Pretty depressing one this week, although there was a nice spot of good news out of China.
-While we hit the "hundreds of people dying in the Sudan" thing last week, let's hit it again up top: still happening, no one doing anything. Now they might have to though--a bunch of Sudanese gunmen ripped off a United Nations convoy trying to take food and medical aid to the people the gunmen haven't gotten around to killing yet. The body count on this one is not slowing down, it's accelerating.
-India wants to get its troops out of Kashmir, although things there are still too treachorous for an official time table.
-While the world looks elsewhere, Pakistan is gearing up for a full scale launch against the Pakistani Taliban.
-The mother-in-law of the president of Indonesia was sentenced to four and a half years in the clink for approving bribes to other politicians. That's messed up, sure, but if she actually does go to jail, that's kind of badass on the part of the president for letting her go down. I can't think of a single American president who would sit back and let his mother-in-law go to jail, except maybe Lincoln. That son of a bitch had a spine of metal.
-North Korea claims they're going to kill us all, but that's not really "news" anymore. Irritating as fuck, though.
-Britain got all pissy that the US sent some former Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Bermuda, and the Economist makes a sarcastic joke about it.
-Russia told the UN to get the hell out of Abkhazia. Yeah, that's in Georgia. Remember that war? One year anniversary in two more months.
-Northern Ireland was worried that people thought they had stopped being a scary place, so they harrassed and attacked a bunch of gypsies until 100 Romanians had to flee for their lives. Hey. Northern Ireland. Fucking Quit It.
-Jose Padilla is suing John Yoo for one dollar. This case should really be bigger news, I don't care how sick people might be of thinking about it.
-Myspace fired a bunch of people. Here's a hint as to why: Myspace was really ugly.
-British Airways asked if anybody on staff wanted to work for free, due to the economy. I tried this trick at the grocery store and nearly got arrested for vagrancy.
-Blu-ray discs didn't fix the gaping hole caused by people realizing that not buying DVDs was a good way to save money when the economy started tanking.
Leaders (Iran)
-Okay, the Economist also wrote about Israel, Argentina, financial regulation, the Japanese economy and fund management. But we all know the big story.
-The opening leader is a simple, direct essay regarding Iran, and it leads well into their extensive (and dated) briefing article. Both point to the still breathing merit in news articles written less then a day after the news happens. The salient point, the one that should probably be mentioned more often, is this: "Iran is not a democracy, but its system, which combines unelected religious authority with a subordinate elected civilian one, was designed to give people a chance to let off steam from time to time within carefully set electoral limits." It's all well and good to talk about the ballot box, and it's incredibly moving to see so many in the streets. That doesn't mean the people in the streets are out there protesting the Ayatollah--not yet, at least. What's happened in Iran last week, what continues now--that's a big enough deal on honest terms alone. Pretending that it's something more--like a fullscale rejection of theocracy--is irresponsible, ignorant, and, worst of all, unhelpful. Being excited is one thing, and it's understandable. Rewriting the story wholesale to match up with hopes helps no one.
-The Economist's review of Obama's "wait and see" approach to Iran's election includes one point that's worth repetition: if and when Obama comes out with "full-throated or even material support" for Mir Hosein Mousavi, (beyond the recent stuff, yes) that might work as an immediate motivation for some Iranians to step away from the man. The tendency towards seeing female Mousavi supporters and the physically battered (and dead) protesters as if they are also pro-Americans is purely self-centered identification: some might be, sure. But they aren't in the streets because they're interested in Iran being more like America. They're interested in Iran being their own country, where their vote counts. If a bunch of random Americans were to fly in to stand along side them, some will back away entirely. The easiest thing in the world for the tide to turn would be for America to make it easy to label Mousavi as being, as the Economist puts it, a "stooge of the Great Satan." His support is strong, but not widespread enough to fight that label at the same time he fights the Revolutionary Guard. And here's the thing: that's exactly what Ayatollah Khameni wants--to be able to point to Mousavi and say, "Look. An Agent of the West."
