Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

"'Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die' - Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan.

In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. "Three Cups of Tea" is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools - especially for girls - in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit."



The weirdest thing about Three Cups of Tea is that it's a hugely enjoyable book until you actually go and read further, because it turns out that everything you've read in this, nominally, non-fiction book is ... Broadly untrue? Vaguely inaccurate? A pack of total lies? Whichever version you go for, it kind of undermines the rest of the narrative. That's a shame, because without the critique Mortenson's story is wonderfully inspiring and compelling.

A mountaineer who stumbled across a Pakistani village whilst descending K2 and was bought back to health by the people there, promising to return and build them a school as thanks, Mortenson is an unfailingly interesting person to read. For the first half of the story I was enraptured by his account, and the breathless narration by journalist and self-professed Mortensom disciple Relin. The story is vividly told, including history, political commentary and context aplenty, alongside an engaging story of triumph against the odds in building the first school despite opposition from corrupt and desperate Pakistani's and indifferent Americans.

Unfortunately, I then went online and read some of the commentary to the book, which sets the benevolent charity Mortenson founded within a wider narrative of financial mismanagement, endemic internal corruption and absolutely no willingness to address these issues. Mortenson's slacker background and inability (and unwillingness) to work with 'the man' suddenly becomes less endearing and more a flashing warning sign that he absolutely should not be in charge of a multi-million dollar organisation. Anyone who is almost uncontactable most of the time, ignores official forms and works from his gut in selecting staff (all traits which are presented as utterly positive and vital to the success of his mission) are obviously going to become liabilities when millions of dollars disappears with no paper trail or inclination to follow up on where it went.

All of which leaves a sour taste in the mouth even before you discover that the two most electrifying moments in the book; Mortenson's near death on K2 (and subsequent arrival in that first impoverished village) and his kidnap and detention by militants in Pakistan's badlands are utterly false and never took place.

From then on the remainder of the book is somewhat less readable as an accurate account of one mans war on poverty and lack of education.

So, worth a read for a look at international development on a budget, but not an organisation to donate to, and certainly not an example to follow.

Also Try:
Jon Krakauer, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/08/is-it-time-to-forgive-greg-mortenson.html
Jon Krakauer, Three Cups of Deceit
Joel Connely, http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Greg-Mortenson-Three-Cups-of-Me-1356850.php

The Age of Consent, George Monbiot

"A visionary road map for humanity's first global democratic revolution.  All over the planet, the rich get richer while the poor are overtaken by debt and disaster. The world is run by a handful of executives who make the most important of decisions—concerning war, peace, debt, development, and the balance of trade. Without democracy at the global level, the rest of us are left in the dark. George Monbiot shows us how to turn on the light.

Emphasizing not only that things ought to change, but how to change them, Monbiot develops an interlocking set of proposals that mark him as the most realistic utopian of our time. With detailed discussions of what a world parliament might look like, how trade can be organized fairly, and how underdeveloped nations can leverage their debt to obtain real change, Manifesto for a New World Order offers a truly global perspective, a defense of democracy, and an understanding of power and how it might be captured from those unfit to retain it."

Like Captive State this is a brilliant read that will make you so, so mad, although it takes a lot longer to get going and is mired in a slightly confused intent.

Set out as a manifesto for a global democratic institution Monbiot seeks to answer the question of who rules the world, where their authority is derived and how we can change this at an international and global level.

This is the less interesting part of the book, because Monbiot's key strength is in tearing apart the hypocrisy and deceit of the powerful, and nowhere is this clearer than when he turns his attention to the global institutions designed to help the poorest nations. His anger is infectious, in a few short chapters he rips apart the arguments and dissembling and presents a picture of Western culpability and responsibility for global poverty that cuts through the promises and words of politicians and shreds their empty rhetoric.

Like The Bottom Billion it also has some ways in which this can be changed, but again these are secondary to the real meat of the book. As an exposé it's riveting reading, and cherry picking chapters is well worth doing.

Unlike the Bottom Bilion, that isn't the real intent though - it's meant to be a practical means to kick start reasonable global governance, which is a somewhat lofty goal which doesn't seem to have too much backing it up. In fairness Monbiot addresses this problem at length but the conclusion he draws (better to try) doesn't really engender much hope.

Also Try:

www.monbiot.com

George Monbiot, Captive State

Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier

"In this elegant and impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty, economist Paul Collier writes persuasively that although nearly five billion of the world's people are beginning to climb from desperate poverty and to benefit from globalization's reach to developing countries, there is a "bottom billion" of the world's poor whose countries, largely immune to the forces of global economy, are falling farther behind and are in danger of falling apart, separating permanently and tragically from the rest of the world. Collier identifies and explains the four traps that prevent the homelands of the world's billion poorest people from growing and receiving the benefits of globalization - civil war, the discovery and export of natural resources in otherwise unstable economies, being landlocked and therefore unable to participate in the global economy without great cost, and finally, ineffective governance. As he demonstrates that these billion people are quite likely in danger of being irretrievably left behind, Collier argues that we cannot take a "headless heart" approach to these seemingly intractable problems; rather, that we must harness our despair and our moral outrage at these inequities to a reasoned and thorough understanding of the complex and interconnected problems that the world's poorest people face."

The Bottom Billion is an attempt to explain why we haven't yet made poverty history, and just what the limits on aid, intervention and Western attempts to bring the poorest nations up to their level aren't working. Within that it chooses to differentiate between those developing countries that are growing, and those that contain a billion people which show no signs of development at all.

The heart of this book is that it's based on matchless research, exhaustively detailed to show that far from being a war on global poverty we have mainly been bringing up the majority of the world blessed with positive positions and able to respond to reform.

Collier's thesis, that a shift to raising the standards in the bottom nations, is well set out and argued, and is sure to be uncomfortable reading for anyone interested in international development. It is especially scathing of the more aid only approach that is so often pushed, and his work on defining how aid can damage non-developing nations is excellent.

It's a common argument now to rail against the usefulness of charity but Collier also goes out of his way to demonstrate the positives of aid - that without it countries would be relatively worse off, and that simply by tweaking the grounds and remit of aid-led intervention the consequences can be more positive.

Over the course of the book Collier goes on to talk about not just what we can do, but what we should be encouraging these nations to do themselves, and it's worth reading just to get a picture of the complex and often contrary ways in which we'll meaning Western campaigns can actually damage policy and initiatives that encourage growth and alleviate poverty.

It's this last part that may be the hardest for many to swallow, as Collier is absolutely wedded to the idea that only through capitalist expansion can these nations grow. It's something that I personally find hard to accept until I really think it through, but his research and examples do an excellent job of setting out his case, especially in the way he shows that without their own foundations our aid will simply crumble.

It's interesting that he rarely resorts to anything beyond his facts and figures, only talking about the moral or social implications and demands in passing, and then infrequently. I think that's an issue that needed to be addressed more, not out of the liberal guilt that the West have caused or prolonged many of the damaging situations that the poorest find themselves in, but simply because there should be an international duty to people that isn't routed in economic reasoning and selfish realpolitik of benefits versus costs.

Maybe this is the first step though. At the very least its a good way to convince those who would argue against engagement and intervention in these situations using a range of methods.

Also Try:
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_collier_shares_4_ways_to_help_the_bottom_billion.html Paul Collier at TED

Eat the Rich, Seamus O'Heaney
African Diary, Bill Bryson
Belching out the Devil, Mark Thomas