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Saturday, December 13, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:18 AM:
Prayers for Michael Weisskopf of Time magazine, who lost his right hand getting a live grenade out of the vehicle in which he was travelling, saving his own life and those of his fellow passengers. The grenade had been tossed into the vehicle by the sort of people German peaceniks love. Here's the Post's account.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:07 AM:
Here's Steve Den Beste on why we're right to restrict who gets oil contracts in Iraq. He's absolutely right.* * *
posted by gbarto at 12:54 AM:
French news headlines:Libé leads with Muslim Anger Against Stasi "Law" - which at this point is really a commission report on what a law on secularism might contain. The biggies are rules for holidays and - the thing that touched all this off - the question of veils in civil institutions, notably school.
Le Monde tells us of an EU Impass Over the Constitution which has leaders hoping that Italian President Silvio Berlusconi's next proposal will help get things back on track.
Ouest-France: Everything Depends on Poland and Spain. Ouest-France seems to be a little slow on this one. It's Poland and Spain's "no" to earlier plans for power distribution that has people now watching to see what Berlusconi offers.
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Friday, December 12, 2003
posted by gbarto at 7:13 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Constitution of EU: Crisis Council. The leaders of the present EU are meeting to figure out what to do to make Europe function as a single unit. It's not coming together as well as hoped.
Libération: Spammer Locked Up. The story concerns the 8th man locked up and on the way to trial for spamming, which is now an imprisonable offense in Virginia.
Ouest-France: Religious Symbols: Toward a Law of Secularism. The Stasi commission that we much noted on Monday has come out for a law against public display of religious symbols in schools and for enforced neutrality toward religions in public service functions. Chirac will announce what he thinks on Monday. The TurkeyBlog is concerned: while this is ostensibly a move to quell a growing Muslim tide that does endanger French civil society, trying to make parts of society disappear is the stuff of failed French revolutionary movements to remake man, not sober government.
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:22 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Executive Life: Global Agreement Apparently Reached. The US and France have reportedly agreed on some hefty fines as the company, tied up - as all these things are - with Credit Lyonnais - works to get out from under investigations into its numerous (mis)dealings. At least some of the parties were allowed to plead not guilty, but they did have to pay for it and big time.
Libération: Veils: A year of anger and one-upmanship. But today the Stasi commission reports and the President of the Republic gets to react, setting up the issue not just of religious toleration but of integration vs. preservation of independent cultural identity in France. Big things afoot.
Ouest-France: Mortal Epidemic In Hospitals. Due to a drug-resistant bacteria making the rounds, 18 people are dead.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:44 PM:
Natalie Solent has a Muslim with a different perspective than the usual on Israel.* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:40 PM:
Cicero captures nicely the question that ought be on everyone's mind now that Gore has thrown his support behind Dean.* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:32 PM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Geneva: Balancing "Information Society" - i.e. equalizing the access to information technology between rich and poor societies. But will this democratize information? Or just slow the growth in its accessibility as reduced opportunities to profit from selling to the rich prevent the development of new technologies and processes that eventually become broadly available once initial development costs are covered and marginal costs for adding new users are relatively lower.
Libé: Complaint Regarding Monks' Murderers. Seven monks were killed in Tibehirine in 1996. No charges were ever brought. Now a family is stepping up its efforts to get to the bottom of things.
Ouest-France: According to two American experts, it's too late to stop reheating - Climate: Man in part responsible. Ouest-France is springboarding off an article in the December 5 issue of Science.
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Monday, December 08, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:09 PM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Israeli Wall Before International Court. In a special session, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution asking for an ICJ ruling on Israel's wall through Transjordan. The Israelis will argue it's for self-defense.
Libération: Beneath the pavements of May 1968, the cinema. Says Libé - in the story up top at liberation.fr - Bertolucci's latest movie, "Innocents," captures the spirit of that age. And such a celebrated age. One wonders just how much cultural devastation has been let loose by a misplaced fondness for May 1968 throughout French society. Imagine if Woodstock were remembered as an important political moment and not just something goofy from '60s culture. Imagine if Woodstock had brought a government to its knees... you get the idea.
