The World Last Week
-Don't know why the Economist website won't give me the cover, so instead, here's their silly picture that goes with the weekly round-up portion.
-Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah stock market keeps going lower blah blah. You got this one, right? Rinse and repeat, every week.
-Presidential debates too, of course, you know this. Did you know there's only been three? The media has about two stories going right now, as far as I can tell--debates and financial crisis updates. So if you were planning on burning down your parents house while an animatronic band from Chuck-E-Cheese plays Sadat X's "Funk Dat," this is the time to do it and not be concerned your ex-boyfriend might catch you on the CNN's "Fucked up weirdo" hour.
-John McCain essentially gave up in Michigan, which would make a good title for a Don Mclean song.
-There are still 25% people who approve of George W. Bush right now. C'mon, America! I'm sure we can drop that below ten by November. I hear he drinks blood out of an infant's skull every Saturday.
-11,000 gay couples have gotten married in California since June, which trumps the amount of gay couples who have gotten married in Massachusetts since they legalized in May of 2004. Either way, I can't figure out where all the demons are at. Didn't a bunch of evangelicals say this was going to bring about the apocalypse or something like that? I want to cook s'mores. Wait a second. Those people are crazy? Not fair! They seemed so sure.
-That previous Iranian president that wasn't super-fantastic but now seems sort of like Kermit The Frog in comparison to Mr. I Hate Everybody (Especially Jews and Americans) And Want To Kill Them Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to run again.
-Kim Jong Il supposedly went to watch a soccer game, but that story comes from North Korea's official press office. They've previously published stories about Kim Jong Il being eight feet tall and have a good portion of the country convinced that America's streets are covered in homeless people who are raped regularly by the rich. And no, I don't mean "rape" in a metaphorical way. So take the story with a helpful bucket of salt poured into your eyes--those cats ain't exactly Edward R. Murrow.
-American International Group (AIG) was given another $37.8 billion, and yes, that thing on Saturday Night Live was true: they also spent $440,000 at a fancy resort right after the initial $85 billion dollar bailout. God, didn't these AIG people read about the French Revolution?
Leaders
-Even the Economist was knocked out of their socks by the co-ordinated interest cut by six national banks, including the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. (The People's Bank of China cut their interest rates at the same time, but that's getting played out by the Chinese government & media as a coincidence that the rest of the world's governments are fine to join in the charade of.) If the bail-out wasn't still obscuring people's focus in the US (not a criticism, it's certainly understandable), then this would probably make for one of the biggest finance news story of the decade. Of course, it, like the recent nationalizations and bail-outs, won't be an overnight fix. But it's a big ass deal.
-The Economist only had four leader articles this week--it's again amping up it's finance section due to the crisis--but that doesn't make this fine op-ed about African progress any less valuable. Acknowledging their own embrace of cynicism with a reference to their famous "the hopeless continent" remark, they spend some time focusing on the progress that's been made both in the expansion of political parties, a stronger media and general improvement in some of the basic economic structure required to break with the failed "African socialism" project. The piece, as well as the massive overview article in the briefing section, doesn't pull any punches--it shouldn't, there's still a long way to go--but it's a strong piece that could've been even longer. Considering the dry tone most of the articles in this magazine use, that's a rare statement. Both articles are too intensive to effectively distill, but one of the most interesting points is that the current financial crisis may have little impact on the continent--it's nowhere near the level of fiscal exposure to the current problems, and that could leave it to continue making progress on its own. Unfortunately, that could also mean that it goes even more ignored by the world's larger economies, many of whom are responsible for the economic aid that keeps many of it's countries alive. It's wait and see, but still--it's been a good long while since "good news in Africa" was something that could be said out loud.
Letters
-Nicholas De Mascarel is a man after my black little heart, yanking this six year old doozy of a quote out of the ether of memory. Back in 2002, the Economist said "that banks, rating agencies, insurers and even regulators may fall victim to a collective myopia that blinds them to the true risks" of packaging and distributing what were then new variations of financial vehicles. God, wouldn't it be so great to be that guy? That guy at the office who read that article and then sat around using it as the "footer" at the end of all his intra-office communication. It's an investment in a future "I told you so." Balltastic.
