This installment includes a litany of horrors, the worst of which can be found in the Asia section. Wednesday publications of the Economist Versus Idiot columns is an experiment, and here's hoping it works. Apologies for the long wait. The World Last Week
-Forty-four children died--that's an "at least forty-four" by the way--when a warehouse next door to a day care center caught on fire. The day-care center had one working exit and no windows. That was in Mexico, the same week that twenty people--eighteen "drug gangsters" and two soldiers--died in an Acapulco shooting war. I don't know if these stories were covered on Twitter or not, you'll have to let me know.
-Italy paid "reparations" to Libya last year, so this year they got a visit from Muammar Qadafi. I wonder if that was part of the deal? I don't know about you, but if I had given Libya money, I would expect a promise that I didn't have to put up Qaddafi for the night. Dude's a creep.
-Here's another story that Captain America's resurrection kept off the front page, haw haw--after two months of violent protests, twenty four policemen and nine Indians died in the jungles of Peru. The Indians have been blocking roads and oil pipelines due to their belief that the Peruvian government is ignoring their right of control over their traditional lands.
-Eighteen people died after a suicide-bomber blew up Pakistan's biggest international hotel. Two of the people were UN workers, and the government of Pakistan has already blamed the Taliban. (They're probably right.)
-Oh, and those American journalists that North Korea arrested have been sentenced to twelve years of hard labor in whatever North Korea calls its gulags. (What's Korean for "hellish place no sane person can think about without wetting themselves"?)
-Althought Syria says they don't have a secret nuclear program, the IAEA found more traces of uranium, for which there is no explanation. I'm sure this story will end fantastically.
-The President of Gabon died. He's been in power since 1967. That's going to be a weird shift.
-Some island you've never heard of called Palau agreed to take on 17 Chinese Muslims who had just been released from Guantanamo Bay. The odd thing about this is that China had demanded they be returned to China--doubtfully a place they would have wanted--and Palau was the country that stood up to them.
-The Supreme Court said it wouldn't hear the appeals of the various pension funds that serve as Chrysler's senior creditors, which was a necessary step for Chrysler to continue with the whole "Fiat is so crazy that they are actually choosing to buy Chrylser, isn't that Crazy" thing.
-The guy who used to run AT&T is entering the manufacturing business for the first time--he'll be taking over General Motors. He actually was quoted as saying he'll "learn about cars." Ha ha ha, you dick.
Oh, speaking of General Motors, I loved this line from one of the guys at Reason magazine:
"[President Obama] can imagine a world in which the internal combustion engine is obsolete but not one in which General Motors is."
Oh, ZING of the day, that one.
Leaders
-This week isn't likely to be one of those issues where a lot of people check out the Economist based on hilarious or controversial covers--"Debt" may be a zany topic when they do it on the news and whip out the old neon signs and cowbells, but "Debt" and this particular newspaper means some Financial Reading 101. The opening op-ed isn't that too tough though, and it's pointed towards a pretty simple--though Completely Improbable--solution. The Economist wants the world's governments to pay down their deficits when their economies get stronger. Scratch that, they want the world's governments to promise to do that. We'll see how that turns out. As the piece notes, the US is interested in bringing back the relatively succefful deficit-controls that saved America before--but they haven't done it yet. Wants and promises are nice. Action though? Hell of a lot nicer.
-The Economist is still tired of writing the name "Gordon Brown", but even they're willing to admit that an un-elected successor limping his or her way towards the next election wouldn't be preferable. That's not a wholesale reversal of previous op-eds or anything, guys.
-The European Parliamentary elections made two cases, one that's for sure, one that you better hope is only true for now. The first one is that nobody really cares about voting in the European Parliamentary elections. The second one is that liberals and the center left really fucking suck at getting their ass to the polls, and that hardcore right-wingers and xenophobic racist nutjobs don't. Good job, Greenpeace. You sat on your ass and drank chai tea, and now the European Parliament has given wacked-out bigots some actual fucking power.
