The World Last Week
-While it is known that Barack Obama visited the White House and met with George Bush, there is no word yet on whether or not Bush, as he once did with Vladimir Putin, looked into Obama's soul.
-Ted Stevens lost, but just barely. Don't give Alaska a hug for this one.
-President Omar al-Barshir called for a ceasefire in Darfur! Wait, that doesn't deserve an exclamation point. Try this: Omar al-Bashir called for a ceasefire, again, for the...I think it's 11th time, but it might be only 9, that's all in the past four years. Nobody paid attention to him then. They won't this time either.
-Syria said that leaked report about uranium traces at one of the facilities Israel bombed last year is total bullshit, and even if it's true, that the uranium was part of the bombs Israel dropped.
-The former president of Taiwan was arrested on corruption charges.
-No progress in Chinese talks with the Dalai Lama's people, but that's probably because the Beastie Boys haven't thrown a fundraiser for them in a while.
-A poorly constructed school collapsed in Haiti, killing 90 people--unlike when the same thing happened in China during the earthquake, the school's owner was immediately arrested. Still would have been nicer if they'd just built it the right way in the first place.
-More environmental carnage in Cuba, this time courtesy of Hurricane Paloma. No breaks for that country right now, huh.
-I don't understand this story at all, and it isn't a story, just a blurb. But a fire extinguisher--filled with gas--exploded on board a nuclear submarine and killed twenty Russians. Obviously, they don't mean "gas" like fill up your tank, flammable gas, right? It doesn't specify, but that can't be the case. I'll probably google this one just to figure it out.
-Serbia is either genuinely interested in making more European friends or is at least interested in appearing too, because the hunt for Ratko Mladic has been turned up a healthy degree. It would be nice to catch him.
-American Express got the Federal Reserve's permission to become a bank, effectively ending the existence of large independent credit-card companies.
-Swiss banks are beginning to see the fruits of a lengthy investigation by American authorities into their shadier deals, as criminal charges have been brought against the chairman of the global wealth-management side of Swiss bank UBS, Raoul Weil. He resigned to fight the charges.
-NRG Energy decided now wasn't the time to sell out to Exelon--if they had joined, it would have made for the largest American energy company.
-Starbuck's quarterly net profit fell by 97% compared to last year. In part, it's because of their short-sighted expansion program, which saw a Starbuck's location opened for every American of voting age.
-America's unemployment rate hit 6.5%, Britains trails it at 5.8%. No sign of improvement is in the cards.
Leaders
-Here's the only op-ed piece that doesn't get double duty this week (all of the articles in the leader section that follow take up a good twenty percent of the magazine). It's not Swift level, but it's a good little piece of humor, starting off with the very real concerns of the Maldives--the island nation faces rising sea levels that, when the Earth finishes it's work, will leave 370,000 people (the entire population) homeless. The new president, Mohamed Nasheed, has proposed putting aside a certain amount of the nation's tourism revenue to eventually purchase a new homeland. From there, the article twists into a mildly dark comedy about how the reminder of the worlds troubles--from the cultural divide of a red/blue US and a besieged Israel--might be solved by similar plans. I'd hate to ruin it for you.
-By now we all know how worthless the recent financial summit was--if the goal was to accomplish something concrete, that is. This opinion piece, and this long briefing, help to explain why. A big part of both was how ridiculous it was to refer to the G20 meeting as "Bretton Woods 2"--the original Bretton Woods that took place in 1944 remade the world of global finance, it was a three week meeting with two years of advance preparation, led by people like Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. This is a five-hour sit-down with, at best, a few weeks. The comparison can only exist to humiliate. That's not to say that there could have been something of value to come out of the meeting--coordinated rate-cuts have already begun, and should be continued, it would benefit most--probably all--for the current fiscal stimulus plans many countries have in place to follow similar schedules--in the end though, what the Economist refers to as the cynical result is, in reality, what has occurred. Promises and platitudes. Remember that if you lose your job. Promises and platitudes.
-China's recent fiscal stimulus plan is a welcome one, and it's certainly extensive. While the Chinese government's official response to the crisis is that the best thing they can do is to keep their own house in order, that's far less cynical or xenophobic then it may sound. China is a hub for billions, it's a manufacturing base for more, and it's growing demand for product has already made things worldwide far better then could have hoped. (While at the same time accelerating the environmental impact of countless, formerly Western-only, practices.) While the Economist does have some misgivings--expressed best, here in the op-ed--the overall impact of the plan looks to be good news. Here's a lot of information about what, exactly, that plan is.
