Category: In the News

You get three guesses as to where the article titled Power of the Pen and subtitled with “The president uses signing statements to decree which laws apply to him” comes from. Here’s the article’s penultimate paragraph:

Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush’s aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy. In the meantime, don’t count on the legislative branch to right the balance: Bush has encountered almost no effective resistance in his own party to his power grabs. One Republican senator recently told author Elizabeth Drew: “We’ve got to hang with the president because if you start splitting with him or say the president has been abusing power we’ll all go down.” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently denounced criticism of the NSA warrantless wiretapping as “insulting” to the president, Drew reported. Apparently, some prominent Republicans believe that the president cannot be criticized even after he admits breaking the law.

On which leftist site did this appear? Mother Jones? Daily Kos? The Huffington Post?

Actually, it’s from The American Conservative.

Cyrus Farivar pointed me to this recently-published French book titled Chine-Afrique: Le Dragon et l’Autruche, which translates as “China-Africa: The Dragon and the Ostrich). The cover, shown below, is pretty ridiculous and dated, not just for what’s depicted, but also the rinky-dink style in which it’s depicted. I’m reminded of the crappy artwork from grade school reading texts from the 1970s:

I wonder why the Chinese dude’s briefcase reads “Made in China” in English and not “Fabriqué en Chine”.

Here’s the publisher’s description of the book in the original French:

L’une étonne le monde; l’autre le désole. La Chine, le dragon rugissant du 21ème siècle, et l’Afrique, l’autruche impuissante à affronter ses défis. Qu’est-ce qui a bien pu se passer pour que leurs sorts respectifs soient si différents ? Cet ouvrage, l’un des premiers sur le sujet, établit les causes de cette dissymétrie des destins sino-africains, en passant en revue leurs expériences au cours des 60 dernières années, mais aussi en analysant leurs ressorts politiques, économique et sociaux actuels.

And here’s my (possibly loosey-goosey) translation:

One astonishes the world; the other afflicts it. China, the roaring dragon of the 21st century, and Africa, the ostrich incapable of facing its challenges. What could have happened that made their outcomes so different? This work, one of the first on the subject, establishes the causes of this disparity of Chinese and African destinies, reviews their experiences over the past 60 years while analyzing their current political, economic and social options.

Between the cover and that line about Africa “afflicting” the world, I’m tempted to say “French racism, Gallic charm, po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, n’est-ce pas?”

I suggested to Cyrus that he write a review if he purchases a copy.

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I thought that the Chinese dude in the dragon’s pouch wasn’t that far off from what I looked like. If you gave him an accordion, some sideburns and a goatee, you’d have Yours Truly. So that’s what I did, resulting in the book cover below:

Click the image to the see Scoble’s blog.

The International Networks Archive site has a collection of amps and charts that make it easier to understand the numbers behind “major current world issues, from the serious to the seriously frivolous”. I’ve posted thumbnails of the maps and charts below; click on the thumbnail to see the map on its original site at full size.

Choose Your Weapon: The Global Arms Trade

All sorts of stats and graphs on what the world is spending on weapons and defense, from perspectives ranging from geopolitics to the average person. Did you know that 1.8 million scissors were confiscated at U.S. airports in 2002? Many of them ended up being donated to the U.S. Boy Scouts.

Click to see the full-size version.

Stealing the Show: The Global Movie Biz

Of the top 20 films worldwide (based on ticket sales), all but one — the Japanese animated feature Sprited Away — were made in Hollywood. The chart notes that Hollywood has still failed to make many inroads into India, whose movie industry output dwarfs Hollywood’s.

Click to see the full-size version.

Sssmokin! The Global Tobacco Trade

This map shows the global cigarette trade routes. There’s a sidebar that notes that in 2000, there was a disparity of 292 billion cigarettes — the rough equivalent of everybody in the U.S. hiding a thousand smokes — between worldwide exports and imports. That’s the black market for cancer sticks, an off-the-books enterprise run by Big Tobacco, who are selling to India, Columbia and Bangladesh to avoid import taxes.

Click to see the full-size version.

Getting Around: Transporation Today

This shows the numbers behind the various modes of transporation today. The most popular vehicle in the world? The bicycle — there are 1.4 billion of them, compared to about 400 million cars.

Click to see the full-size version.

Red Tape: The Government Grind

A breakdown of the 2.7 million people — that’s about 1% of the U.S. population — who work for the U.S. Government.

Click to see the full-size version.

The Magic Bean Shop / The Fries That Bind Us

Charts for two of the biggest franchise operations in the world (and the first places attacked during any protest): Starbucks and McDonald’s.

Click to see the full-size version.

Glass Half Empty: The Coming Water War

A chart that explains who’s getting water and who isn’t. We’re sitting quite pretty here in Canada, at number 2 on the “best water” list and with over 20% of the world’s fresh water.

Click to see the full-size version.

Courtesy of HeadTurban and Miss Fipi Lele, here’s a specially-captioned photo shoot of Hugo “Greasy” Chavez paying a visit to Fidel Castro’s hospital room. Love the matching outfits, guys — are you starting a gang or something?