-Due to some of the most irritating computer malfunctions imaginable, this Economist piece had to be re-built from memory the evening it was posted, so it's a bit shorter and rougher than I'd prefer. In the interest of punctuality and usefulness to whomever reads these pieces, since at least three people do, I decided to let it go and put it up. As always, print editions of the Economist are available, free of charge, at their website. Apologies, and I think I've got enough set in place now to prevent that from happening in the future.
-Lebanon elected a Christian parliamentary president. Something tells me somebody should tell American Christians that. Hey, no judgment.
-They don't fuck around: "Somalia remains virtually ungoverned." But I thought...oh, wait, yeah. Black Hawk Down had a sad ending. I was thinking of King Ralph.
-Ethiopia drops a death sentence on their former ruler, hiding out in Zimbabwe. Don't worry, dude totally deserves it. But try getting Mugabe on board for the idea of a "court of law." It's like trying to watch that K-Pax flick without muscle relaxants.
-Dude, hopefully you can find a picture of Canada's former foreign minister's girlfriend (the one who got him fired for sharing his secret government documents with biker gangs) that doesn't showcase her cleavage. Because The Economist apparently couldn't.
-Some dudes got into Myanmar to help out, after General Than Shwe was forced to meet with the United Nations secretary-general. You have to chuck the UN sec. his propers on that--instead of saying, "Look, I've been calling, he won't answer," which was totally, hilariously, true, the motherfucker just hopped on a plane and showed up at Shwe's office. That's some commitment, especially considering the way the American media likes to paint the UN as a bunch of weaklings. (Which, if you look at the Sudan, they still kind of are.)
-Russia shoots down a Georgian spy plane. It ain't the USS Cole, but don't expect that area to be getting even better in the coming months.
-100 countries say no more cluster bombs, because they keep destroying civilians arms and legs and killing kids. Russia, America and China are all like, "Dude, I totally dig killing kids." and vote to hang on to them.
-Well, for now, Big Oil beat the Big American Royal Rockefeller Family. Still too much of a fight between the grosser aspects of America to be excited.
-Looks like InBev, the guys who make Becks and Stella, are looking to takeover Anheuser-Busch. All that stands in their way? Rednecks who hate Belgium.
-Hey, I think they made a mistake here--did 97 million people vote in the American Idol finale, or were there 97 million votes. It isn't the same, is it?
Leaders
-Well, here's the first in what is as the cover implies, an oil-heavy issue. There's all kinds of stuff here worth checking out, it's basically a check-up from the neck-up, so if you want to know what's going on with Texas T, the black gold, then here's your source. They take the piss out of some sound bites, point out some of the irritating contradictions of oil transactions, and then a dude takes off his pants. Wait a sec
-Wow, Gordon Brown used to want people to call him the "Iron Chancellor." Any likelihood of that has gone out of that after the tax handout to cover his own tax changes. Iron makes a good waffle iron, but it don't make for...oh jesus that's not even funny, I'm sorry.
-Huh, it's surprising that Japan is still doing the whole payment-by-age thing (where your salary goes up as long as you stay at a company, regardless of how well you're doing.) I would've thought that era of time depicted in Michael Keaton's Gung Ho would've eliminated such silly, and poorly thought out, policies.
-One wonders how far outside Iran has to look out their door to decide whether it can rely on the promises being made if it stops enriching uranium. I mean, the group making the swears includes the same cats who also said that Iraq had yellow-cake, right? Nobody is saying that Iran with bombs is a desired outcome, but it certainly isn't like they can toss their trust out right about--well, what, the last 20 years?
Oh no that's right never.
Letters
-Well, everybody rolling up with a correction and complaint this week does it in a classy fashion, so all my contempt is then lathered up in a sudsy white foam and laid at the doorstep of Deucalion Rediadis. It'll be there when he gets back, after "reading your articles in the print edition late on a sunny Saturday morning on a beach near Athens." Back, wall, yours, first: when the revolution comes.