United States
-The Economist details the rising Obama polls with the idea that a bad economy forms the key factor, but then kind of hedges its bets by going on to discuss the two campaigns--one of which is working pretty well, the other not so much. Poll-watching is something I find completely repellent--not just because it takes over so much of the news circuit during a time period when far more interesting stories are pushed to the B list, but because the vagaries of polling punditry are so inanely subjective that I wonder how much one can actually consider it journalism. This piece is better then some, but it's still tea leaves. And reading tea leaves? That's for dirty hippies.
-Two articles on the candidates hometown: McCain's Arizona, which isn't a big fan of him, and Obama's Chicago, which is. Again, I can't be bothered to retell you what these articles say, which is not so blankety much.
-There's two articles on the recently passed bail-out bill, which is, yes, 451 pages long. Besides the $700 billion that will be spent on mortgage assets and stakes in finance corporations, it also includes $150 billion in tax breaks (it doesn't say to who, sorry) and increased health insurance coverage for mental illness. Wait, what? Sorry, mental illness: totally important, love some people who are mondo suffering from mental illness, but...what the fuck is that doing in there?
-Besides being a record 85 days late, California's recently passed budget is based on revenues that have already (in less then a week) dropped below the low estimates the budget was based on. Things for Schwarzenegger look bad, and the future looks worse. Of course, it's just the Californian budget, so it isn't exactly some magical new experience that has never before occurred.
-Indiana goes from being a state that's pretty solidly Republican to one that might actually be a bit of fence-sitter, and the Economist wants to tell you why. As always with these sorts of swing states, the red and blue party map of the state indicates that the people in the larger cities went Democrat in 2004 whereas the entire rest of the state, with zero exception whatsoever, went Republican. Of course, the way I understand it being around the calm and intellectual debate that New York City is so rife with, it has something to do with those people just being "fucking stupid." (Seriously. That's NYC for you baby! A bastion of liberal, forward thinking people that seem to believe that a large portion of the country should "quit their bitching" and let themselves be led into the future by poetry writing wanna-be beatniks living off trust funds and summering in the Hamptons. What makes it even more incredible is that they seem to think that the way to initiate this Pied Piper moment of democracy is to begin their sentences with "You're a fucking idiot if you vote for John McCain.") I'll be glad when this election gets done with and the news goes back to who it belongs to: pricks like me who are rapidly becoming isolated nihilists.
-Lexington talks about the recent and the (at the time) upcoming debates between Obama and McCain, but it's really just an opportunity to cram in some of the trivia he's amassed about the history of American presidential debates--that Al Gore's sighing might have cost him the election, that JFK convinced Nixon to forgo make-up by pretending he wouldn't be getting any, and that Jimmy Carter once thought quoting his 13-year-old daughter regarding the important issues of the US would somehow endear him to the public. It's an interesting piece, which stands in stark contrast to the debates themselves, which struck me as...you know what? Who fucking cares what I think about the debates? God, I don't even care what I thought, and I'm the greatest sexual partner I've ever known.
The Americas
-In all the time I've read the Economist, I'm pretty sure I've never seen them use the word "rape" as anything other then it's standard criminal meaning. Can't say that anymore, because after reading this short piece about what's happened to Patagonia's fishing industry, they end by saying that the government "raped the fishing grounds." Besides overfishing and non-existent regulation, people have actually been killing each other down there over this portion of industry. Sad tale, but one that could've used a bit more information about who these fish are actually sold too--is this part of Argentinian export, is it for in-country use? Seems like that would be information worth having.
-The Economist wants you to pay attention to the current local elections in Brazil, because they might serve as an indicator to the 2010 presidential election, which will be fought out without an incumbent candidate. Salvador elected a transsexual woman, it doesn't say to what, and a soccer player who apparently used his historic record of 800 goals scored made it to the city council in Goiania. The rest of the article focuses on the presidential thing, so I'm assuming that those two stories are just there for fun trivia factor. Success!
Asia
-The old sumo scandal that started--god, at least one year ago, maybe two--regarding three young wrestlers who beat a 17-year old trainee to death at the behest of their "stable-master" (think Craig T. Nelson, there, you got it) has been amped up by some recent claims from former wrestlers that somewhere around 80% of matches are fixed. Of course, there's also the aging audience problem. The solution was to expand the Japan Sumo Association's board to 12 individuals, all of whom are now elected. (They're all in their seventies, which means that they've got a lot of experience looking the other way when people take drugs, matches are fixed, and teenagers get beat to death. Nice.)