Letters
-The entire letters section is devoted to the various responses sent in regarding the Economist throwing their support behind Barack Obama. They are either positive or negative, totally boring, completely irritating, and do no more to increase one's respect for political debate then if you took the same survey with any random selection of people on the street and then shoved a staple remover into your eyesocket as hard as you could.
United States
-Although the opener of the US section is devoted to the Obama transition team, there's no mention of the rumors floating around about the possible selection of Hilary Clinton as secretary of state, so don't go poking around if that's what you're hungry for. Instead, it's a briefing of the last few presidential transitions, and an explanation of the model that Obama's team is following--interestingly, it isn't Clinton's, but Ronald Reagan's. The goal, unlike Clinton's slow-moving appointment process, is to move as quickly as possible, both to demonstrate the willingless to lead and to cement control after such a long campaign battle. (It's imaginable that Obama's exhaustion far exceeds any recent President-elect--while Bush had it tough in 2000, few recent Presidents have gone through the same level of grueling struggle that this years Democratic hopefuls experienced.) Although the Economist doesn't shower Obama with praise over his selection of Rahm Emanuel to be the chief of staff, their support is clear: after all, Emanuel is a big free trader, and if there's anything that might make the Economist a one-issue voter, that would be it. It's a long article, but the closer is a corker, with the writer finishing with a snub for the American appointment process, which involves at least 1,000 Senate confirmations as well as 60 pages of forms and an extensive vetting process by the FBI. It's a good thing Mr. Obama is moving so quickly.
-For all intents and purposes, this article about Cape Coral, which used to be "America's best-performing city," is little more then a human-interest story. It's certainly disguised well enough, and it's full of enough smart figures (like the mention of an 80% increase in the business of a local repo company) to make it seem like you're learning something you can use, but all it really is a magnified look at how bad things have gotten in one Florida town due to the spread of foreclosure. News? Not really.
-While some have probably reached their fill of articles describing how the Republican party has embraced anti-intellectualism and evangelical ideology, those who haven't will probably find this latest installment from Lexington to be a--if not informative--mildly entertaining one. Republican party! Will you ever lower the volume and get back to reading?
The Americas
-Here's a simple and direct title: "How to steal an election." And in one page, the Economist tells the story of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who spent the last few months trying to disqualify two opposition parties from the November 7th municipal elections, had the police harass one of the countries most well-respected journalist as well as a grand total of 16 organizations--including a powerful women's rights group and the British aid agency Oxfam. While his approval rating dropped to 20%, his efforts apparently helped the Sandistina party win 94 of the 146 mayorships on the ballot. Although the electoral monitors were officially barred from observing the voting for the first time in 18 years, some of the organizations went ahead and watched outside polling places. They claim that irregularities occurred at more then 1/3 of the stations. It's a touchy subject, this one--it was back in 1979 that this same political party, only a leftist movement at the time, overthrew the corrupt dictatorship that was crushing Nicaragua. The United State's active involvement began then as well, with the American government funding and attempting to organize the various anti-Sandinista groups that are now commonly referred to as Contra guerillas. If nothing else, the best thing that can be said about it is that it least there aren't as many human rights atrocities occurring as there were during that time period, at the hands of both groups.
Asia
-Well, if there's one country that may see the end of the financial crisis without too much of a slowdown, it's Australia--they've got China to thank for that. The Chinese demand for the minerals of western Australia have kept the land down under in the pink, and despite a slowdown in demand, that ain't changing too soon. Now Austrlain mining companies just need to learn to play nice with each other.
-In the "not important, kind of funny" news category, here's an article about the Chinese Peasant Olympics, which includes events like "the water-carrying contest to protect the seedlings amid drought." Damn it, I never thought I'd say it, but we need another ESPN channel, don't we?
-Australia didn't officially get involved in the execution of the Bali bombers by the Indonesian government until within three hours of the firing squad. When they did, they stuck to their argument for a global ban on capital punishment. Indonesia pretty much said "hey, our government is fine, mind your own fucking business." On a side note, the three bombers--who had killed 202 people six years ago--had just recently started appealing their sentence. Not because they didn't want to die, they were fine with that, but because they preferred being beheaded over getting shot. That's another level of crazy I don't think I wanted to know existed.