-There's a whole lot about the Amazon this week--besides this opening op-ed, there's two briefings about deforestation and the violent Peruvian protests over oil and land rights. It's a lot to take in, but it's worth it for gem like facts like this: due to the haphazard and poorly set up way that farmers can claim land, it's acutually beneficial for farmers to clear trees and destroy the rain forest, because they can use fines from the Brazilian environmental agency to prove the land belongs to them. Don't think that was intended, ladies and germs.
-Here's a Sri Lankan follow-up--the current president is describing the war in pre-Biblical analogies and "relishing" the population's desire to treat and call him a warrior-king, a ship of relief supplies for Tamil refugees was turned away despite the government's own admission that the ship had no "dangerous intentions" and the government ministers have started rounding up any journalists critical of the type of war they just fought. Sorry, that last sentence should say "any living journalists". They aren't even going to put this in World History classes, you realize that? That's how little the world cares about these people. Why don't you put change the color scheme on your Youtube page to show your solidarity with the memory of their dead children? That'll teach 'em!
Letters
-Everybody seems to have a decent little cross to nail themselves upon in this week's letter column, and my personal favorite for Most Cantankerous is split between the guy who writes in to say "Hey, if you're going to criticize Myanmar, let's Really Fucking Take It To 'Em" and the guy who writes in to say that bankers have no permissible claim on the word "innovation" as their industry hasn't produced any useful developments that can't be filed in the "shuck and jive" category.
United States
According to the Economist, the method with which Democrats use to argue away the National Debt--oh, they added another number to that "debt clock" that nobody cares about--is a three-parter: First they say that the complainers are hypocrites who should've spoke up when Bush was spending like mad. The second tactic, which is sort of like the first, is to just say the name "George Bush" over and over again, the same way a five-year-old repeats "Why" or "Are we there yet" or "I bet you wish you'd pulled out". The third is to say that the deficit is a short-term necessity. The article goes on from there, but that's its general point. That deficits are bad. Thanks?
-Hey, they're going to do the Census again! It's funny how so many people can get a job doing Census work, but those jobs are created mostly because so few people send that little form in. (In the defense of people who don't send in the form, the government seems to barely know where anybody is unless they need you to pay taxes.)
-Next time you hear some city slicker complain about medical insurance, tell them what you read in this article about rural health care in Kentucky. It might end the friendship, but hey, fuck friends. You've got an internet connection.
-Nice look at the way the "three strikes" criminal law works (or doesn't) in California, check it out. Here's a taste: some guy got a life sentence in 1995 for shoplifting a pair of socks. In 1981, when he was a teenager, he'd assisted in a couple of armed robberies.
-It's been a few weeks since the Econ first name-checked the Supreme Court case "Caperton versus Massey", but that's just because we had to wait for the Nine to drop the hammer. They did, five to four against Brent Benjamin, the West Virginia judge who received three million dollars for his election fund from a guy named Massey, and then decided that three million dollars wasn't a bias concern when Massey showed up in his court with a fifty million dollar claim leveled at him for an unrelated business matter. The Supreme Court were all like no, I don't think so dog. You were tots biased, SUPREME COURT STYLE.
-Being a product of the American public school system, excepting a short stint on a foreign Army base where the rules were more harshly enforced, I can tell you this: I am not offended at all by Lexington's argument that the children of America are pretty fucking lazy, and that laziness isn't preparing them for the future work they'll have to do. I'm a bit jaded though--I hate children, especially American children, and even more so, white American children. Who are fat. And talk about video games. And myself.
The Americas
-Nice big article about the economy of Brazil. Damn it, you come right back here. This is good for you! It's like medicine, but with numbers and graphs.
-Of course, if you're just looking for Wacky Human Interest stories, you can't go wrong with a story that uses the tale of Abousfian Abdelrazik--he's the Canadian/Sudanese dude who has been living in the lobby of the Canadian embassy for the last year--as the intro to a story about how Canada's government doesn't really care what happens to its citizens when they leave the country. Even if they just want to come home without, you know, being shot and stuff.
