Ten minutes on June 17, 2008
Ten minutes on June 17, 2008
For Father’s Day, I decided to stay in bed for a while and read The Economist and The Atlantic. My room has a huge window that looks out into the top of a big old tree with green green leaves, so I feel like I’m in a tree house sometimes. The day was gray, but promising; downstairs I can hear voices, the sounds of breakfast being made, the general chaos of children playing.
Two things immediately occurred to me. First, reading The Economist is like listening to someone who’s just traveled the globe, probably in business first class. This is not a stupid person, but it also isn’t someone who has much patience for perspectives outside the ‘realist’ political view that corporations and capitalism are here to stay, pretty much in their current shape, that Western governments make poor choices but are also the best hope for solving global conflicts, and that a fine-grained view of the internal political machinations of nations is useful. Second, looking at the ads for GE, Citi, Canon, Qatar, Shell, Emirates, Vanguard, the uses of such knowledge seem geared toward people who are interested in things like a reliable labor market, not workers, if you follow.
Given that, it was quite interesting to read:
In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq, we do not mean to justify The Economist’s support of the invasion of 2003. Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle.
Now this is the ending to an article that introduces a ‘briefing’ on how Iraq may be turning a corner. The cover story has an Iraqi man sitting in a small space fixing a traditional stringed instrument, rather like an oud. The cover proclaims, Iraq starts to fix itself. I want so much to imagine this man finishing his work, handing the beautiful handmade wooden instrument to a young Iraqi who will play the songs of a future Iraq, or a future landscape in which, perhaps, Iraq is no longer what we call this big square of land drawn by Western interests and ignorance.
As I read the article I am struck by a kind of double vision. The economy is growing, the government is afloat in tons of oil cash, death rates are down, a poll shows many Iraqis feel better about their future, al-Quaeda in Mesopotamia has supposedly been dealt a “near strategic defeat.” On the other hand, there is the Sadr militia, the implicit mistrust and conflict between Sadr and the government of Maliki, the conundrum of America protecting Iraqi borders while somehow not appearing to occupy the country or establish long long term military bases. The numbers in the article are like characters in themselves:
$70 billion (projected annual oil earnings this year, as in, one year)
12 million (cellular phones in use)
216, 000 (Iraqi internet users)
2.8 million (Iraqis displaced)
2.2 million (Iraqis fled abroad)
25-40% (the official unemployment rate/s)
22% to 4% (fall in share of US TV airtime devoted to Iraq war)
Notice: no real numbers on how many Americans or Iraqis actually died recently in the “better times” nor how many Americans are in the country, including not only strictly military personnel but also the legions of privatized contractors, consultants, advisers, and so on.
The effort to talk about how for the first time since the insurgency, the tide is shifting can be seen in this ending sentence: “But for the first time since the insurgency against the Americans took off, the tide, which may quickly ebb, is flowing in the direction of the new order.”
I took a deep breath and read on about the other areas of the world, and learned:
The Economist is worried that Wen Jiabao, “Grandpa Wen,” may not manage his “populist” leanings, and the ideological positions of pro and anti populist groups are represented.
Hong Kong is in the middle of a culture war pitting mandatory Cantonese in schools as the primary language (as it is the first language of most Hong Kong citizens, and of Southern China) against the teaching of “power and money” languages: English and putonghua, that is, Mandarin.
The foreign direct investment in Pakistani, and its national reserves, boomed in 2006-7, but are now going south, due to the Bhutto assassination, fertilizer prices, a crippling hailstorm, and of course that little fuel cost hike ($8.6 billion, that is Billion, for the last ten months of fuel imports by Pakistan).
The ‘grey man” of Japanese politics, Yasuou Fukada, in the midst of one crisis after another, is somehow on the rise: he is somehow now positioned as a critic of the rotten “construction state,” nurtured by all parties including his own, and he is turning from gray to green, hosting a G8 summit on climate change, and calling for cuts in Japanese greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 80% by 2050.
The air strike from American forces that killed at least 11 Pakistani paramilitaries on the border of Afghanistan shows how complicated the border war really is. Pakistanis are furious; many of the Frontier Corps, as they are called, belong to the same Pushtun ethnic group as the Taliban, and strike local truces with Taliban forces who then go over the border to attack the Afghan National Army. This is basically what happened: the Afghans came to the border to set up a post; they were dissuaded by the Pakistani Frontier Corps; then the Afghans were attacked as they retreated by the Taliban; then the US called in a strike, but hit the Pakistanis instead. Or at least this is what The Economist says happened.
In South Korea 700,000 people demonstrated in Seoul found themselves trapped between huge shipping containers thrown onto the street by police. They were angry that the president, Lee Myung-bak, had once again ok’ed the importing of American beef, stopped in 2003 after the mad cow disease was found in American cattle. Lee seems caught between the imperious Americans who refuse to renegotiate the opening of beef trade, and the mass of people who are already unhappy about rising prices and unemployment.