-The other big story is, yes, Twitter. As the Economist sees it, neither Twitter nor CNN won, although CNN was fucking useless for days. Instead, the praise here goes to the justly deserved Andrew Sullivan, the unfairly maligned Robert Mackey, and some person who I refuse to acknowledge out of contempt for the website which employs him.
Letters
-There was never a hard rule instituted that it was going to be snarkdown with the letters, it just went that way. And yes, there's a good one here--some lady in Washington DC wishing she lived in Columbia because she saw somebody get mugged, the sort of letter that makes you want to crawl around gurgling warm piss because, hey, this is a human being who can vote and stuff, have kids, and yet, and yet, and yet: fucking idiot, she's a fucking idiot.
But then you read Chris Lowsley's anecdote letter, about how he went to pick up a copy of The Economist in the Shanghai airport during the first week of June, looking to read about the 20th anniversary of Tianmen Square. And guess what? By hand, someone had removed the pages. From every copy. He even got a 5% refund, just to see if he could. That's a good story.
-We'll have to see if that train crash changes things, but as it stands right now, there's no real answer as to where the money for the new $500 billion transport bill recently presented by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Is it needed? Yes. But when's the last time we got excited about infrastructure in the US?
-Lots of people putting chickens in their backyard, which is nice, unless you peel back the surface and see what this really means: dirty hippies, living near you and your children.
-New York's school system has benefitted from letting Michael Bloomberg run it with his iron fist, or so they say. But the deadline to relinquish control is fast approaching, and Albany wants New York to remember that Bloombergs don't last forever.
-Guess what? Those church surveys that said more people are going to church because of the economic crisis? Not true. In fact, the only real spikes have been after the Cuban Missile crisis and 9/11, and neither of those were permanent spikes.
-Lexington gives a cheesy look at how well Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama get along, and while he's top notch with the information, there's something pretty naive about his surprise. Hopefully he's just faking, but c'mon--high-level politicians getting along out of necessity? That's news now?
The Americas
-Although 28 government officials were arrested last month in a decently-planned Mexican raid, none of those arrested have been charged yet, and it looks like that was the plan all along--bring them in, figure out why afterwards. Few believe that those arrested--prosecutors, ten mayors, a judge, etc--are innocent babes, they're all probably in the pocket of a large drug operation. But without decent evidence, they may go free. Which would kind of miss the point.
-Canada doesn't want to make radioactive isotopes for medical use anymore, which is good, because they were doing a shitty job of filling orders. But the kicker here is that the minister responsible for the state-owned atomic-energy company was caught on tape talking about how it would be really great for her if she could solve the "sexy" isotope crisis. While that's opportunistic and somewhat offensive to the cancer patients who rely on the isotope-powered therapy, i'm more curious as to why she used the word "sexy" in the first place. That's just weird.
Asia
-Australia's had a flare up of anti-Indian violence lately, and Kevin Rudd doesn't seem to be taken it seriously enough for the prime minister of India. Admittedly, the article isn't descriptive enough for one not to lend credence to the Australian explanation--that race is less a factor than urban crime rate--but common sense dictates that, when the prime minister of India steps up and calls the attacks racially motivated, one's relationship with one of the most populous countries on the planet might be better served than to respond by saying "you're wrong, dude."
-I didn't know this was the week that I was going to find out about the progress made in gay rights for homosexuals in China, but it is. You're not going to be mistaking Shanghai for Fire Island anytime soon, but still: progress for homosexuality in fucking China? That's good news.
-Of course, then China gives you the bad news: snail-fever, which is probably able to claim some fatalities because nobody takes a disease called "snail-fever" seriously. Take this one seriously though--and be thankful you don't have to deal with snails that "tunnels through human skin, invades the bloodstream, and lays eggs." Gross as hell, this one. (And the article is titled "Hello Again, God of Plague".)
-Kazakhstan may have allowed more press freedom in recent years, but that doesn't mean that reading about Kazakshtan has gotten much easier--case in point, this article about the recent wave of arrests, almost all of which are amongst the elite. (That's unusual.) With little to go on, the Economist has to play it safe, the "That is ludicrous" response to Stalin's purge comparisons notwithstanding. Here's some information, they say. Interpreting it--that's going to take some time.