-Columbian wastepickers have now been classified as "entrepreneurs", and this story goes into detail about why that's a good thing for them. The Western tendency towards getting upset about these sorts of jobs might want to pull back a bit--none of these wastepickers sound like they dislike their jobs in the slightest. I'm sure there's some really sensitive white girl from North Carolina who has some choice words though.
Asia
-American and Chinese climate-change officials met in Beijing recently for more of the old "you guys are really dirty" "but you were dirtier first" games, and I'm starting to think--hey, what if all that climate-change stuff is like, for real, you know? Like what if skyrocketing Chinese carbon emissions are actually so bad that we all do end up Mad Max-ing it? And when we die, as a wise old sage once said, what if it turns out that all that heaven and hell stuff is real? That would suck.
-In February 2008, Cambodia outlawed prostitution in hopes of pleasing the American stae department. It worked, and three months later Cambodia was removed from the human-trafficking "watch-list." For some reason--laziness or insanity--the Cambodian police proceeded to declare some kind of psychotic war on the prostitutes they captured, using a "rehabilitation center" as a fucked up torture house, where multiple women died from the daily rapes and beatings. (And it didn't matter if one of the prostitutes happened to have four-year-old with her at the time. Just chuck the kid in a cell.) The prostitutes that were able to escape arrest began hiding out in karoake bars and the streets, effectively handicapping the successful AIDS prevention programs initiated by the governments health-care workers. All of this was supposed to have stopped, and the "rehab" center had been shut down.
Middle East and Africa
-Last month in the Sudan, a group of heavily armed Nuer attacked a small village called Torkej. Torkej is basically a camp, with little more than women, children and cattle. When the Nuer were finished spraying the camp with bullets and shooting women in their beds, 71 people were dead. To save bullets, they drove children into the river to drown them. Besides the 71, 57 were wounded. That's the sort of thing that is happening on an ever-frequent basis in the area soon to become the new country of South Sudan.
-Oh, Iran would go here, wouldn't it? But no, the election hadn't gone down until after this issue hit the stands, so there was no way for the Economist to prepare for what happened. (If you go back a few issues, you'll see that they've been wondering how much of a struggle Ahmadinejad would have with Mousavi, but that's about it.) You can see more of their current take at the website, and I'll leave you to it. For what it's worth, it's very nice to see the interest that the Iranian election and riots has spawned in America--while it's easy to criticize the over-the-top blogging and twittering right now, especially after those same individuals almost universally ignored Sri Lanka, Georgia, Zimbabwe and the variety of horrors that continues in Myanmar, among others...it's still attention on a place that needs and deserves it, and that's a good thing. The problem--because there is one--is that the bloggers and twitter types fail to recognize that They Are Not The Story. Is the Western media having trouble getting the story out, both due to Iranian media blackouts, intimidation, and a basic lack of Western spinal columns?
Sure they are. But that doesn't make people who re-tweet youtube videos of beatings important. The story is what matters. Not the confirmation bias of children. Right now, we're sitting around watching two things happen--one of them, the story of Iran, matters. The other one--about the brave kids in Brooklyn who are updating their Facebook status with statements about how "important" this all is--that's not a story. That's meaningless shit, and it obscures the point. Information matters. The audience doesn't.
-By using the law set forth in the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789--a law designed to combat the skull and crossbones type of piracy--a court case was brought against oil giant Shell stemming from the death of an environmentalist, who was executed by the Nigerian military over made-up charges related to his activism regarding Shell's activities in the Niger Delta. Shell just settled the case last week, dealing out 15.5 million. That's--well. That's that, I guess. In case you're wondering about what happened to the Nigerian General who presided over the execution, some Indian newspaper I know nothing about claims he had a heart attack after having an orgy with four women.
-Just a quick update: Israeli Binyamin Netanyahu is totally thinking about not building more settlements after talking to Obama about it. He's building settlements while thinking about it, but seriously: it's on his mind, like, a lot.