-In another Chinese story that speaks to a greater problem between the government in Beijing and the people--well, everywhere else--the Wangkuai Reservoir's pipeline began pumping water away from the Hebei province (which is in the middle of a nasty drought) to top off the Beijing water supply. There's really no two ways about this--due to rampant misuse as well as climate change, Beijing is taking water from the people who were smart enough to live near it, screwing them out of profitable rice growth and keeping them impoverished. On top of the milk scandal, which continues to spread despite an agreed upon recall, the Chinese government seems hell-bent on doing whatever they can to worsen the already terrible relations it has with just about any and every Chinese person that isn't a part of the government.
-The security forces in Thailand continue to not fight back against the anti-government protesters, despite the rise in violence. This may actually be a not-totally awful thing, because no one is quite sure what sort of loyalty the security forces (which is really just the police with army back-up) have. A good portion may actually support the protesters, which, if they were to get more actively involved, might make for a total breakdown in the countries military. Either way, people are dying. Somebody in Thailand needs to do something soon, but there's no real indication that's going to happen.
-Thailand actually could take a page from India, who swiftly sent troops into Assam to end the bloodshed between that region's most populous tribe, the Bodo, who had initiated a full scale attack on local Muslims. Before the government could shut down the conflict, 53 people were dead, 25 of whom were shot by police. If you take a look at the article, you'll see a map that showcases how cut off the region is from the remainder of India--the passageway through the borders of Nepal and Bangladesh reach a choke-point that looks to be less then 50 kilometers at one point. I'd like to tell you that the motive was something other then just shitbag immigrant-hating nonsense, but if I did, I'd be lying.
Middle East and Africa
-After twenty years, an American based colloquial translation of the 72 volume English-language Talmud is almost done. Most people read it one page a day, which will end up taking them seven years to finish it. I'm curious about that, because that means that 72 volumes breaks down to around 2700 pages, and that's not even as long as Infinite Jest, is it? Oh well. This probably has more characters or something.
-There's no article in this issue about the current state of Zimbabwe, possibly due to a deadline crunch, but the absence of one is conspicuous. What up?
-Who, exactly, do those 33 tanks stolen by Somalian pirates belong to? The manifest seems to indicate that the tanks were purchased by Kenya's defense ministry for use in the south Sudan. Kenya disputes this, claiming the tanks were for them, despite having no history of using that type of equipment. The concern here is that Kenya, who have played the role of the moderator of peace agreements between the Sudanese government and the chomping-at-the-bit for independence south Sudan, are actively helping to arm the southern regions for a future war with the government. (A referendum on the secession of that region comes up in 2011.) Those pirates had no idea what they were getting into.
-Saudi Arabia is starting to push itself forward as the go-to diplomat of the Middle East, as long as it isn't a serious conversation about Iraq that might touch upon where most of that countries current suicide bombers are coming from. (Hint. Saudi Arabia.) But they are expressing a vocal interest in negotiations between the various countries involved in Afghanistan, including the local government, the US, Pakistan and interestingly enough, the Taliban. Huh.
Europe
-If you're the type that likes to play doom-sayer of the future, then here's some raw meat to chomp on: Russia's continuing adventures in the Arctic Ocean and the Norwegian Sea include weekly scandals along the edges of Norwegian airspace (Russian warplanes "buzzing" the country"), a mock bombing run on Bodo, and a lot of weird, unknown, experimentation with Russian submarines. (It's rumored that the Shkval, a super-fast torpedo, is being tested out there.) Because the area is one that isn't an active concern to any specific country, and the one's closest (Iceland & Norway) have their own financial problems keeping them from instituting some kind of overall naval patrol, it's just more mysterious (and therefore rife with negative speculation) behavior on the part of a Russia that hasn't exactly proven itself to be too concerned with global image maintenance. It's always good to remember that nasty, blood-covered conflicts rarely begin in areas under a big microscope--they usually start because of something happening in an area nobody knows much about, and involve people far out of the reach of any kind of real journalism. For example--well, how about the Arctic Ocean? (Or off the coast of Somalia?)
-A mysterious explosion in Albania that killed 26, where a munitions dump staffed by a local contractor under contract with an American firm, continues to play out as opaquely as anything else does in Albania. Despite the assistance of the American Justice Department and a heavily promoted investigation by Albania's chief prosecutor, the story has a way to go before it beats out the controversial spotlight on weird American laws that prohibit American military contractors from using Chinese made ammo--most of the people who died were at work repackaging shells to disguise their Chinese origin.