-Banyan gives you the North Korea ruler breakdown, and get ready: it's intense, and totally necessary reading. This is the kid who takes over for Kim Jong Il when he goes the way of all flesh. He's 26 years old. We don't know shit else.
-Things in Kenya that happen on a regular basis, according to the Economist: lynching people over petty crimes, lynching people who try to soapbox about their rights on city streets, and--seriously? Okay. Uh, witch hunts. Like, yeah, Crucible style witch hunts, where people chase down and kill old women. For being witches. This is a short one, but it'll stick with you. Vomit.
-Here's the way things have been going for Morgan Tsvangirai: he visits a country, everybody tells him how courageous he is (because he is courageous, a big ole swinging dick of bravery) and then they tell him to head on home without any financial help. That sort of makes sense--Zimbabwe is so corrupt when it comes to aid that the best way to ensure helping the country is to get the money directly into the hands of the population, bypassing the government entirely--but it doesn't change the growing sense that the world is content to sit back and watch Robert Mugabe continue to drive that country into the ground even further than it already is. If Tsvangirai ends up dying a hero, it won't be because the world wasn't aware of him in advance. Nobody twitters about Morgan Tsvangirai now. But if something doesn't change, they will.
-Binyamin Netanyahu had to break down the rhetoric a little, and he actually seems willing to accept a two-state solution. His terms are currently unacceptable to Palestine, pretty far short of what the US wants--but this is Israel we're talking about. It's still a big story.
-Considering that the Economist has been sued by Silvio Berlusconi (something they don't try to hide), and that Berlusconi recently referred to a Financial Times piece about him as being "bad and dishonest journalism", you probably want to take this article with a grain of salt. At the same time, there's not much room to defend Berlusconi--the guy hates journalism, he always has, and he's done everything one can do, short of some steampunk incarcerations for reporters, to shut them down. Still, this article has to deal out so many specific admissions of possible bias--the Financial Times is a part-owner of the Economist--that it might be better if it was coming from a different publication. (Good luck finding a clean one though. Berlusconi really does hate everybody in this particular field.) Oh, and the girl in the picture is 18, and Berlusconi is a big fan of her. Hint. Involves money. 18 year old girl. In the picture. Hinting.
-One thing France seems to get away with, which is so far beyond me that I even feel somewhat uncomfortable criticizing it, is the way that France keeps dipping their fingers into all their old African colonies. This article points to what Nicolas Sarkozy is doing to get out of that business, but still: why are we still talking about this, France? Get your paws off countries that aren't yours.
-Russia is going to make up its own NATO, which they're calling the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as an alternative to messing with the World Trade Organization. It probably won't work, which could save us learning new acronyms to protest against on trips to Seattle, because at least half the countries involved kind of hate Russia. Or they're the types of countries that like to play the US and the EU against Russia. Wait, that does make it sound like NATO.
-It's always a pleasure to see people pick the same fights for the 900th time, especially when it involves anti-government conspiracies and the threat of violent coups. Don't go changing, Turkey!
-Did you know that there was going to be an inquiry into British involvement in Iraq? No, I mean again. This is the fifth one. Yeah, lucky number five! It's going to be private, run by a crew that includes a Winston Churchill-focused historian! I bet when they get around to number six or seven, that's when they'll get Russel Brand involved.
-Sometimes politics fight preference, as is the case presented here, with this article about the growing disgust some Brits have for the license fee that goes to the BBC. (The fee hits any home in Britian that has a broadcast-receiving television.) Part of the reason I like the BBC is because of the money they have, because that money allows them to make shows that others couldn't afford (not the reality stuff, that can be done anywhere). And yet--people shouldn't be paying for a television network unless they want to. Luxury problem debate time! You bring the ladyfingers.