Ouest-France: Veils: At Lille, Focus on Dialogue. The Church has rejected the idea of a new law regarding religious symbology, etc. The public, from what we saw yesterday, is in favor. On Thursday, the Stasi commission will present its findings. In the mean time, a fair portion of France is occupied with where all this goes.
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posted by gbarto at 3:57 PM:
On entrepreneurialism in JapanThe following comes from a forwarded e-mail. I believe the commenter is Peter Payne. If anyone is aware of that attribution being incorrect, please let me know.
One of the difficulties facing Japan's economic future is the lack of entrepreneurial spirit among Japanese. The numbers bear this out -- the number of Japanese running a business less than 42 months old is just 2%, compared with 12% in China, 14% in Korea, 18% in Thailand and 10% in the U.S. The Japanese government is trying to make it easier for people to start companies, however. In the old days, you needed to have $30,000 cash in the bank to start a "yuugen gaisha" (limited corporation) and $100,000 to form a full "kabushiki gaisha" (stock corporation), requirements which helped young companies gain trust by showing they were fiscally solvent from the beginning. Now, however, you can start a company with just one yen in the bank, a move the Japanese government hopes will get more Japanese to start thinking about starting a new enterprise. (American concepts like limited partnerships and easy-to-declare S-corporations don't exist in Japan at all, unfortunately.) A big part of the problem is probably that Japanese are more group-oriented and are more averse to the risks involved with being an entrepreneur. There are many other reasons why Japanese are less likely to take the plunge and start a company, though: the strained banking and investment system here is not friendly to start-ups, there's very little venture capital system, and if you should have to declare personal bankruptcy, you're forbidden from going overseas for ten years.My e-mailer notes:
I thought the comment about Japan trying to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit to be interesting.He hits the nail on the head. While Europe has been looking for a third way for years, many thought Japan had it with its government-managed quasi-capitalist but really corporatist system. Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, not enough Japanese businesses failed during the good years to indicate that Japan was really unleashing the fullest of its citizens' hopes, dreams and aspirations.
A roundabout acknowledgement of the force of capitalism?
Japan, in a lot of ways, was the pets.com of the '80s: It came into a booming market with the right thing for the moment. Unfortunately, when times got tough, Japan didn't know what to do. Having a business tank wasn't something that was supposed to happen. The evolution of the country's conceptions of itself and of its actual social systems also conspired to make the inevitable downturn a real doozie. The biggest problem was the corporatist sentiment in which the banks, industries and governments were part of a managed system that could do no wrong. In the U.S., we've had several industries do major bellyflops. But the adversarial relationship between regulators and business has kept us on an unpleasant but manageable see-sawing between over-regulation after business screws up and deregulation after it becomes clear that the controls put in place went too far. If there's a problem, there's usually an interested party ready to expose it (even if it does take time, à la Enron).
In the US, from the S&L debacle to the real estate collapse to the internet bust, there has always been someone left holding the bag, and while it was usually not the guilty party, the existence of distinct parties in the mess du jour provides a starting point for negotiating how those parties will take the losses and move forward. In Japan's crises, there don't seem to have been such distinct parties - the government was in league with the industry was in league with the banks and so on and since they were all culpable they've all kept quiet and hoped for the best. Not a good system - it causes the inefficiencies to persist because if they were rough to change before the blow-up, they're impossible to change afterwards without admitting that mistakes were made. And so Japan dithers along.
The reforms described in the e-mail are good ones, but Japan still faces a major cultural test. Most of the greats of American industry have had three or four jobs if not companies that just didn't quite work out as planned. When Japan's new entrepreneurs go belly up the first time out, how will they respond? With its emphasis on avoiding shame and loss of face, Japan is going to have to develop an ethic where either shame is less critical or failure is reassessed as a rite of passage on the way to success. After all, icons like Bill Gates dropped out of college. Would such people be handed the money to start Japan's next Microsoft? Yahoo's Jerry Yang (if I recall correctly) held the title of "Chief Yahoo" because there wasn't a good description for his job. Will Japan acknowledge the place for screwballs, wise guys and the irreverent?