-The European Union doesn't have a whole lot to offer on the current financial crisis, since all of its members are pretty much going their own way--Germany has followed Ireland's ridiculous claim to back all deposits by making a just as unrealistic claim that the the German government will back all personal savings deposits, Britain went go-for-broke with a massive bail-out, and France--oh France. They came up with a joint-European rescue fund and then, after it was completely rejected, claimed they weren't the ones who came up with it in the first place. Spain keeps pretending that they want a big team-up, mostly because they're trying to wrest the title for "worst housing bubble that we can't fix by ourselves" from America and Britain. Oh, and the blue and yellow flag is still really ugly.
Britain
-The recent bail-out in Britain, broken down into a trilogy: first up, the Treasury will be paying $87 billion into the British banks still standing so that they can function after losing so much capital; second, the Bank of England will double in size, effectively allowing around $345 billion in Treasury bills to be swapped and cashed out; three--and three is the one that strikes me as the most cringe inducing--the British Treasury will guarantee as much as $430 billion of completely new funding that any banks can arrange. Oh, and I checked on some other sites, and I can pretty much guarantee you that the British didn't include more insurance coverage for the mentally ill on their bail-out. Hope that isn't too big a factor.
-Marjorie Deane, a woman who worked for the Economist for 42 years, handling the financial coverage for the magazine, died on October 2nd. In stark comparison to the terrible obituary that closes the magazine, this is a brilliantly written piece about the life of an individual who's intelligence, class and wit stand as a model for other journalists to follow. (Journalists. Not bloggers. I could give a shit about being classy. Hell, I'm boiling up some crystal right now.)
International
-Sometimes I start thinking that I should have gone with the now-defunct idea to do these Economist pieces as podcasts, like now, when I read a three page article about how few people donate their organs (look at the chart! For every 1 million in the American population, 26.6 people donate after death. 26.6 people have some fucking sense and decency, and 999,974 seem to think they'll need their kidneys in the afterlife! Did you know the US had that many Egyptian pharaohs?). Of course, then I could've followed up the bitchy part of the recording by letting whoever was bored enough to listen hear the sound of me vomiting on a porcelain butter dish while talking about the growth of support for the idea of paying people for their organs. The Economist treads as fine a line as it can--mostly because even the most out-of-touch reader immediately realizes that this means bringing the grossly frightening black market in organ donation, wherein rich Americans and Europeans fly to 3rd world countries to rip the actual guts out of poor people, to the front page--but it also has to acknowledge what is, at it's core, an almost as ugly fact: that there's a good portion of the population of even the most well-educated countries who keep taking their fucking useless dead corneas with them when they get burned up in a crematorium. (Unless they died in the American South, which means they got to keep their organs with them when that crazy dude threw their bodies in his yard and said his incinerator was broken.)
Business
-Dead business watch continues, and while I'm not sure this will last long enough to be a weekly feature, let's just pretend and sit back:
1. Sharper Image, because neck pillows filled with cedar chips are even less useless then when consumers had jobs.
2. Linens 'n Things, because you can buy absolutely anything they sell at about a million other stores, many of which are more interesting to spend hours at because they have food and baubles.
-Having your tunes show up on the popular Guitar Hero video game seem to be one of the few ways that can help increase dismal album sales, to the point where Activision has pondered the idea that maybe the musicians should be paying to have their games featured, as opposed to the other way around. After all, the big dog in the room sure as hell ain't Aerosmith.
-After a tumultuous relationship that has never made a whole lot of sense, Tata Motors has officially abandoned the car factory they built in West Bengal, as the local protesters finally convinced Tata that, despite all the platitudes dispensed by the Indian government indicated, nobody really wants to industrialize the area. Meanwhile, back in America, a whole bunch of ex-autoworkers probably sat around reading this and going "Wait--they built you a car factory and you didn't want to work there?"
-That "paperless office" thing that never happened is finally starting to happen, mostly because the people who wanted underlings to print out emails so they could mark them up by hand are finally starting to die off. (Okay, that's not really why, but it's shorter and funnier then this boring ass article.)
-Here she, is the second most powerful woman in the world (after Germany's Angela Merkel) according to Forbes. Shelia Bair is the current head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, otherwise known as the organization that puts those stickers on the front window of banks so that people can rest assured that their $300 "college account" will be safe from...hey, now do you get why she's such a big deal? Anyway, Face Value, the bio column in each weeks Business section, give you the rundown on a smart and powerful woman who seems to be handling the current crisis really well, or at least, as well as can be expected.
