you make me black?' I don't like being black. I don't like black skin," he tells me.

Skin lightening creams are popular in many parts of Africa

Mr Marcelle - known in this busy community as Africa's Michael Jackson - says his mother used to apply creams on him when he was young in order to make him appear "less black".

"I like white people. Black people are seen as dangerous; that's why I don't like being black. People treat me better now because I look like I'm white," he adds.

Entrenched in the minds of many Africans from a young age is the adage "if it's white, it's all right", a belief that has chipped away at the self-esteem of millions.

Until this changes, no amount of official bans or public information campaigns will stop people risking serious damage to their health in the pursuit of what they think is beauty.

Lest we forget....

The dismal state of the USSR's economy, during a time of rapidly improving living standards in the West, was a result of its dogmatic Communist political system, which stifled free enterprise and stopped the country moving on from its feudal past.

As these images show, by the 1980s that system was close to collapse, as Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalising reforms did little more than open the door to ever louder clamours for change - and on Boxing Day 1991, just a few years after these photos were taken, the Soviet Union was finally dissolved.

Hard times: Eighteen-year-old prostitute Katya scours the street for work as a police car drives past in Moscow in 1991 shortly before the collapse of the USSR

Bleak: Siberians line up outside a shop in Novokuznetsk, Russia, in a sign of the economic decline that had beset the country in the final years of communist rule

Hindered by centralised market forces: A long queue forms in Novokuznetsk for bacon and other meat from the butcher at a state-run market

Glum: Two dirty children look out the window in a coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships

Struggling: Siberian women sit outside houses in the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community of Novokuznetsk

Bleak: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in November 1991, just a month before the collapse of the USSR

A real age of austerity: Shoppers line up at the check out stand of a store in Moscow in 1991 as the USSR neared collapse

Looks more like the 1970s: Women patients sit at a table with food and fold their laundry in a rundown hospital ward in Moscow in July 1991

Taking a breather: Hospital nurse Ludmilla Subocheva smokes on her break in the dining room

Unrest: Soldiers and tanks moved to Red Square to surround the Kremlin at the beginning of the coup. But by the end, much of the military decided to back Gorbachev

Grim: A line forms for bread in Moscow (left), while woman mourns the three victims of the attempted coup at various impromptu memorials around the city in 1991

Sombre: Three female Moscow department store workers watch a mass funeral from the store window following the failed coup attempt

Small comfort: Women stand next to several vodka bottles which they are exchanging for small change at a recycling point

Taking their minds off things: Siberian men relax outside a shack in the town of Novokuznetsk, which was hit hard by widespread economic problems in the early 90s

No smiles: Female miners take a break from their work in the town of Novokuznetsk, Russia, in June 1991

Getting the bare essentials: Shoppers and vendors in a food market in Kaluga in November 1991

Signs of desperation: People stand in line with cans for food supplies in Tula, Russia, in November 1991

Hoping for anything: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in Moscow

Putting on a brave face: A woman stands near the back of a queue for a market in the Russian capital

Dark times: A coal miner who lives in an industrial community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships in June 1991

Getting by: A woman plays her accordion along Arbat Street in Moscow, a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, as several men stand nearby watching her

A young girl plays her violin for a crowd with her dog lounging in the violin case (left) and an accordionist (right) performs on Arbat Street in Moscow

Unequal outcomes between population groups

We conclude that the preponderance of evidence demonstrates that in intelligence, brain size, and other life history traits, East Asians average higher than do Europeans who average higher do South Asians, African Americans, or sub-Saharan Africans. The group differences are between 50 and 80% heritable.


