12 Years a Slave
Jan 10, 2014 12:20:12 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2014 12:20:12 GMT -5
Good afternoon to you all! I trust that all is well with all of you this weekend. So is China the new titleholder? China says it is world's largest trader, but writing for BBC News, Linda Yueh reports that China's latest trade figures show that it is only "very likely" to have overtaken the US as the world's largest trader. It would topple the position that the US has held for much of the last century and cross another milestone in rivalling the biggest economy in the world. For some, it is perhaps surprising that China didn't already hold this position. After all, four years ago, China became the world's largest exporter of goods. But it's the surge in imports that has propelled Chinese trade - exports and imports - to hit a record $4.16 trillion in 2013 ($2.21 trillion in exports plus $1.95 trillion in imports). Although the full-year US trade data isn't yet available, the first 11 months saw US trade at $3.57 trillion. This is why it seems that China has probably overtaken America.
The increase in imports is notable. It implies a greater opening of Chinese markets, which is what matters for the rest of the world seeking new consumers and sources of demand. So far, China's markets are still frustratingly closed in certain segments, which is why the rise in imports is so important. Plus, the bulk of Chinese trade is in goods and not services. Trade in services is less than half of that of the US, which exceeded $1 trillion in 2012. As China is seeking to increase the size of its services sector, which Linda have written about before, it implies there is much more potential growth in the relatively closed sector. Linda concludes thus:
So China is well on the way back up to global economic dominance once again! For as long as one can remember, the only certitude about the black experience of inequality and oppression, from slavery to apartheid, is that cinema cannot handle it. The subject provokes either piety or lunacy. In the past 12 months alone goonish melodrama ('Django Unchained') has vied with stodgy sanctimony ('Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom'). '12 Years a Slave' is a breakthrough as amazing as advance word has suggested. British artist-filmmaker Steve McQueen brings to the screen Solomon Northup’s 1853-published memoir of his kidnap and captivity – 4,000-plus days under Louisiana plantation owners – as if the subject of slavery had never before been tackled; or not like this, untarred by hokum and untarnished by the triteness of homily.
McQueen drives every scene straight to the core of its emotions. From screenwriter John Ridley (who co-scripted David O. Russell’s antic Iraq war tragicomedy 'Three Kings'), the dandified period dialogue proves paradoxically perfect. It makes that emotional drive a greater victory for vigour, visceralism and the vernacular of the rebel imagination. Yes, people probably spoke like this. But yes, they also – human emotion never changes – felt, endured, suffered, grieved, raged like this. Writing in the FT, Nigel Andrews concludes thus:
FT - Film review – 12 Years a Slave - A breakthrough in the depiction of the black experience of inequality and oppression
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading 'The Third' is once again cordially invited to the cinema this weekend. If you cannot make it in person, here is the film online:
12 Years a Slave
I should perhaps clarify that kleines c has never been a slave, although slavery has never really been eliminated, not even in a country like Britain in the twenty-first century! As for 'World government', there is a sense in which the governments of the world cooperate. Lord Clark of 'Civilisation' (1969) famously criticised the United Nations Organisation (UNO) for the time spent on procedure, the speeches made for home consumption, the result a foregone conclusion. And yet, here is a precursor of world government, Sydney?
The increase in imports is notable. It implies a greater opening of Chinese markets, which is what matters for the rest of the world seeking new consumers and sources of demand. So far, China's markets are still frustratingly closed in certain segments, which is why the rise in imports is so important. Plus, the bulk of Chinese trade is in goods and not services. Trade in services is less than half of that of the US, which exceeded $1 trillion in 2012. As China is seeking to increase the size of its services sector, which Linda have written about before, it implies there is much more potential growth in the relatively closed sector. Linda concludes thus:
' ... By 1992, China's "open door" policy had taken off when Deng Xiaoping expanded special economic zones across the country after seeing the success of the initial ones. It led to an era where exports grew on average at 17% a year, doubling the pace of overall economic growth. The increase in trade was even faster after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001, which made it a part of the multilateral trade body that accounts for nearly all of world trade. Within a decade, China rose from having a share of global merchandise exports of less than 3% to more than 10%. The US and Germany each have a share that is just smaller than that of China, while Japan accounts for around another 5%. So, altogether, these four countries account for over one-third of global goods trade.
However, there are doubts over the accuracy of Chinese trade statistics as with other areas. Export figures have been inflated by the use of faked invoices to disguise capital flows and evade controls. A crackdown by the Chinese government last May revealed that such invoices inflated the size of exports by $75bn in the first quarter of 2013, according to Chinese media reports. If so, that implies about $300bn faked over the whole year - a sizeable amount. But even if China doesn't overtake the US this year, it is likely that the country which is over four times larger than America in population eventually will. When it does, then trade will mark another chapter in the re-emergence of China. According to economic historian Angus Maddison, China was the dominant economy in the early 19th Century but fell behind after the 1820s when it it didn't experience an industrial revolution like the ones seen in Britain, America and Germany. It could be the dominant economy once again. But, as nations which have been felled by crisis know all too well, size isn't the only determinant of economic might or resilience.'