-And then there's the other times when Bill Hicks definition of Britain as being "a socialist's wet dream" seems spot on, like when there's a debate about a new tax to pay for high-speed internet. Sure, it's "for everyone", and it would probably benefit them, but what's next? A tax to pay so everybody can have high speed computers? Where does Britain end, and personal choice begin?
International
-There was a meet and talk about dumping the dollar greet between India, Russia, China and Brazil recently. They actually do refer to these meetings as "BRIC" meetings, and I know what you're thinking: I'm thinking it too. Which country whose name starts with a K could join up and make this thing legal? Kazakhstan is a possibility in crazy magic world. Maybe Kentucky could secede. I haven't heard good news out of Kentucky in years.
-You can't really call this particular blurb of horrible information "buried", but after reading about the simple numbers of what has happened to the world's poorest since the advent of the economic crisis, it's hard to swallow it not being as a big a news story as the latest developments in America's attempts to run car companies. Simple, brutal facts: 50 million pregnant women with anaemia, an expected climb of 200,000 to 400,000 in dead children every year, a rise of four million in the already horrifying 121 million underweight children.
We lose jobs. They lose more.
-As far as the Economist is concerned, perennial economic whipping country Japan doesn't get to make progress, they get to be patted on the head while everybody sneers and says "Not enough, but thanks for playing." Is the Japanese corporate setup a stupid one? Of course it is. But it's one that's been in place for a long time, it worked extraordinarily well for them, and the fact that they're fixing some of its problems--shutting down unprofitable subsidiaries, pursuing a real diversity with investment--is worth a bit more credit than this article, and this particular publication, seems willing to give.
-Saab was purchased by the Koenigsegg company, which has 45 employees and makes less than 20 cars a year. (The starting cost for one of those cars is 1.2 million dollars.) That's a weird business model, made even weirder by their purchasing a brand that's been throttled into the ground for the last twenty years.
-There's a really nice soap opera piece about some backroom crazy at the house of one of the richest Arab businessmen in the world, one that would take more space than you'll tolerate for me to shrinkwrap. But if you got a hankering for mysteries, this article is a good start.
-Part of the reason people read the Economist is because they can count on the Economist not to waste a line of print on Jon & Kate Plus Eight, which is a show about how America deserves to be attacked by terrorists on a 24 hour basis until all of us are dead, dead, dead. Let me be the first to offer you a shoulder, brothers and sisters: that day is no longer.
-Here's a specificly focused blurb article on the way in which Marcegaglia, a steel company in Italy, has been granting extended vacations to employees (with pay) in exchange for promises that the employees will "make it up" by not taking overtime pay when things get busy again. It's interesting enough that the Economist should have just written it straight, but they introduce and title it like it's a some kind of widespread idea a lot of other companies are a part of. Not exactly, dude.
Finance and Economics
-If you're interested, here's a link to the US federal government's "white paper" on financial regulation. It's straight to a pdf and it takes some time to download. If, after looking at it, you want to know what the Economist thinks, go to this link for their take on it. Here's some alternatives, all of which seem to be really popular right now.
1) Misquote, misremember, and outright lie about its contents.
2) Memorize one or two things in it that you don't agree with, talk about those ad nauseam.
3) Cynically smirk and say "it's going to be totally different when the legislative branch gets done with it, so everybody should chill out."
No matter what, make sure that you mention how much you "love politics" when talking about it, that way people know how serious you are.
-How long did it take for an American private-equity firm to hightail it out of China after realizing that the playing field was about as level as that spike floor in the old Flash Gordon movie? Five years.
-They invited, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisors to write an article, which she totally did, one where she drew parallels to the Great Depression, argued against the relatively accepted argument that the Depression was ended by World War II, and basically said "trust me, I'm really good at this stuff." She's a pretty well-known scholar of the Depression and one of the policy-makers involved with current American economic planning, which makes this article a worthy, intelligent read. But it's also propaganda. And while propaganda can, sometimes, be just as accurate as anything else...it's still fucking propaganda.
