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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 20th, 2008 From www.FT.com Africa mourns loss of a leader unafraid to speak his mind One Sunday in late June, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who died yesterday aged 59, was on the eve of the most momentous day of his career.He had been the first… Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who was laid low by a stroke hours before he was…would like to inform the nation that our president, his Excellency Dr Levy Mwanawasa, died this morning at 10.30am at Percy Military Hospital,” Rupiah Banda… The health of Levy Mwanawasa, the ailing Zambian president who has been a sharp critic of Robert Mugabe, his Zimbabwean counterpart, has deteriorated, his deputy… The fate of Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s president, was last night shrouded in confusion amid reports that he had died in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke… Zambia on Thursday moved to end the confusion surrounding the fate of Levy Mwanawasa, dismissing reports that the president had died in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke.”These are false and malicious rumours… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll.In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll.In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll. In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …President Paul Kagame is among the first to raise his head above the parapet, joining Botswana’s Ian Khama and Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa in a growing band of African leaders who are prepared to condemn a tyrant. Not only has Robert Mugabe put southern… …sea-change in the thinking of the 14- nation Southern African Development Community.Regional diplomats indicate that Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s president, and Ian Khama, Botswana’s new leader, are impatient with the region’s traditional reverence for… *** Africa mourns loss of a leader unafraid to speak his mind. By Tom Burgis Published: August 20 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2008 03:00 One Sunday in late June, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who died yesterday aged 59, was on the eve of the most momentous day of his career. He had been the first to break the longstanding deference of African rulers towards Robert Mugabe, condemning the abuses that had culminated in the Zimbabwean autocrat claiming victory in a discredited election. As early as March last year, Mwanawasa had referred to the “sinking Ti-tanic” that was Zimbabwe’s inflation-battered economy. Now, as the serving chair of the southern African bloc, the retiring former lawyer would carry the hopes of many Zimbabweans into an African Union summit in Egypt at which Mr Mugabe would try to stare down his counterparts into legitimising his flawed triumph. For a man most at ease in small gatherings, assiduously reading his briefing papers or escaping to the family farm for the planting season, the ordeal ahead was immense. Alphabetical seating by country was to have put him next to Mr Mugabe. It proved too much. Always in poor health since the car crash 17 years earlier that left him with slurred speech, Mwanawasa suffered a stroke. Even as he was flown to the Paris hospital where he would die seven weeks later, the summit was welcoming Mr Mugabe back to the fold, thwarting the efforts of a handful of Mwanawasa’s like-minded peers. The second son of 10 siblings, Mwanawasa was born in Mufulira, near the Congolese border, in 1948, 16 years before Zambia’s independence from Britain. A crusading legal career established his public profile. When the one-party state of Kenneth Kaunda unravelled into elections in 1991, Frederick Chiluba, the victorious leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, appointed Mwanawasa as vice-president. In 2001, disillusioned with the pervasive corruption of the Chiluba regime, Mwanawasa turned on - and ousted - his mentor. Within weeks he had stripped his predecessor of immunity from prosecution. A London court later found that Mr Chiluba had salted away $46m (€31m, £25m) of public funds. Mwanawasa’s anti-graft offensive won him the allegiance of international donors who flooded state coffers with aid. China came calling too, tempted by some of the world’s richest copper deposits. Economic growth rose from just over 3 per cent a year when he took office to 6 per cent last year. Yet, as his critics point out, about seven in every 10 Zambians still live on less than $2 a day. “Wealth has trickled downwards but it has not trickled outwards to the rural areas,” said a European diplomat in Lusaka. “That challenge is only just beginning.” It is not clear who will take up that challenge. Mwanawasa avoided anointing an heir. His death has thrown his party into turmoil as cabinet ministers who thought they had three more years to jockey for position face an election within three months. The discord may open a window for Michael Sata, the opposition leader who came second when Mwanawasa won a second term in 2006 and who has lambasted the government’s fiscal orthodoxy. Those who knew Mwanawasa, who had six children with his wife Maureen and two from a previous marriage, describe a man whose unspectacular oratory masked a deep conviction. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition, yesterday lamented the death of “a good friend and comrade”. He added: “Sadly, he has left us at this most trying time.