Kazakhstan is full of sycophants.
Ethiopia has suffered hailstorms, late rains, and too heavy rains, and insects; animals and children are listless, especially as you go deeper into the country from Goru Gutu. No wheat, no maize, no eating, food prices too high for the vast majority who make 80 cents a day. Rising fuel prices make things worse, as do the increasing unpredictability of rains. The government refuses to help Goru Gutu.
South Africa has just had a horrible wave of xenophobic violence; mobs chased many African migrants from places like Congo, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe to police stations. At the peak of the post-violence displacement, 20,000 people were living in temporary shelters in Johannesburg, scared of their now violent neighbors, scared to go home to political violence and collapsed economies. Why the violence against the migrants? Unemployment, soaring food and petrol prices, a feeling that most are forgotten by their government. South Africans accuse foreigners of stealing jobs and housing.
The Congo is better than it was five years ago (does this seem like the same story as Iraq?) but horribly violent and unstable. The genocide in Rwanda spilled over into Congo. Hutu rebels responsible for mass murder (1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in 1994) fled to Eastern Congo; these FDLR are at war with the Congo military, and since the “peace accord” in January 70,000 more refugees from the fighting have fled into Northern Kivu in Congo. The UN peacekeepers – mostly Indian – refused to support the Congolese army, instead are now accused of supplying the Hutu rebels with ammunition in exchange for poached Ivory. This is right out of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The cost of food and transport have doubled since January, and crime is also up. Rape is endemic as a war strategy.
Budweiser may end up in the hands of InBev, a huge Belgian brewer.
Sweden has for-profit schools that are gaining in popularity; the head of the main Swedish company running such schools proudly compares their approach to Ikea…and McDonald’s.
European biotech firms have a “Peter Pan” complex when facing big-ego, big thinking American companies. Even an apparent exception, Genmab in Denmark, has an American woman as CEO, and an aggressive American approach to the business of trading on future products.
Margann came up and wished me happy Father’s Day and I shut The Economist, looked out at the big tree, now holding sunshine in each of its leafy fingers, and headed downstairs for breakfast, eggs, toast, coffee, fruit.
The world – or that world that comes to life in print, in statistics and analysis and map and assessment – receded to that part of the brain where it continues to spin. Perhaps somewhere, many wheres, people live with my little world in a separate part of their brain. There a world spins where the father sits with the mother and the son and the neighbors, and there is plenty, plenty for everyone, and the sounds of laughter is heard, sounds like the sounds of heaven.
For Father’s Day, I decided to stay in bed for a while and read The Economist and The Atlantic. My room has a huge window that looks out into the top of a big old tree with green green leaves, so I feel like I’m in a tree house sometimes. The day was gray, but promising; downstairs I can hear voices, the sounds of breakfast being made, the general chaos of children playing.
Two things immediately occurred to me. First, reading The Economist is like listening to someone who’s just traveled the globe, probably in business first class. This is not a stupid person, but it also isn’t someone who has much patience for perspectives outside the ‘realist’ political view that corporations and capitalism are here to stay, pretty much in their current shape, that Western governments make poor choices but are also the best hope for solving global conflicts, and that a fine-grained view of the internal political machinations of nations is useful. Second, looking at the ads for GE, Citi, Canon, Qatar, Shell, Emirates, Vanguard, the uses of such knowledge seem geared toward people who are interested in things like a reliable labor market, not workers, if you follow.
Given that, it was quite interesting to read:
In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq, we do not mean to justify The Economist’s support of the invasion of 2003. Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle.
Now this is the ending to an article that introduces a ‘briefing’ on how Iraq may be turning a corner. The cover story has an Iraqi man sitting in a small space fixing a traditional stringed instrument, rather like an oud. The cover proclaims, Iraq starts to fix itself. I want so much to imagine this man finishing his work, handing the beautiful handmade wooden instrument to a young Iraqi who will play the songs of a future Iraq, or a future landscape in which, perhaps, Iraq is no longer what we call this big square of land drawn by Western interests and ignorance.
As I read the article I am struck by a kind of double vision. The economy is growing, the government is afloat in tons of oil cash, death rates are down, a poll shows many Iraqis feel better about their future, al-Quaeda in Mesopotamia has supposedly been dealt a “near strategic defeat.” On the other hand, there is the Sadr militia, the implicit mistrust and conflict between Sadr and the government of Maliki, the conundrum of America protecting Iraqi borders while somehow not appearing to occupy the country or establish long long term military bases. The numbers in the article are like characters in themselves:
$70 billion (projected annual oil earnings this year, as in, one year)
12 million (cellular phones in use)
216, 000 (Iraqi internet users)
2.8 million (Iraqis displaced)
2.2 million (Iraqis fled abroad)
25-40% (the official unemployment rate/s)
22% to 4% (fall in share of US TV airtime devoted to Iraq war)
Notice: no real numbers on how many Americans or Iraqis actually died recently in the “better times” nor how many Americans are in the country, including not only strictly military personnel but also the legions of privatized contractors, consultants, advisers, and so on.