Europe
-After the fourteen page special report on the Euro, a tremendous collection of dry, unwelcoming prose if I've ever seen one, it's a non-stop dive into the European Parliamentary election results. As was expected, turn-out was a record low--unless you happened to be a right-wing anti-immigration border-line Nazi. In that case, you had no problem goose-stepping your fascist ass over to the polling place while all the liberal, forward thinking types sat around...doing what, I wonder. Not voting. There's probably more truth than the Economist wants to admit to the idea that the European Parliament is somewhat ineffectual. But that doesn't change the simple fact, which is that a whole bunch of people sat around while all the nutjobs got their shit together and won elections. Charlemagne throws out some ideas on why people don't care, and his climax is one of the most correct things of all time: "When experiments fail repeatedly, it is time to try something else."
Britain
-Oh, and here's the two British National Party leaders that won European Parliamentary seats: Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons. Here's some choice shit from this fuckface: Islam is a "wicked, vicious faith" and the only reason that the BNP didn't win do well in London is because Labour activists were "ferrying Africans who can't even speak English" in to vote against them. Let's be clear about something, Idiot style: You want to be a fucking dipshit racist, you go right ahead and be one, that's your right. Nick Griffin isn't the problem. The problem is the people in Britain who aren't racists numbskulls. Because it was their job to get off their fucking ass and vote against this piece of wet shit. Instead, they laid back in the cut, and they better hope the European Parliament is as useless as the cynics say--otherwise, Britain just decided it was okay to be represented by two bigoted sacks of trash. Smooth fucking move, that one.
-Want to know why the Economist thinks Gordon Brown is still in power?
Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of hearing them talk about it too. Read enough about Cambodia, you do kind of get to the point where you look at Gordon Brown and say "Hey, this guy doesn't rape children, right? He's okay then." Bagehot's take on the same subject is a little funnier, so credit for that.
-No one was ever convicted in a criminal court for the Omagh bombing that killled 29 and wounded 220, but some of the familes have finally won some kind of justice in civil court. This one is kind of heartbreaking, so fair warning.
International
-The Economist actually grades Ban Ki-moon's performance as the UN secretary general so far. That's the kind of silly absurdity I can get behind, especially when it's couched within a crash course on what the UN has been doing for the last few months.
-The Economist read secret documents regarding business transactions involving a business that isn't actually supposed to be operating yet. If that doesn't interest you, check this out: the prime minister of Papua New Guinea is having to carry out a review due to these documents. Oh, it's about tearing down old-growth forests too, if you still haven't checked.
Kind of irritating how I wrote that last one, right? Like it doesn't make any sense? That's in reference to the article, which is clearly about something really important, but seems to think that playing games with prose and delivery is more fun than delivering the fucking information.
Business
-The Economist barely ever pays attention to Apple's big tech extravaganzas, but they would have if Apple had released their supposedly game-changing "tablet" computer. As the Economist sees it--as well as anybody else with a brain--the change isn't coming, it's already here. Nobody cares about their OS anymore, and computers have gotten as fast as is necessary for most consumers. Now, it's about the internet, cloud computing, and portability. Everything else can go screw. Get ready for the blood of corporations to hit the floor.
-I didn't realize that Palm had retooled pretty much everything about their company and their products, but they did, and they have a new phone out. Something tells me that it must not be that big of a deal, because God knows nobody shuts up when they get a new iPhone application, and I'm hearing about Palm developments for the first time in a week-old magazine.
-Hey, India decided that 2009 was the time to get sub prime mortgages! That's really stupid!
-It's kind of funny that Ford didn't take government money and will probably go out of business because of it. I mean, you have to forget about the people who will lose their jobs for it to be funny, but still. Maybe ironic is a better word, but I don't know what ironic means.
-Since the Economist likes the new rules on executive pay, I'll make the snap judgment that a lot of other people don't. I'm ambivalent, but that's just because I'm exhausted from feeling superior to people who rely on social networks for their "news".