-It would be pretty interesting if the bankruptcy of Six Flags--OMG didn't you hear?--was the straw that broke the camel of irresponsible credit-default swaps, but considering how difficult it is to grasp ahold of the complex equation of what (probably) happened with Six Flags, that won't happen. (Financial regulation still requires a mob complaint, and mobs need a simple premise for the torch-lighting ceremony.) Pointedly, it could be boiled down to "bankruptcy [being] more attractive than solvency" to lenders, but even that requires some further explanation. Like, further than me. C'mon now.
-Although this article is entirely focused on some people who are working with sound to make black holes on a desk--yes, and now you want to read it, don't you--my favorite part is where they open by talking about the Large Hadron Collider, which costs a bunch of countries billions of dollars, broke after a week of use, and hasn't been fixed yet. Remember that rap video? Looks pretty dumb now.
-They might start using a plasma torch to deal with tooth infections, and since that could be a relatively painless process when compared to the current one, a lot of people will probably be very happy to hear about that. My dentist is my abusive father, and I don't anticipate him making the upgrade, so I remain nonplussed.
-If you look more like your dad, your dad subconsciously loves and treats you better. That's what science proved this week. (Kind of.)
-Liberty in the Age of Terror sounds like a must read, even when you just focus solely on the simple, concise idea that author A.C. Grayling puts forth regarding the "if you don't break the law, you have nothing to fear from the ever-expanding powers of the government to spy on absolutely anyone for imagined reasons" attitude. As Grayling puts it, that mentality stems from the belief that the government's interest "will always be benign". It speaks to a mindset where the individual can place faith in governments that lie about the reasons for war, governments that fail to protect and care for their own soldiers, governments that torture the innocent--governments that pad their expense account to build a moat. It's the mentality of the fool, the ignorant, and the damned.
-Hey, a book about roads!
-Due to the job that I spend my non-blog time at, I've had to pay way more attention to Art fucking Basel than I did to the food/sleep equation during the run-up to the show, and now that it's over, I could give two fucking shits about reading about it. Is Art Basel a big deal for a lot of really fantastic people? Sure is. But if the entire place burned to a cinder, the world would lose a lot of septic trash alongside the tragic destruction of the masterpieces and lovely folk as well. And if you think you disagree with that statement, than guess what? You don't know a fucking thing about Art Basel.
-This Thursday, at a theater near you, maybe: Helen Mirren as Phedre, live. How can a play be live in a theater near you, regardless of where you are, maybe? Because it's going down Wrestlemania style.
-Fantastic piece of writing here--gotta say, the obituaries are really stepping it up as of late. Omar Bongo had been the president of Gabon since 1967, a forty two year period in which he used the entire country as his personal bank, giving himself a life few in Africa could realistically imagine. (If you don't have the internet or a television in certain parts of Africa, you could conceivably live your entire life without any knowledge of Genera Hypercolor and Spencer Pratt, lucky devil.) At the same time, I'll acknowledge the same depressing fact that this obit closes with: Gabon's history isn't covered in the sort of horrible degradation and terror that other Central African countries are. That's not to excuse Bongo's sociopathic selfishness. But you can't really call him a monster. Sure knows how to pose for a photograph, too.
I'm ashamed, because the only article I clicked through was the one on Jon & Kate, just out of curiosity about what the Economist said about them. The result, not unexpected, but I did like that they referred to the show as "an obscure American reality-TV programme". I wish that were true in the US as well as England. Hell, I just wish it were true in my house; why my wife likes to watch that fucking show, I have no idea.
Actually, I lied; I also clicked through on the Helen Mirren thing. That's more like it. I can claim to be interested in that, and appear cultured. That accomplished, I'll go home and watch Elmo with my daughter.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.06.25 at 16:08
I sure hope this week's Captain America Reborn puff piece gets a top spot next time... remember your roots, man!
Posted by: Jog | 2009.06.25 at 17:45
Only half way through my issue, but Charlemagne's piece on Europe's labor policy - flexicurity - the mess it caused and the mess it's going to cause in the future - is one of the best pieces I've ever read. Best ever as in it matches my opinion 100%. Funny how I qualify based on my personal opinions like that!
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.06.26 at 15:27