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Letters from Beijing: July 1st
July 1, 2008 - 11:24amIt’s not your Ithaca Wal-Mart. Though the form is more or less the same with the happy smiley face promising “always low prices” (though in Chinese it only promises “always fair prices”), the blue-aproned sales associates and the general brightness and cleanliness of the store
Letter from Beijing
June 13, 2008 - 1:07amWalking down the streets of Beijing is a surreal experience. There are times when it doesn’t even seem like you’re in the same country, let alone same city. On the one hand there are towers of steel and glass and deluxe shopping malls with high-powered brand names pasted on the walls, but there are also areas of poverty, where resident are just waiting for an eviction order to make way for the next shiny development.
Down the Rabbit Hole
May 15, 2008 - 12:19pmIt is rare that a government would try to block humanitarian supplies from reaching its own people. Even such pariah governments as North Korea eagerly accept aid for its people when faced with famine. Benefits of such aid may not be equitably distributed, but rarely do governments refuse foreign help when their own ability to cope with a crisis has been overloaded. That is, unless we’re discussing the military government of Myanmar, which has placed the paranoid concerns of its leaders over the welfare of the millions affected by the recent cyclone. Myanmar’s leaders have wasted precious time delaying badly-needed foreign aid and placing restrictions on distribution aimed at monopolizing the government’s control of the situation.
The New Resource Crisis
May 4, 2008 - 11:21pmEveryone knows about OPEC, the cartel of petroleum-producing nations that has manipulated oil prices and production for years, but if Thailand has its way there will be a cartel for rice producing nations. The interest in a rice-producer’s cartel highlights a new resource crisis that is upon the world, that of food. Over the past year food prices across the world have skyrocketed, with rice prices rising 74 percent and wheat prices going up 130 percent. The origin for much of the rising prices is the increasing world populations, as well as increasing incomes in developing countries, leading to higher demands for meat products, which require grain for feed.
The Patriarch Strikes Back
April 28, 2008 - 3:20amThe crisis in Zimbabwe has only worsened since April 13, when I last posted a blog on the elections there. We can take a small consolation in that now the ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe are laid out for what they really are, thugs, for the entire world to see. Violence against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has been reported across the country, including the recent arrest of several hundred opposition members from the party’s headquarters. Morgan Tsvangirai has been forced to flee the country for his safety, while the official results of the presidential election have yet to be released!
Seven Years Later, Same Government, Same Policies
April 21, 2008 - 10:14pmWe dropped the ball big time on this one. When the International Olympic Committee gave Beijing the 2008 Olympics, China was well-known for its abysmal human rights record. While the decision was being made, advocates for Beijing said that China would improve itself for the Olympics. They cited the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which was closely tied to South Korea’s process of democratization. Unfortunately, they failed to cite the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, where several months before the Games started, Mexico’s authoritarian government brutally repressed student protestors. Democracy has a complicated and often uncorrelated relationship with the Olympics.
Autumn for the Patriarch
April 13, 2008 - 3:57pmIn 1980, revolutionary independence leader Robert Mugabe became the leader of Zimbabwe. The man who had led the guerilla movement against the white-minority regime assumed power amidst high hopes. Since 1965, Mugabe has been a key figure in the struggle for majority rule in the former Southern Rhodesia. He has remained President up until this past election and as of now, the results of the March 29 election remain unannounced and the future of the country remains in a delicate balance, largely due to Mr. Mugabe's actions.
A New Outlook?
March 16, 2008 - 12:20amSince its founding after World War I, the Turkish state has had a clouded history with the integration of minorities. Founded out of the multi-cultural Ottoman Empire, Turkey forged an ethnic identity that came into conflict with Greek and Armenian residents of the Anatolian Peninsula. The conflict with the Armenians is often referred to as genocide, though the Turkish government steadfastly refuses to characterize it that way.
The Question of Kosovo
March 5, 2008 - 11:55pmA lot happened in Versailles in 1919. Germany was crippled economically and began down the path towards the rise of the Nazi Party, the state of Iraq was born out of three dissimilar Ottoman provinces and Yugoslavia was created as the state for the South Slavs of the Balkans. The errors of Versailles have haunted us for a century, and with the independence of Kosovo, one of those mistakes has been settled.
Cold War Redux
February 16, 2008 - 7:10pmI remember (or at least remember being told) that when the Soviet Union and Communist bloc fell, it was the end of history. The time afterwards was supposed to signal the end of human ideological evolution, with the world being defined by liberal democracy and market economies. The optimism was only matched by the belief that with the growing democratic “consensus” there would be the end of human conflict. Given the state of the world now, it’s hard to imagine that anyone believed it at the time.