United States
-Just a reminder, now that everybody has their two candidates to pick from: if you don't live in a swing state, you can just as easily support your candidate by writing "bring back lou gehrig's disease" in your grandmother's ashes all over your ballot. Thanks to the electoral college, what you think doesn't really matter!
-So, "Kate from Baltimore bought a three-foot-tall light-up ice cream cone with her stimulus check." Hopefully, Stephen, from Brunswick, Georgia will stop by and show her the new Smith & Wesson he picked up and she'll remember that, just because George Bush told you to go hog wild, he didn't mean for you to be a total freakshow idiot with your $600.
-I fully acknowledge that Scott McClellan's tell-all book probably has the actual newsworthiness as that unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise that claimed Katie Holmes had been impregnated with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm, but it will probably also be just as funny.
-Lexington decides to throw an article about Bob Barr, the Libertarian's presidential candidate out there, and I can't help think it's in the hopes for bragging rights if the moon collapses and Barr actually has some kind of impact that can't be described as "negligible." That being said, everybody get ready to look at those pictures of Barr licking whipped cream off of a stripper--because you know the National Review keeps those close at hand.
-So, if house prices are now falling faster than they were during the Great Depression, all I want to know is which trains I have to avoid so as to avoid seeing tin-roofed shantytowns. I'm sad enough as it is.
The Americas
-Everybody in South America is on an arms-buying bonanza, and no one else is invited! Chile, which is the skinny one on the bottom left to those of you who went to an American public school, needs tanks and submarines and F-16 fighters! Venezuela needs 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles because they're basing their military strategy on Metal Gear, I think.
-I'm all for racial harmony, tolerance of other faiths, but I really can't see why a Sikh boy needs to bring his ceremonial dagger to school everyday. Of course, that's just one of the many reasons why I'm not on a Canadian court of law. Because they totally think it's a great idea.
-While it's not exactly party-causing news that Pedro Antonio Marin has died, if that helps to bring down the FARC guerrilla army and get that Ingrid Betancourt woman home (or any of the hostages), then yes, I will have a quiet little celebration. This shit has gone on far too long, and I no longer care if any governments considers any of their demands rationally.
Asia
-Does there happen to be a lot of articles in the world about countries running out of truck-drivers, and desperately getting the immigration department to let more in? Because this one about Australia can't be the only one. That's got to be a widespread problem.
-North Korea continues to come up with more reasons why they're a fucked up and sad place to be a human being--this edition includes: counterfeit iPods, fifteen refrigerators and counterfeit American money.
-Buddhist charities have it easier than Christian charities, partly because they make things more difficult on themselves than Christians: they don't yap about their faith, they pay their own way, volunteer for extensive training, and physically bow to the people they help--instead of handing boxes to Burmese militias and saying, "Ya'll promise to git that to them dying people now."
-Man, that's the dumbest hat I've ever seen, and I work in Soho. I would've given you two weeks to get the hell out of the royal palace too, Mr. Former King Of Nepal.
Middle East and Africa
-So, if they're asking Ehud Olmert to resign over bribes, can't they at least tell you what the bribes were for? (I think they did last week, but that Economist copy has already been re-gifted, along with chocolate fingers.) All that's here is talk about "campaign finance" and "personal loans," but he had to do something for it, right? That's the way bribery works.
-What kind of party does the Japanese government host when they're trying to earn the natural resources of Africa? Hope it's better than the party that the Chinese and Indian government threw. Or the ones every other superpower plans.
Europe
-When Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko team up, they form like Voltron and everything in the Ukraine goes together like cake and icing, but when they fall out with each other? People in Parliament fight it out, Mike Tyson style, and everybody in the country sits around wondering why they can't elect leaders who know how to behave like fucking grown-ups.
-It's nice that the European Union is dithering around trying to figure out how they want to deal with Russia, but this article could use a little more, or any, information on what Russia is doing about dealing with the European Union. Then again, maybe this is just more of a hint of how little, reputable information is making its way out of Putin's hands and into the public forum.