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 20th, 2008 [Comment] Brussels, August 20, 2008, as an EUOBSERVER COMMENT: The European Union’s frenetic diplomacy around Georgia’s war with Russia is in stark contrast with its reluctance to engage just a few months ago. After years of blockage, delays and hesitation the EU will have to act. The question is how to get it right this time. After the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy in 2003, the EU made all the right noises about its potential contribution to conflict resolution in the South Caucasus. It appointed an EU Special Representative (in 2002), launched a rule of law mission to Tbilisi in 2004, deployed a 12-person EU border support team and significantly increased its financial contribution to the rehabilitation of the conflict zones in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But - “Many in the EU have developed Georgia fatigue” Since 2006 the EU has been the biggest international donor to the conflict regions (not counting Russia’s non-transparent assistance). The EU has financed civil society, the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, electricity generation and water sewage systems in the conflict zones. But the EU has performed less well on the political issues. In a constantly degenerating security environment of increasing tension between Russia and Georgia, the long-term focus of the European neighbourhood policy has been increasingly out of touch with the pressing realities on the ground. The EU has found it hard to muster the political will to even ask Russia some tough questions about its role in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, let alone push the transformation of the negotiation formats and the peacekeeping operations in the region. The OSCE’s five military observers in Tskhinvali were regularly reporting persistent breaches of the security regime in South Ossetia and excessive militarisation of the region, but such reports have rarely been taken off their shelves in the OSCE headquarters in Vienna. The EU never had the political will to discuss the topic with Russia other than pro-forma.
These included relatively uncontroversial proposals such as offering greater support and financing for civil society and youth support in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and greater support for institution-building in Georgia’s customs service; the opening of European Information Centres in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; the appointment of two EU police officers to work with the secessionist authorities; and the possibility for two EU border experts to develop a dialogue on border-control issues in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However minimalist, even such measures have had to be dragged through EU decision-making mechanisms, blocked and delayed by a minority (sometimes only one) of Russia-friendly member states. As the EU was debating sending two more persons on the ground, Russia was introducing hundreds of armed “peacekeepers” into Abkhazia.
It is now time for the EU to relearn one of the central lessons of the Balkan wars: that the best way to keep the peace is to get involved, rather than standing on the sidelines. The EU now needs to rescue what it can from a terrible situation. It has already become Russia’s main negotiator for the post-conflict arrangements. Now is the time to reform the dysfunctional peace support arrangements that enabled the conflict, i.e. the supposedly “trilateral” Georgian-Russian-North-Ossetian joint peacekeeping force supervised by a Joint Constitutional Commission where Georgia was de facto completely outnumbered by South Ossetia, North Ossetia and Russia. The EU now has three options. The first is to offer greater support to the OSCE and the UN in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by providing additional monitors. Second, the EU could send armed peacekeepers. But either of these options would mean double dependence on Russia, requiring approval in the UN Security Council, and Russian cooperation on the ground. EU peacekeeping from a position of weakness might end up conferring greater legitimacy on Russian forces on the ground, while contributing little to any political settlement (like the UN peacekeepers in Cyprus). The third, and
The EU has taken the lead in finding an immediate ceasefire solution. But without longer-term engagement in the South Caucasus violent solutions to territorial problems might remain the default solution for years, if not decades to come. ————————— Pentagon, White House at odds over aid to Georgia. By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers, posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 The Pentagon officials, who both spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal policy deliberations, said the move is unnecessary. Last week, the U.S. military sent a 12-member assessment team to determine how much humanitarian aid Georgians need. Air Force and Navy aircraft are sending supplies daily and military officials don’t think Georgia requires much additional assistance. The Comfort, which is based in Baltimore, could be ready to leave as early as Friday but would take five weeks to arrive, and the two military officials said they believe that air support is sufficient. “That is all they need right now,” one senior defense official said. Moreover, to send the Comfort, a destroyer or any other major naval vessel, the Bush administration would need to obtain permission from Turkey under the Montreux Convention, an international treaty that regulates naval passage in the Black Sea. So far, Turkey, which controls the Bosporus and the Dardanelles that link the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, has refused, the Pentagon officials told McClatchy. The White House is frustrated, the officials said, but the Pentagon is unperturbed.
