Month: July 2005

Remember all those complaints about humiliating Israeli checkpoints. Well, they are sprouting all over. The latest Fence is being built in Kuwaite!

And, apparently, there are humiliating checkpoints on the road to Sharm Al Sheik. Indeed, without these checkpoints, the Egyptian terrorists, excuse my politically incorrect language,“bombers” would not have been “forced” to set off their explosives early and blow up Egyptians to reach those 72 virgins. They could have blown up the tourists, instead.
posted by Judith

When a society does not tolerate violence against its soldiers, political losers may just turn to spells and incantations.

If only the Iraqi Sunnis followed suit.
posted by Judith

Two locust and drought stories focused my mind on the real meaning of progress. The first, on France 2, described the plight of French farmers. The second, on BBC News, the trouble in Niger.
But the difference, oh, the difference:

In Europe the drought meant monetary loss.

The second half of 2005 will also be challenging in Europe.

“In addition, conditions in the Western European market are less certain in the second half of 2005, as farmers may delay equipment purchases due to European Union farm subsidy reforms and drought in certain regions,” Richenhagen said.

In Africa it still means starving children.

The food crisis in Niger also threatens three other countries in the region – Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, the United Nations has warned.

At least 2.5m people in the three countries need food aid and like Niger they were hit by drought and a plague of locusts last year.

And you know what is the best thing about progress? We know about those far away places and are able to do something to soften the blow.
posted by Judith

That is the question posed by many readers. Dan Smith deals with that subject in the 6th edition of the Atlas (p.22). Here are the differences of income between the poorest 20% of the population and the richest 20% in selected countries according to UNDP Human Development Report 1998:

Over 20 times: Brazil, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Panama

10 to 20 times: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Dominica, Guinea, Honduras, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

5 to 10 times: Algeria, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Laos, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Singapore, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam.

3 to 5 times: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Inequality in the US is greater than that in Europe but it soes not reach the proportions of the level of the countries listed above.
posted by Judith

this time by John Kay in the Financial Times. It’s well worth reading not the least because it includes the following paragraph:

The debate has become so polarized that it is more and more difficult to pick one’s way through it. The best recent short guide to the issues I know was published on the eve of the Gleneagles summit by the Economic Affairs Committee of Britain’s House of Lords. The report is balanced in approach and conclusions, and has therefore received little attention. The most trenchant paragraphs describe the ways in which politics, science and advocacy have become entwined. The voices of people who know how little we know are routinely drowned by those who claim to know far more than they or we do.

posted by Judith

Well, Now they advertize.

This is what happens when the West is divided and reformists blow it.

And these men wanted to be entrusted with nuclear feul, not to mention, nuclear weapons.
posted by Judith.

First, she refuses to forget about the brutal murder of Zahra Kazemi in the Iranian jail. Now she speaks out about the brutal hanging of the gay boys.

Bravo.

posted by Judith

Your blog is a wonderful resource, perhaps especially for straight neocons like me. I check in intermittently, but always with the expectation — nearly always satisfied — that I’ll learn something I didn’t know before.

But you do your readers a disservice by simply linking to the gay UK blog from which you apparently learned of these hangings last week. First, in doing so you risk allowing your readers to treat a crime against two gay youngsters as simply that: A very public and barbarous crime against two gay men. I’d be surprised if I’m the only opponent of the Iranian regime who has often felt that the feelings we’ve long maintained against it were longer in theory than in experience. Just for example, it’s one thing for the State Department to forever keep Iran tops on its list of sponsors of terror; it’s another thing altogether to witness so vividly the revolting impulses that animate this and every radical Muslim opponent of civilization.

Second, there’s a third photograph on the official Iranian website of the two young men moments before their deaths, being interviewed — yes, interviewed — presumably by somebody with official Iranian press credentials. This photograph, on a state-sanctioned website, of two clearly devastated human beings being hounded by a caricature of a Western-style press is among the most wretched and haunting images I’ve seen. Moreover, we see in this photograph not two young gay men, but two men, simply, facing death at the hands of a regime that, it turns out, is really quite deserving of civilized loathing.

That so few of us today truly hate the Iranian government — hate it reflexively and without reservation — speaks perhaps to the easy-going nature of our easy-going western lives. But please, let us never forget that while the Iranian regime is certainly anti-gay — and you are right to emphasize this truth — it is also, and even more significantly, anti-human. And this is the deeper truth to which the photographs of these young men’s deaths bear witness. Peter Greenman
posted by Judith

Andrew is kind enough to let me read your emails. Keep them coming. But if you wish to have your comment automatically posted and even debated, you can do so on my History News Network blog .
posted by Judith.

CAFTA needs to be ratified and we hear again about the danger of America losing more manufacturing jobs and getting stuck with only poorly paid service ones. So, it’s time to focus attention on some surprising statistics found in Dan Smith’s State of the World Atlas. It’s a highly recommended resource.

It has a chart comparing regional GDP per person of countries dominated by agriculture, industry and services (2000 of the latest available data). The numbers speak for themselves:

Africa: Tanzania-agriculture-$523. Niger-industry-$746. Kenya-services-$1022.

Central Am.: Nicaragua-industry-$2366. El Salvador-services-$4497.

East. Europe: Ukraine-agriculture-$3816. Macedonia-industry-$5086. Poland-services-$9051.

SE Asia: Indonesia-agriculture-$3043. Brunei-industry-$16779. Malaysia-services-$9068.

Brunei has few people and lots of oil.

posted by Judith