Finance and Economics
-Some articles in this section are uncovered and are available on the website, but trust me my friend--they are not covered here because they are totally racist.
-First article: Long and unfocused, while somehow not cumbersome in the least, this is a ground-level look at the entire reach of the global financial state. Due to it's overall "all in" approach, this isn't something that is going to be outdated for another couple of weeks unlike the daily stock market type reports that change within hours. Here's some of the choicest bits: the majority of the world is facing the same internal banking problems--banks need capital after their massive losses, but they can't borrow in the long-term paper markets, making them short of the funds needed to protect their own existing (on paper) collateral, on top of this, the short term money markets are shut down. They need money to protect the money they have and the way they normally get that money is inaccessible. Somebody with more ego (yes, they exist) would say "it's that simple," but honestly, if some motherfucker tells you that this specific state of affairs is "that simple," you've just found somebody you should stop paying attention to. It's global, it's every major economy, it has no historical reference point--this ain't "that simple."
-Sidebar: Dick Fuld sat down in front of the US Congress, said that he was sorry, accepted all the blame and then immediately laid Lehman Brothers problems on the short-sellers and, oh really, the media. Because the media created the subprime crisis, and the media came up with a loan system that allowed people to borrow 100% of the cost of a home, and the media came up with an over valuation of housing costs, and the media came up with mark-to-market accounting. Yeah. Totally the media's fault. The one thing the media's done that does seem to confuse this crisis is that it hasn't given as much play to the "Main Street" areas of culpability, which is that people, regular working joe type people, should never have taken on homes that they could only afford through goofball banking ideas. Sure, there's a good portion who walked into deals they couldn't understand, that's not on them, but look at it as simply as this: if you couldn't afford a house unless you took out a loan that paid the entire cost, then you shouldn't have gotten the house. Greedy bankers suck, but so does basic ignorance. Blame--pass it around, share it in a trough.
-Second Article: If you want to see what it looks like when a countries entire banking system has to be nationalized, when the population of the country has racked up debt that takes over 213% of their disposable income--essentially, if you want to see what it looks like when this financial crisis reaps the scary end that US Presidential candidates and British prime ministers are attempting to fend off, well, here you go. It's called Iceland.
-Third Article: The American asset purchasing plan is called The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Yeah, that's right. The thing that's supposed to save, or at least monumentally assist, the American finance system is called "tarp." Cute. Whoever came up with that should get punched in the dick. (Because you know it's a dude.) Anyway, here's a breakdown of what it is, how it's supposed to work, and yes, you probably already read something about it somewhere else.
Fourth Article: This one is a bit more ethereal, as it's about the nature of a countries relationship to the bank deposits that country can realistically guarantee. All major countries end up with bank deposits that exceed the actual gross domestic product of the country they exist in, that's standard--the question is, what happens when the government attempts to back this debt on the scale of which this current crisis requires? Places like Finland and Sweden are near the bottom, in that their bank deposits only make up 125-150% of their GDP, as is the United States, whereas Iceland--which is addressed above--has to deal with bank deposits that are five times their actual GDP. I'm not going to pretend to fully comprehend the solution here, it's more of a numbers game for smarter individuals then I, but the chart is certainly educational.
Fifth Article: Buttonwood again does that thing were he takes a widely used piece of common world info--that a toddler will throw a fit so it can get stuff--and then extrapolates it into the overall topic of his column, which is about how markets keep dropping so they can get more out of their local governments. Not really sure it works, since the markets, if they were babies, haven't stopped crying and thrashing. At some point, maybe we should just put them in a trunk and drive into a lake. Ha, that's awful. I'll leave it in.
Sixth Article: The argument that plays itself out, of whether or not America is in a recession, seems to be over for the Economist--as far as they're concerned, they are, as is Britain, most of Europe, and things don't look good for anybody else. The GDP is either shrinking or barely growing at all in most of the rich world's economies, the trends look to continue, and, as the article says in it's subtitle "At best, the world economy is on the brink of a recession." I'd say something like "keep an eye on this one," but I kind of guess that we all sort of are anyway, right? Except for World of Warcraft people.