Racial group differences are now being observed on a global scale. Sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 70) lag the most, with the genetic cluster “South Asians/North Africans” (IQ = 85) becoming part of an increasing “Clash of Civilizations.” Lynn and Vanhanen [14] found that national IQ scores correlate .68 with per capita income and rate of economic development. They further document that national IQ differences explain a number of other social phenomena, such as adult literacy (.64), enrolment in tertiary education (.75), life expectancy (.77), and democratization (.57).
There is no value in denying reality. While improving opportunities and removing arbitrary barriers is a worthy ethical goal, we must realize that equal opportunity will result in equitable, though unequal outcomes. Expanding on the application of his “default hypothesis” that group differences are based on aggregated individual differences, themselves based on both genetic and environmental contributions, Jensen [59] proposed “two laws of individual differences”—(1) individual differences in learning and performance increase as task complexity increases, and (2) individual differences in performance increase with practice and experience (unless there is a low ceiling on proficiency). We must recognize that the more environmental barriers are ameliorated and everybody’s intellectual performance is improved, the greater will be the relative influence of genetic factors (because the environmental variance is being removed). This means that equal opportunity will result in unequal outcomes, within-families, between-families, and between population groups. The fact that we have learned to live with the first, and to a lesser degree the second, offers some hope we can learn to do so for the third.


http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Intelligence%20and%20How%20to%20Get%20It%20(Working%20Paper).pdf

The Campaign to Undermine Darwinism

The Campaign to Undermine Darwinism

Beginning in the 1920s when the Franz Boas school of anthropology succeeded in decoupling the biological from the social sciences, Darwinism has been marginalized in the human sciences. Although early in the century William McDougall had proposed an "instinct" theory of personality, and G. Stanley Hall had advanced an evolutionary perspective for developmental psychology, Darwinism was swept away in the 1920s by various environmentalist doctrines. Freud's Oedipal theories and Watson's behavioral molding of individuals were compatible with Marx's assumptions of the malleability of entire social groups through government intervention.

In the 1950s, hostility to the record of Nazi racial atrocities tainted attempts to restore Darwinism to the social sciences. From that time on, it became increasingly difficult to suggest that individuals or groups might differ genetically in behavior without being accused of Nazi sympathies.

Those who believed in the biological identity of all people, on the other hand, remained free to write what they liked, without fear of vilification. In the intervening decades, the idea of a genetically based core of human nature on which individuals and groups might differ was consistently derogated. This intellectual movement has been politically fueled by successively coupling it to Third World decolonization, the U.S. civil rights movement, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and the renewed debates over immigration.

Let us be explicit about the problem faced by Darwinian psychology -- political correctness. Its central thesis is the environmental determinism of all important human traits. It stems from Marxism and a belief that social and economic oppression are the cause of all significant individual and group behavioral differences. The Marxist hold on liberal political sentiment is so extensive many of us think that way without realizing it. We censor ourselves lest we even dare to think the forbidden thoughts.

In a 1975 paper invited by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Hans Eysenck, himself a refugee from Hitler's Germany but a strong advocate of Darwinian bio-social psychology and the doyen of British psychology, wrote:

 

It used to be taken for granted that it was not only ethically right for scientists to make public their discoveries; it was regarded as their duty to do so. Secrecy, the withholding of information, and the refusal to communicate knowledge were rightly regarded as cardinal sins against the scientific ethos. This is true no more. In recent years it has been argued, more and more vociferously, that scientists should have regard for the social consequences of their discoveries, and of their pronouncements; if these consequences are undesirable, the research in the area involved should be terminated, and the results already achieved should not be publicized. The area which has seen most of this kind of argumentation is of course that concerned with inheritance of intelligence, and with racial differences in ability.

Richard Lynn, another British Darwinian psychologist, noted that many politically left-of-center scientists are currently in the same position as Christians were after the publication of The Origin of Species. He called on liberals to do what honest, intelligent Christians did then and what many still do today. Bite the bullet, and jettison those aspects of their world view (like egalitarianism) that are incompatible with the science of natural selection. Political correctness must be discarded if evolutionary theory is to achieve its full promise to become the unifying framework for the human sciences. Charles Darwin Research

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