Finance and Economics
-Although ten banks have already paid off the money they were loaned under the Troubled Asset Relief Program--by the way, Economist, you don't get to determine the spelling of "program" in that acronym--it's questionable whether or not the "stress testing" that allowed them to raise the necessary capital to make those repayments possible. Although it was the results of the tests that opened the funding doors, the tests were based off a worst case unemployment rate that's already looking to be not "worst case" enough. On top of that, some people are claiming--with good reason--that the data provided by the banks may not have been wholly accurate. Surprise!
-Buttonwood's column this week is a nice little dive into the state of hedge-funds, an industry that can occasionally find a lot of success during wildly fluctuating markets. Wait, I don't know why I used the word "nice." It's just a dive. Take a snorkel.
-Jesus, that was a bad joke.
-Although I don't fully comprehend this little article about sovereign credit-default swaps, it is interesting to find out that a corporation has more leeway than a country when they enter a "credit event"--that means default, pretty much. Corporations have a grace period before they have to pay out, but countries are stuck the second they cross the line.
Science and Technology
-Oh shit, this story is on the way to Real Deal status: The Power of Positive Thinking, Dale Carnegie, The Secret--it's all bullshit son. "Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, [the books] may be worse than useless." The only thing I love more than watching sad people hate their own game is watching sad people try and fail to feel better about themselves. Science says: they be fucked-for-life.
-You know, this article about how storing wine in a box is better for the wine's taste could also include scientific proof that storing wine in a box will give you the power to win the lottery and fly like a Spitfire, and the entire world would still join me in saying "its fucking boxed wine."
-Some Chinese scientists better hope they got great patent protection, because if some Chinese scientists have really come up with a way to prevent windshield fog, that shit is going to be standard issue in less than a year.
-The opener article is about long-range solar powered airplanes, and while it sounds like the technology has a good long way to go before it becomes useful in any real fashion--planning for "every morning" to be in sunshine sounds more than a bit difficult--it's got a Wright Brothers crazy that I kind of like.
Books and Arts
-There's a lot of love here for the "Pen and Parchment" show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this is one of those rare times when a gallery show is actually important enough that the expense of traveling to it is worth looking into. A good portion of the work shown will eventually be returned to monasteries and other impossible-to-visit galleries, and it's insane to think that the sort of perfect borrowing storm this show is the result of will happen again. Besides all of that "opportunity of a lifetime" stuff, the Economist goes so far as to wonder whether the show itself will change the way drawing is regarded in the history books. This one is nerdy, yes: but it's that big deal kind of nerdy.
-If you want to get right to the heart of being able to criticize rational market enthusiasts like Milton Friedman without going off into the "the Chicago school drank the blood of virgins" type of argument, it sure sounds like you could do a hell of a lot worse than reading The Myth fo the Rational Market. As an alternative? Head, in the sand, Air America on the iPod. I'm all about choices.
-There's a realllllly complimentary review of Brian Nelson's The Silence and the Scorpion book detailing the story of 2002's Venezuelan coup that saw Chavez out of office, back in office, and more than a few dead bodies. The exoneration of the United States seems questionable--can one book really do that?--but it's probably worth reading anyway. At the same time, the Economist has never been a fan of Chavez, and the complete lack of criticism for the book in this review is questionable. Chavez is a fucking liar, sure. But the Economist saying "Those who truly care about human rights"? That doesn't track.
-Books like Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking sound interesting in concept, but it's a concept that seems best served by a really good magazine article. I think I'll stick with the review, which includes enough trivia to pass the time: the first being that Agatha Christie "apologized for not smoking", and the second being that anti-smoing activists apparently demonized the scientists who first proved the connection between smoking and death when the guy refused to prop up the bad science behind second-hand smoke related illness.
-One can't tell by reading this review of Harold Varmus' autobiography whether he's an insufferable dick on a personal level, but god I hope so. If this Nobel prize winning doctor/poet, polticial scientist, cancer researcher, former NIH director and current co-chair of the Council of Adivsoers on Sciene and Technology for Barack Obama is a nice guy, than I might just have to start believing in ANGELS.