Middle East and Africa
-German authorities, working off a French arrest warrant, took Rose Kabuye into custody. Rose, one of the Rwandan president's senior aides, is accused of being complicit in the 1994 murder of former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyariman, as well as the president of Burundi. (And the entire French air crew, since the murder was carried out by firing a surface-to-air missile into the president's executive jet.) If the crime sounds familiar, it should--it's the match that ignited the Rwandan genocide, which resulted in at least 800,000 deaths. Rose claims she's innocent.
-Here's a real simple op-ed from the Economist. If Barack Obama really wants to be a US President that is a force for change, then one of the quickest ways he can go about it is to do the one thing no American president has done in the last twenty years. He can give a shit about Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Congo. Or he can hide behind the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and allow one of the worst moments in recent history to continue it's slide into oblivion. The clock starts now.
-The Congo. 250,000 have been displaced. Besides rape and massacre, which is growing exponentially, hunger and cholera are making their way through those stuck in makeshift camps for refugees. At least 100,000 are unreachable by aid organizations, who are being killed and raped as well. (Most of the aid groups that have yet to flee the country are right up against the moment before they must.) The available UN peacekeepers in the country, spread far across, failed last week to prevent the Kiwanja massacre. The requested 3,000 additional troops may not be available for months. The European Union is sitting on two 1,500 member battlegroups, for reasons as yet unknown. General Nkunda, the leader of one of the largest rape and murder squads, has plans to expand the war beyond where it is now, with an official attack on the lakeside town of Goma. The military that had been there to protect the civilians has collapsed, and on their way out of town, they killed and looted the civilians they were there to protect. If and when Nkunda attacks, there will be no one to stop him.
Europe
-Germany, the world's third largest economy, is officially in recession--yet has one of the few budget surpluses in the world. How did they do it? High taxes, wage restraints, and...oh, well this will be a problem. They are the world's largest exporter. Unlike America, Germany's major election is next year--so all eyes will be on Angela Merkel, who will have to deal with whatever is waiting in the wings while, at the same time, fight to keep her job.
-Articles like this are worth taking a look at, but seriously, the idea that it matters where "Nicolas Sarkozy is a closet socialist" or not is a moot one. It's not like Nicolas Sarkozy runs the world, no matter whether he's president of the European Union or not. One man's political belief may inform his power, but one man's political belief doesn't change the make-up of the global economy by itself. It's certainly a valuable subject to discuss, to read about, to argue against--but it also needs to be taken with a dose of reality at the same time. When the socialist party in France comes into power, sure. But it won't. Trying to argue it will is--well, it's just old school McCarthy fearmongering.
-Obama's first experience with Eastern Europe? When he was held up for three hours in a tiny room in the provincial town of Perm. (Some reports say that the room also smelled really bad.) That was in 2005, when nobody knew--except him, probably--who he would become a scant three years later. Lucky for Russia (it was the Kremlin who probably ordered it) that he looks back on that experience without public rancor. How Eastern Europe treats him now? We'll have to see.
Britain
-You'd think that Britain, one of the windiest and tide-battered coutnries in Europe would have an interest in windmills and tidal energy. You'd think that, because it's logical, and yet? Yeah, they decided to delay planning, miss out on the good investment opportuniites, and watch German, Spain and Denmark take the lead. While they may catch up, their only claim to fame in the new-energy market is that London now hosts the "world's biggest carbon-trading exchange." Oh wait, that doesn't make your crazy ass energy bills any smaller, now does it?
-I'm not a big fan of the twisted popularity of hardcore news articles about the random fucked up crime--there's just something a bit pointless about over-analyzing the individual act of violence as if what occurred in some fucked-up family out in some city has something global to say about itself. It's one thing when the Congo uses widespread rape or torture--that speaks to the Congo as a whole--and it's another when looking at this story, where two men who lived with a 17-month old baby and, here we go, this is hard, broke it's back, fractured eight of it's ribs, almost tore off an ear, did tear off a fingernail, and then--this is what killed the child--hit it so hard in the head that the autopsy found a tooth in the child's stomach.
Now, it's obviously grotesque and horrifying. That goes without saying. And yes, that better not be all you bring to the table--which, to be honest, is what I originally thought this article was doing. It's not. The reminder of the article, which doesn't get viscerally as nasty as how it begins, is about how this child was more then just a victim of two horrible human beings. It was a victim of a drastically mismanaged child services department. Many knew something was wrong. All of them failed. While what happened ends up laying on the shoulders of those two perpetrators, there is more then enough blame, and more then enough injustice, to go around.
