Globalization

So, Robert Kaplan is sleeping with the Commiesnow.

As before, he views the rise of the Chinese military as “wholly legitimate” — the product of growing commercial realities, not a drive for conquest. “If you governed China, with the responsibility of lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese into an energy-ravenous, middle-class lifestyle,” he writes, “you, too, would seek a credible navy in order to protect your merchant fleet across the Indian Ocean and western Pacific.”

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Remember the bird flu scare of 2005, another one of those “Chicken Little” crises currently contributing to global cynicism about science and government expenditures? It didn’t happen, and there’s a few head-slapping reasons why.

Dr Gaidet’s team analysed 228 birds from 19 species using satellite telemetry from 2006 to 2009 over the bird flu affected areas of Asia, Europe and Africa. The results indicated that migrating wildfowl do have the potential to disperse H5N1 over extensive distances as mass migration can result in infected birds covering as much as 2900km before symptoms become apparent.

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Yes, I missed last week – apologies. This week brings disappointment leavened with hope – for carbon taxes, CCT’s, and sorting out the banking system and the world economy in general. I am, however, partial to a counter-terror strategy in Afghanistan. But, maybe I should read the WikiLeaks’ trove of documents now.

• The Rising Power of the Chinese Worker

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They’re all good reasons to boycott the World Cup.

It’s inevitable, perhaps, that in a sporting event that draws together people of all classes, creeds and colors, shameful paradoxes will emerge: the interplay between child workers in Pakistan and sports industry marketing agendas; the dissonance between the overbuilt stadiums and the poverty of the workers who poured their sweat into the concrete.

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For years, I’ve listened to South Korean students, co-workers, and even my wife and family tell me how obese Americans are due to a rotten food culture, or even racial characteristics. I’ve listened patiently. I’ve not said a word about the diminutive grandmothers and grandfathers bent 90 degrees as if carrying phantom loads of cargo on their backs from the decades when the Korean diet lacked key nutrients. I also didn’t say a word about the street food, that, even if it were hallowed local favorites, still contained plenty of oil and salt for me to recognize it as fast food. And, of course, I said nothing of the plump kids with cellphones gorging themselves silly at the vendors’ carts between cram school sessions or devouring bags of chips and cookies in class. I didn’t warn them about the lure of modern society: cheap food that really is trash.