Science and Technology
-If you've got some cash on the side, then congratulations. Also, you might want to invest in Solyndra, a Californian company that has come up with a cheaper, thinner form of solar technology that can be cheaper, easier to install, and more resilient then any other current method. The companies current plan is to put the product (which looks similar to a bunch of florescent light bulbs placed in a rectangular panel) on the roofs of factories, warehouses and supermarkets. As things went last week, were important news in China went in the back of the mag due to the financial situation, this is one of those stories that will most likely become a much bigger deal down the line. For now though, here's more evidence to my own personal theory, which is that the place to look for developments in alternate energy isn't in US Presidential debates, but in the market. Solyndra doesn't give a fuck about abortion or terrorism. They've just figured out a way to create electricity in a way that could also make them a naughty amount of cash.
-And because it's list week, here's your Nobel science prize breakdown:
Luc Montagnier, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen won for medicine. Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi because of the discovery of HIV, and zur Hausen for a study that showcased the papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer. (Yes, if you watched And The Band Played On, you'll notice the absence of Dr. Gallo, the American who was considered to be one of the HIV discoverers as well. That's on purpose.)
Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa split the prize for physics. Nambu came up with the math that explains the "spontaneous breaking of symmetries in fundamental physics," Kobayashi and Maskawa came up with another form of symmetry breaking that predicted two new families of quarks. If you're having trouble here, that's because this is about matter, antimatter, and the existence of the origin of the universe. If you're mad that you're having trouble here, then you need to wake up to the fact that you and me ain't that different: we're neither of us intelligent enough to win Nobel prizes in physics. Acceptance!
Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien were all responsible for the discovery of a green florescent protein, an important tool of modern biology. It's what makes certain kinds of jellyfish glow. It'll be used to study the expression of different genes at the same time.
Books and Arts
-The biggest art story of the year? Maybe so. "Picasso et les Maitres" has opened at the Grand Palais--it's ten rooms, each focused on a specific theme, with Picasso's work joined by the masterpieces he was influenced by, responded to, or stole from. The additional work includes classics by El Greco, Goya, Ingres, Renoir, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Poussin, Manet & Velazquez. The Grand Palais is also featuring a massive, and rare, exhibition of the work of Emil Nolde. The Economist goes so far as to say that the room showcasing Nolde's crucification centerpiece (making up one of a nine panel "Life Of Christ") is "worth a trip to Paris" by itself. For the time being, any time somebody criticizes your taste or heralds their own, make sure to remind them that the only people who get to play that claim out are the ones on a plane to Paris.
-Hey, it's a book about shit. No really. It's a book about shit.
-You can always tell when the Economist is going to go after a book with knives out--they start off by telling you how important and valuable a book, one that sounds sort of like the book titled in the review, would be. Then they say something like this: "This rushed, uneven book...will contribute less to than expected to that debate." Anyway, a book detailing the financial history of the world: it would be sorta boring, but it would be valuable. There will be one coming out with that as its title. Don't buy it though. It's not good.
Obituary: J.B. Jeyaretnam
-Maybe it's just me, but this is the worst written obituary I've seen in the Economist, whether it was an issue I read for this feature or at any other prior time. The thing that makes the obituaries in this publication such a resounding success is their ability to really encapsulate why the deceased had an impact on the world, what the impact was, and a sense of their personality. This fails pretty much across the board, consisting instead of a litany of Jeyaretnam's accomplishments and trials, many of which the Economist presents in a dismissive fashion that seems at cross purposes with the tone they seem to be going for, which sounds like one of admiration. It's a confusing piece. As far as I can tell, J.B. Jeyaretnam was an politician who made it his life's mission to play gadfly to the powers-that-be in Singapore. At time, he seemed to find some success--the 1988 appeal of his disbarment (from a perjury charge) and winning a seat in parliament in 1981--but mostly, he just maintained a never-give-up mentality for the entirety of his life. He certainly sounds impressive. It's too bad his obituary doesn't.
All images from the Economist, used completely without permission, except as follows.
Madonna and that guy she cheated on from Star Trip, the thing from cheers probably still belongs to the Chicago Tribune, tony leung ripping your guts out and showing you how lame you are from Happy Together, your guess is as good as mine on the baby-eating wrestler, the Art Scroll Talmud comes from a website inaccessible on Saturdays, sean connery playing peep show from The Hizzle For Red Octdizzle, the beefeater totally belongs to dc comics and shit, massage chair from last-man-standing brookstone, the solyndra tech drawing comes from solyndra, and the day that i give credit to the airline industry for anything is the same day that i'll start telling people that they should watch one tree hill.
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