Tag Archives: Not Europe

Don’t Stand In The Middle, Just Duck

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I don’t think this is ‘getting shot from both sides’ material, I think this is a question of post, and pull up a chair (or per llogar-hi cadires as we say in Catalan). When the loony right meets the looney left. Robertson vs Chavez. I don’t even need to write a post, since Tim Worstall has done a pretty accomplished job already. Basically the Guardian article Tim links to says it all in the first para:

“America’s leading televangelist appeared to take Christian fundamentalism into uncharted territory yesterday when he called for the assassination of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Ch?vez.”

Taking Christian evangelism into uncharted territory, that just about gets to it.

I do have one reasonably important difference with Tim on the deontological level I think: political assasination. I do not favour this, and recent US history in Latin America is not a happy one in this regard to say the least. Maybe my perspective is coloured regionally, but little as I like Chavez, I regard Vladimir Putin as a much worse global menace, and he has nuclear weapons, but no, I don’t want anyone to ‘take him out for me’, not in this lifetime thank you very much.

Update: One commenter has just reminded me of a source on this that I forgot to mention, Venezuelan blogger Miguel Octavio, and his Devil’s Excrement blog.

Little Bits of Asia

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A while back I asked about EU policies toward China. There’s now a section on the Europa server devoted to just that question.

“There will soon be more people living in the city of Bombay than on the continent of Australia. … Bombay is the future of urban civilisation on the planet. God help us.” (p. 3)

“[W]orldwide, a billion more people a year buy tickets to Indian movies than to Hollywood ones. … When every other country’s cinema had fallen before Hollywood, India met Hollywood the Hindu way. It welcomed it, swallowed it whole and regurgitated it. What went in blended with everything that had existed before and came back out with ten new heads.” (p. 321)

“What is a South Asian? Someone who watches Hindi movies. Someone whose being fills up with pleasure when he or she hears, Mere Sapnon ki rani or Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Here is our national language; here is our common song.” (p. 323)

“A wide assortment of cousins and uncles peoples the marriage. One works on an oil rig in Abu Dhabi; another is a property dealer in Bombay who spent six years in Nigeria getting rich off the currency scam in the 190s.” (pp. 430-31)
— From Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta

“[Ms. Zhang] has come to realize what all people who want to change China eventually learn: the current system is at a dead end, but its death is not in sight.” (p. 273)
— From Wild Grass by Ian Johnson

“Anita Jain reported in the Financial Times last week that India has ’10 discount airlines planning to enter the market over the next 18 months.'”
— From Slate

“On July 18th, Shanghai’s first budget airline made its maiden flight from Shanghai?s Hongqiao Airport.”
— From the Economist’s August 2005 Shanghai update

And finally, back on July 9, the perceptive Mark Leonard had a terrific article in the dead-tree edition of the Financial Times on China’s role in global economics and politics. It’s online here.

The Never To Be Forgotten List

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This decision is long overdue. That doesn’t make it any less welcome.

Argentina’s Supreme Court overturned two amnesty laws Tuesday that had prevented the prosecution of hundreds of military officers, soldiers and police linked to this country’s “dirty war,” in which tens of thousands of people may have been slain.

The ruling allows the reinstatement of hundreds of prosecutions and civil lawsuits that had been dropped nearly two decades ago, legal experts and government officials said. Government sources and human rights activists said new charges naming as many as 300 defendants ? the majority retired military and police officers ? could be filed in the coming weeks.

Not Europe, But Still a Good Story

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Give me one real live anarchist over a bunch of yipping libertarians any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

And so it was that the nation’s most militant labor organization, the brotherhood of Big Bill Haywood and Joe Hill, came to publish the lyrics of “Run, Cthulhu, Run,” a Lovecraftian parody of the bluegrass standard “Molly and Tenbrooks.”

The rest is just as wacky, just as human.

African Debt Deal

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Well, this isn’t the end of Africa’s suffering, but it is a start.

“British Finance Minister Gordon Brown said the deal would provide 100 percent write-offs immediately for 18 countries and that more countries would qualify for relief later.” The debt deal is very good news for people in the 18 countries that will immediately benefit,” Romilly Greenhill of ActionAid said. “But it will do little to immediately help millions in at least 40 other countries that also need 100 percent debt relief.” Among those in line for rapid relief are countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mauritania and Zambia as well as, beyond Africa, Honduras and Bolivia.”

OK, the thread is open if anyone wants to express an opinion.

Bolivia Has A New President

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His name is Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, he has been a judge in the supreme court, and he appears, at this stage at least, as an interim, compromise candidate:

The action came after lawmakers gathered following a day of demonstrations and under a warning by the military of possible intervention if the spreading chaos isn’t quelled.

Congress rapidly accepted the resignation of President Carlos Mesa. Then both the Senate and House leaders rejected the job, automatically giving it to Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, who had been third in the line for the presidency.

“Bolivia deserves better days,” Rodriguez told lawmakers after swearing in. “I’m convinced that one of my tasks will be to begin an electoral process to renew and continue building a democratic system that is more just.”

Publius Pundit has another good Bolivian blogs roundup. In particular Mabb has a good on the spot account of the tension involved.

Interestingly enough Miguel at Ciao and Eduardo Barrio Flores are arguing that opposition leader Evo Morales should resign too, in order to reduce the dangers of this conflict exploding.