Japan, from what I see, is a strong, progressive society with a lot to offer and a lot of potential for growth. The Japanese, given time, can learn to do just about anything well if they set their minds to it. Will they learn to fail and fail effectively? If so, they can learn and adapt to dynamic habits and set the stage for a major rebirth. If not, they'll remain a powerhouse, no question, but there won't be any copies of Japan, Inc.: Part 2 on store shelves any time soon.
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posted by gbarto at 4:38 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Putin Big Winner in Russian Elections. It looks like his party will take nearly 37% of the vote and wind up with an absolute majority in the Duma, Russia's parliament.
Le Figaro: Veil, Laïcité (secularism): Key Questions. Whose nature and answers should be offered when the Stasi commission, appointed to investigate them, makes its report this week. At issue, in the main, is the integration of Islam into a secular regime.
Libération: We'll skip down to Libé's 3rd headline to stay with our main concern for the day: Putin Walks away with the Parliament. They expect his party to get a "crushing majority."
Ouest-France: Religious Symbols: The French want a law. With the Stasi commission, mentioned above, set to report, the French are hoping there will be a law passed to decide what to do about veils, etc.
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posted by gbarto at 4:04 AM:
Cicero follows up on the French news posting with a note that speculations about Putin blowing up a train to win votes are like speculations that the Jews and the CIA blew up the WTC to get support for their agendas. He suggests we "give it a pass." Wise words.The TurkeyBlog, on second reading, sounds like it enjoyed following the conspiracy theorists a little too much. In truth, Putin's pattern of actions against Yukos and its former top dog are more than enough to give cause for worry. Getting bogged down in claims of manipulation on the scale of deliberate murder of one's own citizens (though hardly unheard of in a regime Putin once served) are more likely to detract from the exploration of real issues where the facts are in far less doubt. And the last thing the TurkeyBlog wants to do is to take the focus off the real threats Putin and his friends pose to emergent but weak notions of private property, individual liberty, free expression and democracy in Russia by putting it on what Marcus correctly calls a bogeyman.
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posted by gbarto at 3:47 AM:
Blogger was down; loosely formatted content from 12/7 a.m. now added to blogger entries:Kidnapped girls flee dad, setting off culture clash
Sisters hole up in Iran's Belgian Embassy
He put them on a plane during a vacation with the girls in Greece and took them to Tehran. Iran has refused to honor the custody agreement he signed in Belgium. Now that the girls have made it to the embassy, they're halfway there. If they leave for the airport, will the Iranians have the nerve to arrest them? And if so, will Belgium and the Europeans take a unified stance against an Islamic regime where they have trade interests, or will they show us that not only human rights but their own citizens' rights take a backseat to the oil corporations' dealings with Middle East mullahs? (We know which way the U.S. State Department leans, by the way, and advise American women not to marry men from Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. if they wish to keep their children - and their own freedom - if things go badly.)French news headlines:
Le Monde: Vladimir Putin's Russia Goes to the Polls. 110 million Russians expected to select the 450 deputies in legislative elections. I read elsewhere that 57% of the population thinks the elections are fixed anyway.
The headline on Libération is the same as yesterday's late update. Let's mention the second headline: Putinism Confiscates Russian Politics.
Curiously, the text below the Libé headline is about the train bombing not the election. Which sets us to wondering: How much of a conspiracy nut do you have to be to believe that Putin might have ordered the train bombing to shore up support for candidates who would back giving him expanded security powers while taking focus off of his Yukos hijinks? If you think that's ridiculous, is it because you think he's above such things or only that he is too aware of the dangers of getting caught?
The Libé article, for its part, is at points otherworldly in the themes it weaves together on election eve in Russian. Then, at the end, you get the bit that puts it all together: If these elections go well enough, Putin's party will wind up with the votes necessary to change Russia's constitution - and allow Putin to seek a third term. If you're invested in Russia, it's not too late to sell.
Ouest-France follows up on the telethon story we mentioned earlier. Here's the headline: Telethon house at 129000 Euros. To recap, with a telethon coming up to help with research on genetic diseases, a small group decided to build a house for free and sell it, the proceeds going to the telethon. They've apparently done quite well for their cause.
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