by David Steven | Jun 19, 2009 | UK
The Daily Mail, bastion of British bitterness, is frothing at the mouth at plans to allow travellers (or as columnist Richard Littlejohn prefers, “raggle-taggle Romany gipsies… Irish tinkers, itinerant scrap-metal merchants, scruffy hippies…[and] dubious waifs and strays from Eastern Europe doing a bit of freelance begging”) preferential access to health care.
Not wanting them to be left out, it put up a poll to allow its readers to stick the boot in too. Unfortunately, results don’t seem to be turning out the right way. I wonder how long it’ll take before the Mail’s Supreme Leader – editor, Paul Dacre – steps in to sort things out. I feel a fix coming on…
Support up above 90% now – you can vote here.
Update: And the fix is in – seems like Supreme Leader Paul Dacre has cracked. Three different computers (two of which have not been used to vote from) show the poll has now been blocked…
by Alex Evans | Jun 18, 2009 | Influence and networks
Via Charlemagne at the Economist, this small gem: BBC News Online interviewed social networking expert Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard about the use of social media technologies in the Iran protests, and asked him whether this was a seminal moment for social networking. He began his response thus:
“It’s just too early to say but my expertise tells me what is going on is extremely interesting.”
More from Jonathan Zittrain a bit later in the programme…
by Andrew Pickering | Jun 17, 2009 | Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia
The good stuff - Flickr User BullionVault
It’s well known that in times of crisis, people fall back on the certainties of old. Among these is that gold is a good investment, for gold always holds its value far better than, say, real estate. The current recession is no different. Back in October there was a brief media hullabaloo about people buying up gold in droves, forming queues outside bullion merchants.
Now we are seeing something totally new. Indeed, there is no end to human ingenuity. While Japan has long led the pack in eccentric vending machines (purportedly used underwear being the most famous among many products available), in Germany a bright spark named Thomas Geissler has hit upon just what’s needed in these trying times: gold bullion vending machines! I’m kicking myself for not having come up with that one. According to the FT:
For €30 airport shoppers could buy a 1g wafer of gold, with a larger 10g bar priced on Tuesday at €245 and gold coins also on sale.
When the Financial Times bought the cheapest product it was dispensed in an oblong metal box labelled “My Golden Treasure”, with a certificate of authenticity signed by Mr Geissler but no receipt and the wrong change. Mr Geissler said he hoped to have a more advanced prototype available this month.
Still, I suppose spending your money on gold from a vending machine has to be a better investment plan than that of the woman who saved $1 million in her mattress, only for it to be thrown out by her daughter.
by Jules Evans | Jun 17, 2009 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
If you want to see Sir John Sawers, the new head of MI6, in action, check him out in this steely confrontation with Iran’s foreign minister, from Norma Percy’s recent excellent documentary, Iran and the West. The incident is 1 minute 15 seconds in.
I recommend watching the whole episode by the way – fascinating interviews with Putin, Khatami, Straw, Armitage, Fischer, Bolton and others. Sawers is one of the main interviewees, and later in the programme tells of a secret deal Iran offered him in London: let us enrich uranium, and we’ll stop killing your soldiers in Iraq.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ikwy8p4Yc8&feature=related[/youtube]
by David Steven | Jun 16, 2009 | Global system, North America
A few weeks ago, I nearly blogged about growing opposition to IMF funding in the US, but thought it was something of a fringe position. I was wrong. House Republicans are so enraged by Obama’s G20 commitment to the IMF that they are voting to block a $106bn war-spending bill because an additional $5bn for the IMF has been included.
According to House Republican, Mike Pence:
Once the American people learn that the Democrats are using a war-funding bill for a global bailout, they’ll know what to do. We’ll take the message to the floor and to the American people, and I expect we’ll win this fight.
John Boehner, House Minority Leader, agrees. According to his spokesman:
It is the Democratic leadership that is playing politics with our troops by insisting on using them as leverage to pass over $100 billion in global bailout money for the IMF.
Republicans are inching close to advocating complete US disengagement from the global system – UN, World Bank, IMF and all. It’s a worrying trend.
Update: Politico notes how Boehner’s position has hardened over the years.
Boehner now derides the inclusion of IMF cash in the bill, calling it a “global bailout,” despite President Obama’s request that Congress make a down payment on the $100 billion he’s committed to keeping the financial crisis from swamping developing countries, including Pakistan.
That wasn’t Boehner’s tune in 1998, when the Clinton administration requested $18 billion in IMF funding to ameliorate the effects of the Asian financial crisis.
“I have been as critical about the IMF as many, but given the crisis we have around the world, the U.S. needs to provide leadership,” the Ohio Republican told the [Newark, N.J.] Star Ledger in Oct. 1998. “The only real avenue is the IMF.”
His trajectory, it seems, is typical of the whole of his party.