-Short British section this week, but I'll just go ahead and remind you that Bagehot really hates how much love Gordon Brown is getting right now. God, he hates it so much. It's intoxicating, this level of hate.
International
-Wow, two terrible international weeks in a row. Non-nerds, turn away.
The rest of you, remember how the entire plot--for what it was worth--in Superman IV was based around this little kid asking Superman to get rid of nuclear weapons? Okay, now here's the hard part: imagine that little kid writing an article about that, and imagine it saying very little for multiple pages, and being even more boring then that terrible movie. It's hard, right? Yeah. It's hard.
Business
-In case you didn't hear, like every single day, and in case you haven't already formed an opinion about it, here's an article talking about why General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are begging for more bailout money. Simple sentences, longer available: Ford & GM are running out of cash, if they don't get more, they may have to go Chapter 11. Chapter 11 is bad for car manufacturers, because even though it would give them time to restructure their financial stake--which they probably could do, as both companies are doing very well in emerging markets, just not in the US--consumers are notorious for wanting to believe their car is backed by a company that isn't going anywhere. The Economist holds their judgment and presents both sides of the argument--Chapter 11 is designed for these cases, yes, but the car market may just need one final push to get back on top. Wait and see, although the decision may already have been made, depending on when you read this.
-Apparently Yahoo reads the Economist, because they pretty much took this Face Value column at its word and knocked Jerry Yang out of the top spot. With the type of sarcasm that is usually more in my wheelhouse then theirs, they even call him "a nice person" despite going on to spend an entire page saying why he's a bad boss, a lousy negotiator, and all around unqualified to be in the job that he, aww, no longer has.
-DHL has bailed out of the domestic shipping business in America--the expansion had begun back in late 2002, and after almost six years of trying, it turns out that Americans are just too committed to UPS, FedEx and the now more reliable US Postal Service. I'd say they'll be missed, but seriously: it's a shipping company that mostly relied on independent contractors. I don't think too many people will notice their absence. (Except for all the lost jobs, which is depressing. Still, there's a lot of companies that are going down, and DHL still has a pretty successful international business.)
-Great, television advertisements have figured out how to game the DVR-let's-us-fast-forward system. Look out for more ads that keep the brand logo and name in the center of the screen for a good portion of the run-time. Read this to find out why.
Finance and Economics
-Let's not play sensitive and understanding on this one: the Economist clearly thought that the US government made the right choice in bailing out AIG last month. They may not have gone into a lot of detail as to why, and they may have been just as snowed in by, as they now believe, the federal government was, but they did think that the initial decision to give a two-year loan of $85 billion was the right one. This article is the one they should have done then, but didn't. (This isn't really the time or place, but then again, neither is any of this, so why not? The major criticism that the Economist regularly receives is not their political slant. No, the major criticism the magazine has gotten over the past twenty years is that they don't do enough of their own reporting leg-work, and often depend on other sources more then they should. Because of the structure of the magazine, and it's specific writing style, it's not easy to discern where the information is coming from--that could not be the case here. But if there's some truth to that criticism of the publication, it seems highly possible--I'm not the right guy to use the word "probable"--that this article is an example of that kind of mistake.)
Anyway, on with it: AIG's bail-out was one they were unlikely to be able to pay off in the agreed upon time-table. The first years payment would almost have matched their 2006 profits, which was also their best year ever. It was absurd to assume that would have been possible--2008's profits, if any exist, are certainly not going to reach that level. Almost all of their available capital is stuck in insurance units anyway--for them to survive, which was the whole reason AIG was considered such an integral part of America's economy, that capital is, for purposes of loan repayment, inaccessible. They couldn't have tapped credit markets, because then they would have ended up in default, and their CDS exposure is so massive that, again, it would have destroyed the insurance units. That's why they're getting another $53 million. Of course, some media pundits seem to think that this makes AIG, which the government now has an 80% stake in, should cede some major control to the Treasury department. The problem there? You're expecting a bunch of randomly selected officials--the best of whom are already at work on the TARP program, where they are most needed--to run one of the most complicated corporations in the country. As it is, the Economist admits that there's no real way to know if this current way is worse then what would have happened if AIG had been left to burn. All we do know is that the initial plan was a real bad one, and somebody could have figured that out before it went through.
-I don't usually write anything down about the Economics Focus articles that always close this section, as they're often impossible to summarize--this one isn't much different, but it's a pretty worthwhile read if you have the time. It's about the unexpected racial benefits of financial deregulation that came about following the 1970's deregulation of American banks. While actual racial bias--the "hey, that guy is a bigot, just like Strom Thurmond"--isn't impacted by deregulation, the actual hiring practices and wage compensation seems to even out. It's not a one-to-one thing, so you'll have to read yourself to see if you buy it. It does seem pretty solid though.