The McClutchen papers, August 20, 2008 Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 16th, 2008 Eurozone swings closer to economic recession - Europe’s economy is shrinking while prices remain at record highs. The eurozone’s economy has slipped further towards recession, with fresh output figures pointing to an economic downturn in the 15-strong zone as well as in the whole of the European Union, while inflation remains at a record high.
Similarly, the GDP for the whole of the EU shrank by 0.1 percent during the same period, with the worst performance recorded in the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. The gloomy forecasts – published on Thursday (14 August) - have reinforced concerns about the European economy moving closer to recession, with both Germany and France as the two biggest countries showing signals of an economic slow-down. The German economy dropped by 0.5 percent - which was less than analysts had predicted – while France’s shrunk by 0.3 percent. Amelia Torres, European Commission spokeswoman for economic and monetary affairs, refused to speculate on recession fears and suggested that the latest figures were of no surprise to the EU executive, referring to unexpectedly high growth rates in the first quarter of 2008. “I think it’s a bit exaggerated to use that word,” she told reporters in Brussels. But she admitted that “the signs are not really very good for the future”. According to eurozone figures, no eurozone country is yet officially in recession – seen as two consecutive quarters of economic decline – but within the whole of the EU, Estonia has officially slipped in recession. Along with the declining growth, inflation in the eurozone remained at a record high of 4 percent in July, unchanged from June. A year earlier the rate was 1.8 percent. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 15th, 2008
COMMENTARY: The Global Leadership Vacuum The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly aren’t up to the task. A dose of basic management logic could help them establish goals, mobilize financing, and identify the scientific expertise and organizations best suited to implement solutions. The Global Leadership Vacuum August 1, 2008 The G8 Summit in Japan last month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world’s leaders. The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders that went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually, and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action. There are four deep problems. The first is the incoherence of American leadership. While we are well past the time when the United States alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the Clinton administration, but it has disappeared entirely during the Bush administration. The second problem is the lack of global financing. The hunger crisis can be overcome in poor countries if they get help to grow more food. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies. Diseases such as malaria can be overcome through globally coordinated investments in disease control. The oceans, rainforests, and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection. Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production, and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly $350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world. This is obviously affordable, and is modest compared to military spending, but is far above the pittance that the G8 actually brings to the table to solve these urgent challenges. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made a valiant effort to get the rest of Europe to honor the modest aid pledges made at the G8 Summit in 2005, but it has been a tough fight, and one that hasn’t been won. The third problem is the disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians. Scientists and engineers have developed many powerful ways to address today’s challenges, whether growing food, controlling diseases, or protecting the environment. And these methods have become even more powerful in recent years with advances in information and communications technology, which make global solutions easier to identify and implement than ever before. The fourth problem is that the G8 ignores the very international institutions—notably the United Nations and the World Bank—that offer the best hope to implement global solutions. These institutions are often deprived of political backing, underfinanced, and then blamed by the G8 when global problems aren’t solved. Instead, they should be given clear authority and responsibilities, and then held accountable for their performance. President Bush may be too unaware to recognize that his historically high 70 percent disapproval rating among U.S. voters is related to the fact that his government turned its back on the international community—and thereby got trapped in war and economic crisis. The other G8 leaders presumably can see that their own unpopularity at home is strongly related to high food and energy prices, and an increasingly unstable global climate and global economy, none of which they can address on their own. Starting in January 2009 with the new U.S. president, politicians should take the best chance for their own political survival, and of course for their countries’ well-being, by reinvigorating global cooperation. They should agree to address shared global goals, including the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease (the Millennium Development Goals), as well as climate change and environmental destruction. To achieve these goals, the G8 should set clear timetables for action, and transparent agreements on how to fund it. The smartest move would be to agree