The effort to talk about how for the first time since the insurgency, the tide is shifting can be seen in this ending sentence: “But for the first time since the insurgency against the Americans took off, the tide, which may quickly ebb, is flowing in the direction of the new order.”
I took a deep breath and read on about the other areas of the world, and learned:
The Economist is worried that Wen Jiabao, “Grandpa Wen,” may not manage his “populist” leanings, and the ideological positions of pro and anti populist groups are represented.
Hong Kong is in the middle of a culture war pitting mandatory Cantonese in schools as the primary language (as it is the first language of most Hong Kong citizens, and of Southern China) against the teaching of “power and money” languages: English and putonghua, that is, Mandarin.
The foreign direct investment in Pakistani, and its national reserves, boomed in 2006-7, but are now going south, due to the Bhutto assassination, fertilizer prices, a crippling hailstorm, and of course that little fuel cost hike ($8.6 billion, that is Billion, for the last ten months of fuel imports by Pakistan).
The ‘grey man” of Japanese politics, Yasuou Fukada, in the midst of one crisis after another, is somehow on the rise: he is somehow now positioned as a critic of the rotten “construction state,” nurtured by all parties including his own, and he is turning from gray to green, hosting a G8 summit on climate change, and calling for cuts in Japanese greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 80% by 2050.
The air strike from American forces that killed at least 11 Pakistani paramilitaries on the border of Afghanistan shows how complicated the border war really is. Pakistanis are furious; many of the Frontier Corps, as they are called, belong to the same Pushtun ethnic group as the Taliban, and strike local truces with Taliban forces who then go over the border to attack the Afghan National Army. This is basically what happened: the Afghans came to the border to set up a post; they were dissuaded by the Pakistani Frontier Corps; then the Afghans were attacked as they retreated by the Taliban; then the US called in a strike, but hit the Pakistanis instead. Or at least this is what The Economist says happened.
In South Korea 700,000 people demonstrated in Seoul found themselves trapped between huge shipping containers thrown onto the street by police. They were angry that the president, Lee Myung-bak, had once again ok’ed the importing of American beef, stopped in 2003 after the mad cow disease was found in American cattle. Lee seems caught between the imperious Americans who refuse to renegotiate the opening of beef trade, and the mass of people who are already unhappy about rising prices and unemployment.
Kazakhstan is full of sycophants.
Ethiopia has suffered hailstorms, late rains, and too heavy rains, and insects; animals and children are listless, especially as you go deeper into the country from Goru Gutu. No wheat, no maize, no eating, food prices too high for the vast majority who make 80 cents a day. Rising fuel prices make things worse, as do the increasing unpredictability of rains. The government refuses to help Goru Gutu.
South Africa has just had a horrible wave of xenophobic violence; mobs chased many African migrants from places like Congo, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe to police stations. At the peak of the post-violence displacement, 20,000 people were living in temporary shelters in Johannesburg, scared of their now violent neighbors, scared to go home to political violence and collapsed economies. Why the violence against the migrants? Unemployment, soaring food and petrol prices, a feeling that most are forgotten by their government. South Africans accuse foreigners of stealing jobs and housing.
The Congo is better than it was five years ago (does this seem like the same story as Iraq?) but horribly violent and unstable. The genocide in Rwanda spilled over into Congo. Hutu rebels responsible for mass murder (1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in 1994) fled to Eastern Congo; these FDLR are at war with the Congo military, and since the “peace accord” in January 70,000 more refugees from the fighting have fled into Northern Kivu in Congo. The UN peacekeepers – mostly Indian – refused to support the Congolese army, instead are now accused of supplying the Hutu rebels with ammunition in exchange for poached Ivory. This is right out of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The cost of food and transport have doubled since January, and crime is also up. Rape is endemic as a war strategy.
Budweiser may end up in the hands of InBev, a huge Belgian brewer.
Sweden has for-profit schools that are gaining in popularity; the head of the main Swedish company running such schools proudly compares their approach to Ikea…and McDonald’s.
European biotech firms have a “Peter Pan” complex when facing big-ego, big thinking American companies. Even an apparent exception, Genmab in Denmark, has an American woman as CEO, and an aggressive American approach to the business of trading on future products.
Margann came up and wished me happy Father’s Day and I shut The Economist, looked out at the big tree, now holding sunshine in each of its leafy fingers, and headed downstairs for breakfast, eggs, toast, coffee, fruit.
The world – or that world that comes to life in print, in statistics and analysis and map and assessment – receded to that part of the brain where it continues to spin. Perhaps somewhere, many wheres, people live with my little world in a separate part of their brain. There a world spins where the father sits with the mother and the son and the neighbors, and there is plenty, plenty for everyone, and the sounds of laughter is heard, sounds like the sounds of heaven.
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