However, there are doubts over the accuracy of Chinese trade statistics as with other areas. Export figures have been inflated by the use of faked invoices to disguise capital flows and evade controls. A crackdown by the Chinese government last May revealed that such invoices inflated the size of exports by $75bn in the first quarter of 2013, according to Chinese media reports. If so, that implies about $300bn faked over the whole year - a sizeable amount. But even if China doesn't overtake the US this year, it is likely that the country which is over four times larger than America in population eventually will. When it does, then trade will mark another chapter in the re-emergence of China. According to economic historian Angus Maddison, China was the dominant economy in the early 19th Century but fell behind after the 1820s when it it didn't experience an industrial revolution like the ones seen in Britain, America and Germany. It could be the dominant economy once again. But, as nations which have been felled by crisis know all too well, size isn't the only determinant of economic might or resilience.'
So China is well on the way back up to global economic dominance once again! For as long as one can remember, the only certitude about the black experience of inequality and oppression, from slavery to apartheid, is that cinema cannot handle it. The subject provokes either piety or lunacy. In the past 12 months alone goonish melodrama ('Django Unchained') has vied with stodgy sanctimony ('Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom'). '12 Years a Slave' is a breakthrough as amazing as advance word has suggested. British artist-filmmaker Steve McQueen brings to the screen Solomon Northup’s 1853-published memoir of his kidnap and captivity – 4,000-plus days under Louisiana plantation owners – as if the subject of slavery had never before been tackled; or not like this, untarred by hokum and untarnished by the triteness of homily.
McQueen drives every scene straight to the core of its emotions. From screenwriter John Ridley (who co-scripted David O. Russell’s antic Iraq war tragicomedy 'Three Kings'), the dandified period dialogue proves paradoxically perfect. It makes that emotional drive a greater victory for vigour, visceralism and the vernacular of the rebel imagination. Yes, people probably spoke like this. But yes, they also – human emotion never changes – felt, endured, suffered, grieved, raged like this. Writing in the FT, Nigel Andrews concludes thus:
" ... Ejiofor lights each step of Northup’s grim journey with the lantern of truth, from the New England musician and family man’s shanghaiing in Washington, DC, to the Deep South survival games: whipping, near-lynching, the grisliest punishment of coerced flagellation of others. Late on there is a brilliant lingering close-up – trance-like, moist-eyed, glittering with dread and amazement (a man glimpsed at bay against the dogs of destiny) – placed at a point between first hope and first doubt of final rescue. It’s an almost abstract moment, typical of McQueen’s method of using mood as hyphenation between story stages. The whole film breathes with reality, even while the bayou landscapes are infernalised, surrealised, by a terrible beauty of vision. (The cinematographer, as on McQueen’s 'Hunger' and 'Shame', is Sean Bobbitt.)
The movie’s only clumsiness is mercifully brief: Brad Pitt as Northup’s saviour-rescuer, a carpenter whose Christly auburn locks seem at odds with his grizzled grey beard and whose dialogue hews commonplaces for the hard of hearing. (“Niggers are human beings.”) Elsewhere in '12 Years a Slave', not even some oh-it’s-him-again star casting in character cameos (Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano) can light-pollute the film’s tragic darkness or vitiate the power and credibility of its portrait of a period."
The movie’s only clumsiness is mercifully brief: Brad Pitt as Northup’s saviour-rescuer, a carpenter whose Christly auburn locks seem at odds with his grizzled grey beard and whose dialogue hews commonplaces for the hard of hearing. (“Niggers are human beings.”) Elsewhere in '12 Years a Slave', not even some oh-it’s-him-again star casting in character cameos (Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano) can light-pollute the film’s tragic darkness or vitiate the power and credibility of its portrait of a period."
FT - Film review – 12 Years a Slave - A breakthrough in the depiction of the black experience of inequality and oppression
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading 'The Third' is once again cordially invited to the cinema this weekend. If you cannot make it in person, here is the film online:
12 Years a Slave
I should perhaps clarify that kleines c has never been a slave, although slavery has never really been eliminated, not even in a country like Britain in the twenty-first century! As for 'World government', there is a sense in which the governments of the world cooperate. Lord Clark of 'Civilisation' (1969) famously criticised the United Nations Organisation (UNO) for the time spent on procedure, the speeches made for home consumption, the result a foregone conclusion. And yet, here is a precursor of world government, Sydney?