that each country tax its CO2 emissions in order to reduce climate change, and then devote a fixed amount of the proceeds to global problem solving. With the funding assured, the G8 would suddenly move from empty promises to real policies. Backed by adequate funding, the world’s political leaders should turn to the expert scientific community and international organizations to help implement a truly global effort. Rather than regarding the UN and its agencies as competitors or threats to national sovereignty, they should recognize that working with the UN agencies is in fact the only way to solve global problems, and therefore is the key to their own political survival. These steps—agreeing on global goals, mobilizing the financing needed to meet them, and identifying the scientific expertise and organizations needed to implement solutions—are basic management logic. Some may scoff that this approach is impossible at the global level, because all politics are local. Yet today, all politicians depend on global solutions for their own political survival. That by itself could make solutions that now seem out of reach commonplace in the future. Time is short, since global problems are mounting rapidly. The world is passing through the greatest economic crisis in decades. It’s time to say to the G8 leaders, “Get your act together, or don’t even bother to meet next year.” It’s too embarrassing to watch grown men and women gather for empty photo opportunities. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 13th, 2008 European Parliament ceiling collapses. Although languishing in the middle of summer holidays, there was some activity in the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week when part of the ceiling of the main plenary room collapsed. The website www.strastv.com distributed photos of the collapsed ceiling on Monday (Photo: StrasTV.com) French news agency AFP reported that the first part came crashing down around 18.00 CET and another part followed just over four hours later at 22.36 CET. There were no injuries as the room was empty at the time although a large number of seats have been damaged. Readers of French newspaper Liberation were generally amused by the event. Reacting to the news, one said it was a “bad omen for Europe”, another called it a “superb metaphor” while a third said it was “sign for a move to Brussels” tapping into the years-long debate about scrapping the monthly trek from the Belgian capital to Alsatian city, a 350km trip involving MEPs, armies of assistants, a generous scattering of lobbyists and truck-loads of documents. During the holidays, the Strasbourg parliament, which is used 12 times a year by MEPs, gets visitor groups. The last plenary session was in mid July and the next one will take place at the beginning of September. ============ http://euobserver.com/9/26630/?rk=1 The Strasbourg parliament - on hold for now: MEPs shift to Brussels after ceiling collapse. The European Parliament’s first plenary session after the summer break will be held in Brussels rather than Strasbourg after part of the ceiling caved in, but few tears are being shed for the loss of a 500 km round trip to the Alsatian capital. Parliament chief Hans-Gert Poettering decided on Thursday (21 August) that MEPs will remain in Brussels for the 1-4 September session. The announcement came after a collapse on 7 August of the ceiling in the main hemicycle in France - around a third of the ceiling has been affected - where a potential 785 MEPs sit to agree legislation. No one was injured, with the building mainly sitting idle during the summer weeks. “The preliminary results have revealed that the partial collapse of the ceiling resulted from the breakage of parts holding the suspended ceiling that connects it with the actual structure of the ceiling,” said a statement from Mr Poettering’s office. The news has been greeted with glee among some parliamentary officials and assistants - who generally make the five-hour trip crammed in shared cars or by train. “The general feeling is ‘yahoo’,” said one parliamentary assistant “except in those offices [in Brussels] where they are happy to get rid of their boss for a week.” “I hope more bits keep falling off,” said another. From the point of view of some, the decision also concerns the ideal month, as the ‘Strasbourg session’ as it is known takes place twice in September, making up for the Strasbourg-less August. According to the EU treaty, parliament is obliged to meet 12 times a year in its French seat. The incident has once again prompted renewed calls to scrap the Strasbourg seat - a regular discussion among MEPs and assistants alike many of whom dislike what they call the “travelling circus” which sees armies of politicians, advisors and lobbyists as well as lorry-loads of documents make the monthly trek. “We should turn catastrophe into opportunity and meet continuously in Brussels,” Chris Davies said according to the BBC, and condemned “the nonsense of the Parliament’s perpetual momentum”. Estimates suggest it costs around €200 million a year for the commute. In recent years, the trip has also come under fire for undermining the European Union’s general stance on cutting down greenhouse gas emissions. However, the Strasbourg seat has its staunch supporters too. They say it is a potent symbol of Franco-German reconciliation - with Strasbourg on the border between the two countries. Any decision to change to parliament set would have to be agreed by all 27 member states. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 9th, 2008 Coincidentally, I started to read yesterday morning a new book by Dmitry Orlov titled - “Reinventing Collapse.” The book was released by New Society Publishers www.newsociety.com and was sent to me by Perseus Distribution of Jackson Tennessee. Dmitry Orlov was born and grew up in Leningrad, and came first to the US in 1985 and after 10 years started going back and forth so he says - hehasbecome a witness to the changes in Russia. Orlow is an engineer who worked in high-energy Physics and in Internet Security. He came under our cross-hairs when it turned out that he is also a leading Peak Oil theorist. But this is not why I am mentioning him today. The reason is much deeper then that. Dmitry Orlov writes that when he came back to the US in 1996, after a longer stay in Russia where he just got married, but also said that at the time he started to understand the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed - and horror - he started to see that the US had already at that time all the symptoms of the same disease that did in the Soviet Union. He writes that he came back with his wife to make for themselves a new life in the US, but he also started to write about his insights that made him see that the second shoe will drop eventually - that is the US after the Soviet Union - two very different States - but nevertheless two States with similar destinies because they suffer from very similar malaise. His description of the ingredients of a super-power collapse are as follows: (a) A severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil; (b) A severe and worsening trade deficit, (c) A runaway military budget and (d) Ballooning foreign debt. When such a soup starts boiling, then “the heat and agitation” are provided by (e) a fear of a humiliating military defeat, and (f) wide spread fear of a looming catastrophe. He looks then at all of those ingredients that existed in the Soviet collapse - that was an internal collapse - an implosion I would say. He laughs at the thought that it was caused by outside influences, stemming from the actions of the US, except for the fact that the Soviets fell for the arms race of the “star-wars” competition that caused them further exhaustion. On the other hand, he sees all these ingredients in the present state of the US, and he watched these aspects grow during the last decade. Orlov looks at Chernobyl as the backdrop of catastrophe that sent off the Soviet Union, and sees the need of oil in order to grow food in the US - at the tune of ten calories of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of food - this, and runaway foreign foreign debt, leading to the decrease in credibility of US monetary instruments - killer hurricanes and global climate upheaval - become the US fear of catastrophe. The eventual reason for the drop of the second shoe. I only mention here these morning thoughts - I will be getting back to this book later and write a book review. Now I intend to touch on another incomplete activity I found myself involved in yesterday. *** This was a “Pre-Concert Discussion” of the “Mostly Mozart” Lincoln Center Festival presentation of “REQUIEM.” Yesterday was the US premiere, but I will be seeing the show only tonight. All what I did was to sit in at the discussion between the Festival’s Director Peter Sellars, and Lemi Ponifasio, a Samoan living in Auckland, New Zealand, who is the Director/Choreographer/Designer of this Requiem. Again, this writing of mine is a half backed attempt, and not yet a finished review of the show. This will come later. But now what I want to say here is that all such words as “Director,” “Choreographer,” “Designer,” “Show,”"Review,” were actually knocked out of my head last evening, because I realized that we really are totally incapable of understanding the mind of those that do not think like us. Interesting, Peter Sellars, remarked in a even larger context - “in our age - the commentator on the Op-Ed page presumes to understand everything - we will see that it is not as simple as that.” My mention of Orlov’s look at history showed me how trite it is to think that the US led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the US is safe because it thinks of itself as a democracy. Now, Lemi, and the movement of MAU in Samoa, and his troupe, that adopted the MAU name for their collective, are really no actors at all, according to how they see themselves. In effect they will be involved in CEREMONIES that come to them naturally - something that is not just a CELEBRATION - and this requiem is not a memorial for the dead - this because they are not dead at all - they are here with them - so it is as if there were a communal living with these unseen members of the community present. We will look in a future review at this as a “Requiem to Requiem” where the idea of a Requiem, in the second time it is mentioned in this comment, becomes sort of a synonim to culture, life, an island, an environment. Then the first mention of Requiem in the remark is the more accepted meaning. MAU is the name of the Samoan independence movement that took on the Germans, French, Dutch, and British. The meaning is Vision or Revolution. The activities of the MAU troupe serve “to energize dialogue and revive local oriented histories, arts, thought, languages, and narratives that have been silenced or excluded.” In those Pacific Islands a house is not a home where you close in your belongings like in a storage - their concept is that this is a space for life and all are invited. There is always a standing pole in their culture - this pole gives you sort of a vertical feel of space and you and all your ancestors reside there. We will see that eventually this home without walls becomes the whole island and its sufferings. To be true to our www.SustainabiliTank.info website, I will add that Lemi and Peter also touched on the problems of global