Science and Technology
-They found some new planets outside our Solar System. The Economist capitalizes "Solar System," I wonder if that's British? I'm sure some English major knows and will tell me later. Not much else they can do with that degree except irritate, why miss the opportunity? Anyway, you can read all about these if you want, but they are 128 light years away, meaning you and I will never get a chance to go there as we will be long dead before the available technology exists to allow us to make the trip. Besides, you will be busy, as I will be telling you how awesome John Carpenter's The Thing is in Heaven.
-Why worry about your carbon dioxide output? There's a rock that eats carbon dioxide, it's in the ocean. Put your carbon there. This will never cause any problems or have any unknown side effects. It is, as God once said, the perfect plan.
-If you've got a lot of love for rats, then you probably don't want to read about this experiment, where rats had their spinal cords partially severed so that they could be paralyzed. Oh wait, now you can. Okay, so they cut their spinal cords, insert a virus carrying light sensitive proteins. Then they opened the animal's spines. (Still not dead!) Using various experiments with light, they were able to get the rats back to breathing normally, something they couldn't do, as their nervous system had received the major shock of having their spinal cords partially severed and then split open. Why do all this? Because it might lead to an light transmitter (to be inserted internally)--for patients with chronic pain, patients who can't breathe on their own--and solve the problem with a sort of night light maintenance.
Books and Arts
-I'd have to read it myself to see if I agree, but it certainly sounds like Don Tapscott may have a rather important book on his hands with Grown Up Digital. The arguments about what technology has done to "kids of today" are dispensed pretty often, and considering that their sources are most often, well, old fucking people who seem to have forgotten all the time they spent getting barked at when they were growing up, it's high time for somebody--preferably a guy like Tapscott, who oversaw a $4.5 million study of people born between 1978 and 1994--to produce something involving actual research. The techno-cat is out of the bag, and no amount of geezer finger-wagging is going to change that. It might be best to start looking at what the long-ranging effect of that is going to mean, preferably, without so much emotion behind it.
-Some lady wrote a book about silence, and what it means or can do. Okay, whatever. Can I write a book about soda water, and what it can mean or do? How about an encyclopedia defining all the various sounds that video games make when you reload a weapon?
-Want to read the book that American military censors tried to prevent the commercial sale of? Hey, you're excited right now, aren't you? You're sure this is something that you can quote at length to make those on the other side of the political debate feel real dumb, right? Probably not. It's War Surgery in Iraq and Afghanistan, it costs $71 dollars, and yes, it's as graphic as possible. Let's mention how graphic, shan't we? The photography includes "cavitating high-velocity ballistic wounds, injuries from 'biological projectiles' formed of body fragments from other victims dismembered in explosions, children riddled with shrapnel and a pregnant woman shot through her belly." Yes, this book is real, yes, it's for sale, and yes: if you want a copy, you are going to be put on some kind of watch list as being too big a fan of Dexter.
Obituary: Miriam Makeba
-On a complete side note, I think the Economist has two primary obituary writers--this one, a talented stylist who mixes an emotional narrative voice with a clinical delivery with facts, and another more passionate writer (with less editing time) who handles the obituaries that are more immediate reportage. I doubt that interests anyone but me. Anyway, Makeba was an immensely talented woman who did that thing so many--too many--artists claim to be doing, which is be a vibrant political force through art. (Most of the time, when an artist starts telling you how they do "political" work, what they mean is they dispense lazy platitudes based off emotional response, usually to court controversy. Courting controversy is about as likely to change a political situation as picking a fist-fight at a protest.) Makeba, on the other hand, showed the world South Africa, she lived apartheid, and she brought the subject--and the women and men who lived it--to a group of people numbering in the millions who would never have known otherwise. Most impressive of all was that was never her ambition in the first place. Miriam Makeba changed the world, and she made it a better place. While South Africa may have begun a disconcerting slide from the heights of the Mandela period, she is someone who an entire nation will never, ever forget.
All art is from the Economist unless otherwise noted below:
Good old internet viruses made grabbing art difficult, so i stuck to public domain except for these--get it kylie's album is called light years don't ask i'm sure it's awful, and although the cover of Tapscott's book probably belongs to his publisher, you'll learn more at his site.
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