-Regardless of your feelings about Danish censorship and religious cartoons, it's altogether disheartening to read that 2/3 of Muslim college students plan to bail out of the country after graduation.
-Charlemagne skirts controversy while writing out about various reasons why there aren't more women in top-level European Union positions, proving once again that when there's a brainaic at the wheel, somebody can talk about any frenzied issue without resorting to polemic and ignorance. That being said, it's unsurprising that more women aren't interested in late night binge drinking sessions with a bunch of loser politicians, which is apparently how a lot of European Council members like to do their job. I'm all for getting tore up after work, but doing work while you're at it? Especially when you have an important job? What's really depressing about this column is that more men want these jobs.
Britain
-Let's keep the ticker running, here's oil article number two: Will high oil prices tip the economy into recession? If this were Family Feud, I'd be stealing Richard Dawson's alcohol and laughing myself to the right answer to the question. If you can't guess it, you're dumber than I am--and i'm a complete fucking moron!
-Oil article number three drops all over your face and brain: even though they've known that the North Sea was running out of oil since 1999, nobody thought to prepare the British economy for when it finally started being a serious problem. Hey, preparation, where'd you go? C'mere.
-British police can hold suspects for 28 days without charging them. America, New Zealand, Germany? Two days. Gordon Brown has already tried to push the number to 90, which failed to make it through Parliament--there response was somewhere around the area of "Holy shit dude, have you lost your mind," so now they're going for 42 days. Wha? Seriously. The fuck?
International (Mommy Won't Let Us In The Leader Section)
-Why aren't you up front, big article about spankings? Oh, because nobody really gives a shit about spankings. Child abuse, now that's a big ass deal, and you might totally get up front if you were all about child abuse. But no, you're all about spankings, and no one cares.
-And why isn't this up front? Well, maybe because it's a horrifying article about the rampant sex abuse of children by aid workers in Sudan, Haiti and the Ivory Coast. (The aid workers were with, wait for it, make sure you're ready to get upset and cry some: Save The Children.) Yes, that's right! And to make it worse, the piece is coupled with the findings of repeated patterns of rape by United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal. That's right! Some UN peacekeepers decided that the situation in Congo five years ago wasn't bad enough, so they made it even more fucking worse. Wait, don't stop, there's more! UN peacekeepers will also raping children alongside aid workers! AND there is no workable system in place to punish the guilty. Hey! Where'd you go? You can't go live on another planet--this is the one you're stuck with!
Business
-Oil article number four, which is probably the most intensive of the group-whereas the leader article will fill your conversation with expansion on talking points, this is the one that gets down to the nitty gritty stuff. It's still totally readable, and here's something I didn't know--Iran is sitting on barrel after barrel of the "heavy" oil, which is used for heating fuel, that sort of thing, whereas everybody is freaking out for "light" crude, which is what makes petroleum and diesel fuel. Iran would totally love to sell it, but it's cheaper and in large quantities, so refineries are finding it more profitable to focus on the "make-my-car-go" kind.
-Well, to wrap up oil talk, here's one on the differences in worldwide fuel taxes--next time that irritating asshat at work is telling you all about "How much I paid at the pump dis morning" you can throw it back in his face and point out that Germans and Brits are paying double that. If you say it enough, maybe he'll eat a bullet and you can get back to looking for a shareware download of Legend of Zelda on your work computer.
-If I had money invested in a private-equity firm that was looking to buy a big-ass Ferris wheel in Vienna, I would move that money into a company less tied to being a bunch of 9-year-olds.
-The nicest thing about Communist China right now is that it's a big laboratory for massive industrial reorganization--you can't get this scale of entertainment when you have all those rules of ownership shit. Six companies, contolling $244 billion in revenue, 600 million mobile subscribers and 360 million fixed-line companies, will be collapsed into three. They announced that shit on a website. Here, that would be like Nike saying they were going to eat the state of North Dakota on a Piggly Wiggly bulletin board in southern Alabama. (Where you go to find a babysitter, you know what I'm talking about.)