Obituary: Danny La Rue
"if I had given Libya money, I would expect a promise that I didn't have to put up Qaddafi for the night. Dude's a creep."
Hey don't worry, you won't have to pay for a hotel room! Everywhere the guy goes, he sleeps in a tent. Seriously.
He's truly the Boy Scout of world leaders.
Posted by: Thoapsl | 2009.06.18 at 00:31
Look, proof: http://www.theage.com.au/world/gaddafi-pitches-his-tent-in-rome-park-for-visit-20090610-c3m2.html
Posted by: Thoapsl | 2009.06.18 at 00:31
Oh god that's good
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.06.18 at 06:24
What the??? How the Hell do you already have this recapped??? I *just* got my issue on Tuesday night!!! Geez, I thought you were moving too quick for us mortals when you had this feature on Saturday every week, but Wednesday???? There went my dream of catching up to you so I could actually have worthwhile discourse with you over each issue's content!
Screw it, I'm backing this crazy train up. What did you think of the feature last week on the failure of GM? I thought they did a phenomenal job analyzing the history and actual bankruptcy, but I think any dreams of an explosion in the Chinese market for cars is silly. The bailout of GM is simply to cushion the blow of it going under. Now it will take 5 years instead of 5 weeks.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.06.18 at 08:56
Holy shit, you're really trying to depress the fuck out of me this week. God damn. I definitely agree with you about the self-importance of twitterers and whoever about the whole Iran thing; not that I think anybody who mentions it is malicious or anything, I'm sure they've got good intentions, but changing the color on my avatar is such a meaningless action that it borders on insulting.
Why wasn't that Supreme Court case about the bribed judge a near-unanimous decision? Four justices didn't think anything was going on there? Ugh.
I can't comment on anything else; I'm too intimidated by all the fucked-up shit going on. God, this post is just a litany of horrors. I need more coffee.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.06.18 at 11:07
While the Supreme Court ruling there was good, its kind of annoying and sad that FOUR of them didn't think bias was involved...
Posted by: LurkerWithout | 2009.06.18 at 11:57
I haven't read it yet, but you can read the Supreme Court's transcript here:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-22.pdf
Skip to the end for Scalia's dissent.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.06.18 at 12:10
I think even the authors of the Babylonian Talmud that Scalia quotes would find $3 mill a heavy bill.
Posted by: bad wolf | 2009.06.18 at 13:58
ashleigh kate moncrieff SNH says you rock
Posted by: ashleigh moncrieff | 2009.06.18 at 19:32
Kenny: sorry, i responded in my head. I think the GM report was strong, although it read as a mash-up of the last 3 months of GM articles. That's fine--I start reading about car companies, and they all run together, except for Fiat. (Due to sheer wackiness.)
On China--I pretty much think that if the Chinese government wants the Chinese people to buy cars, that's exactly what will happen. The price will be cut, or they'll insert some kind of subsidy, or...whatever they need too. The Chinese government has never had a problem determining how much of something its people will buy, and if it benefits China to buy cars, that's exactly what will happen. I think the Economist agrees with me on that, and where we differ is that I'm not so sure that's what the Chinese government wants quite yet--they aren't that interested in road maintenance, and after the way they've dealt with gasoline distribution in the last year, aren't that interested in dotting the countryside with more places to fill up the tank. The Party is the one to watch. How much money the individual makes--that's only become a determining factor in the Chinese economy very, very recently, and I don't think we know yet what all it's going to entail.
On GM's collapse--I don't know, I think that Ford might go first. Getting the support of the US government to shut down all GM's senior creditors was a massive stroke, and while it was illegal, it's given GM a lifeline. Ford didn't get the same protection, and that'll eviscerate them in the long run.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.06.18 at 20:09
A.)The United States is rooting for Iran to have an open, transparent democracy.
B.) The United States was rooting for Cambodia to outlaw prostitution.
My conclusion: America should mind it's own business.
(Sorry, I just had to let off a short burst of charmless cynicism.)
Posted by: AERose | 2009.06.20 at 02:09