warming that threaten the demise of cultures like Kiribas (Kiribati). So, will we someday have to try our own hand at this kind of Requiem when remembering the independent indigenous cultures of these Small Islands Independent States of today - the SIDS of the Pacific? This is the extent of how far I am ready to go here. *** Now, with the above two snippets, in my head, let me say that I sat down before my TV set to watch the NBC, Channel 4, reporting from Beijing, that was handled by NBC as if it was just an excuse to sell us ExxonMobil trying to sell us that they take on “the largest energy challenges of the World.” I was amazed when after that an NBC journalist actually added “while you watched the advertisements China advanced several hundred years in its history.” I hope they will not fire him for this remark. GE spoke of biogas technology and that was fine, but Chevy Silver was trying to impress us with their miserable 20 mpg technology. Oh! Yes - we also saw John McCain bashing Obama in the campaign well paid advertisement - and we thought that at least this night we can forget about the US Presidential non-debate. This Chinese Coming-Out event was all about HARMONY. We watched the Tai-Chi performers and were told of Harmony between Man & Nature as the only chance for Sustainable Development for China and the rest of the World for next generation - and we said AMEN. When this is resolved there will be prosperity and environmentalism. You do not have to be naive and embrace China’s government, or take for granted the smiles on the faces of all the participating dancers and musicians. It was too uniform and large to be taken at face value - but there was enough there to say that it was an honest attempt to say - look - we suffered in our history from what others did to us - but we are a sleeping giant that is now showing - yes - we can and we will. China showed us that they are much closer to the MAU mentality now then they are to their previous MAO mentality. Yes, the legions of dancers and musicians were militarily trained. Their performance perfect, thus in some way threatening, but the content of their show was so we appreciate what they have given to the world - ink and paper for those believing in the needs of the press, and the compass for those in search of direction. Navigation is the means of communication with the great world, and they had their own naval chiefs of the caliber of a Christopher Columbus. These performers did not hate us - they CELEBRATED their return to the world stage, and this was their CEREMONY. After this show, China and us will never be the same. Just think of the fact that they reminded us that there were days China had the highest GNP in the world. We saw some of their ghosts, and we saw some of our ghosts. We saw Confucius, and yes, we remembered how it was members of the Atlantic community that committed them to opium enslavement. It was not said - but I knew it was somewhere there in that huge mat, center stage, on the floor of the stadium. Money is no problem, they bought the best architectural minds to work with their own best, and created the greatest venue for a global event. Pity that parts of the show were missed by us because of the commercialism of US TV world. We saw how some foreign leaders, like Putin, that did not smile, President Bush looked at his watch, we wondered why President Peres of Israel, who is secular, had to make the gesture of going on foot back to his hotel because of the Sabbath, but then these were not China’s problems that day. OK, now, I finished the Friday events. On Saturday morning I rushed to pickup the papers. The opening of the Olympics was really not the main set of news. That debatable honor went to Russia’s attack inside Georgia, and to the John Edwards attack on the US political system by having endangered the Democratic Party’s chances for meaningful change in Washington. I really have little to say about Edward’s male infidelity - that should have been left to be solved between him and his wife, but we know that this is not US reality. Such events can sink the US, as it happened in the Bill Clinton days. Clinton’s Presidency was decreased in potency, to the detriment of the American Nation, by some self appointed ethical judges who, as we know by now, some of them had much worse transgressions in their closets. What the US does not have is that vertical space the man from Samoa was talking about. There is no ceremonial thinking in our system - only raw hunt after the culprit who may have sinned much less then we did. And when the US is in decline, while China is on the rise - now we have things to think about - not so? And don’t forget - China holds the strings to the US treasury and Orlov made his unforgivable observations. As for the second news of the day - Putin moving on Georgia - that is tough for the Georgians but again, Putin is back in the oil-saddle and is flush with money too. In effect, we believe that he came to Beijing not as a teacher, but now he comes to Beijing as a student. He has learned from the Chinese that if you put your economy in better shape, outsiders and your own people as well, will criticize you less on human rights and other transgressions. He did not smile on TV, and he knows what his intent is now. So, what does Dmitry Orlov think of the opening of the Olympics and the near certainty that China will take over the Super-power manttle after the drop of what he described as the second shoe? Then, to remind us that change may not be as smooth as some may hope for, two American Olympic tourists were just stabbed while visiting the Drum Tower in the center of Beijing - reasons yet unknown. ***
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