-Damn it, these fucking poor people don't have any food, or stable governments, or decent hopes for the future! We've got to get them cell phones as soon as possible!
Finance and Economics
-Should Societe Generale still get to be a company after one of its employees lost $7.2 billion? When a low-level trader ganks a company that bad, shouldn't they just kind of close up shop and move on to shoe manufacturing?
-Hey, everybody who's so smart and wonderful and wears suits all day, even when they sleep upside down in a clamshell, here's a Buttonwood column I didn't comprehend about "The puzzle of low Treasury-bond yields." You heard it here first--I am dumb.
Science and Technology
-Hey, they should call this the "good news" section this week. Completely untouched by oil! First off, the Phoenix landed on Mars, and it's wandering around looking at shit! That's pretty much it--sure, there's all kinds of scientific discovery type jazz on the way, but hey! You don't need to know that! We landed on Mars! Take that, weird conspiracy nutjobs!
-While there's lots of studies that propagate the myth "Girls bad at math compared to boys, kick boys ass on reading," recent studies show that when you balance the studies out for sex discrimination, turns out girls are just as good at math as boys, whereas boys still kind of suck at reading. So, yeah, the ladies? Smarter than the gents. Well, that's not all good news, I mean, lots of people I like have a penis, and I think they read fine, but the math thing is pretty great.
-Dude! There just might be a vaccine for cancerous brain tumors!
Books and Arts
-Gustav Klimt, as talented as he is, has never really done that much for me. Partly due to a personal distaste for most of his fans, I'd assume. (I saw way too many college dormrooms with that fucking "Kiss" painting overseeing a vomit bucket.) That being said, the new show in Liverpool though sounds pretty amazing though. Amazing enough for a trip to see it? Well, just don't fly American.
-Why the Economist has it out for suburbs this week is something only the gods could explain, but their main complaint with the state of French cinema, found here, seems to be that there aren't enough French films that explore the "harsh banality of life in the suburbs." Hey guys--maybe nobody really gives that much of a shit about the 'burbs. There's not much you can say better than that crappy Tom Hanks flick.
-Sebastian Faulks has recently come out with a new James Bond adventure, licensed by the Fleming family. While I can't pretend that I'm that interested in a hard-cover book of Bond's adventures, as I'm sure it's not a novel that will take more than three hours to read, the Economist seemed to like it. They also liked Indiana Jones though, so their taste? Suspect.
Obituary: Robert Vesco (Probably?)
-Interesting one this week out--an obituary on a guy who may, or may not, have died in November 2007. He's spent a large amount of time wandering the parts of the Earth that allow financiers who's empire was built on fraud--as the article points out, we know for sure it was at least $224 million (in 70's dollars, today that means about $1 billion), we think it's probably closer to twice that, and that information is coming from the same group of people who weren't actually capable of catching the dude for 35 years. So, in effect, you've got one of the most successful examples of crime paying a massive amount and then the successful criminal dying of natural causes in an island paradise.
-Next week in the Economist: a really shitty Photoshopped cover!
Another click-through for me this week, on the Klimt article. I guess I like reading about art. I came damn close to reading some of the other ones, but, eh, I'm too lazy to strain my brain with something that has actual importance.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2008.06.06 at 22:59
To those of you who have been reading this column, what's your general consensus on it having a podcast component?
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2008.06.06 at 23:05
Ooh, that would be interesting. I don't generally listen to podcasts, but I would definitely give it a try.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2008.06.06 at 23:11
Again, thanks for these. I can tell this must take some amount of work, and they are always a highlight for me, so thanks.
Oh man, a podcast would be an interesting addition. I vote yes.
ALSO: That article about Save The Children is about the worst thing ever. Is that the same Save The Children founded by the Canadian kids?
...
Google says no. I am thinking of Free The Children.
Posted by: Hugh Stewart | 2008.06.07 at 13:33
The death of a FARC leader, fisticuffs in eastern europe and spring hats in Napal; why would I not like a podcast.
Posted by: Benjamin Myers | 2008.06.09 at 09:13