Entries Tagged 'International' ↓

Burma cyclone death toll could hit 63,000 .

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According to the polity of the United Methodist Church, there is no separate denomination for each country, nor a hierarchical transnational organization. Rather, Methodist congregations from around the world are on an equal footing. Their representatives get together every four years for a General Conference to decide on policies for all Methodists. In the General Conference currently going on in Fort Worth, a coalition of AFRICAN Methodists with American conservatives is thwarting efforts from the normally-liberal Methodists to take their church even further to the left.

See Methodists Struggle To Reflect Diversity. Once again, the Africans are the ones upholding Christian orthodoxy against the churches that once sent them missionaries.

Also, what do you think of the Methodist polity? Could that be a model for an international synod of, say, Lutheran churches?

HT: Graham Walker

The colorfully eccentric conservative Boris Johnson beat out the incumbent Marxist “Red Ken” Livingstone as mayor of London, part of an overwhelming Tory victory over Labour (sic) in England’s off-year elections. According to this article, How Boris Johnson finally grew up to grasp his shot at redemption - Times Online , Mayor-elect Johnson’s lifelong ambition was to be elected President of the United States. He was born in New York, so he could actually qualify under the constitution as being “natural born.”

Unlike, maybe, John McCain!

This article, The New Economics of Hunger, is both fascinating and sobering, showing just how interconnected the world’s economy has become and how good environmentalist intentions and arcane investments are translating into actual human beings starving to death. Killer quote: “food was becoming the new gold.”

Here is how the current food crisis happened: The wheat harvest worldwide was mediocre, making for tight though sufficient supplies. But Argentina and Russia decided to ban exports so they could keep their crops for themselves. That meant less wheat on the world market, sending prices up.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., our farmers–who account for half of the world’s grain exports!–had shifted a significant amount of their production from wheat to corn to take advantage of the federally-subsidized ethanol market , which consumes nearly 25% of the current corn supply. So less American wheat meant still higher prices. Foreign buyers, facing the prospect of hunger at home, bid it still higher. Because of the falling value of the dollar, foreigners bought more and more, stockpiling supplies. In the meantime, the collapse of the mortgage markets sent investors into grain markets! Bidding prices even higher!

Now, food shortages and high prices are destabilizing governments in Haiti, Bangladesh, and a dozen other countries. And, after years of progress in fighting hunger in these countries, starvation is back.

Remember J. R. Ewing? Southfork? Miss Ellie? We are at the 30th anniversary of “Dallas.” According to this article, How ‘Dallas’ Won the Cold War, the show with its evil oil tycoons and cutthroat capitalism, helped win the hearts and minds of the proletariat in communist countries. It happened along the lines of this priceless anecdote:

Joseph Stalin is said to have screened the 1940 movie “The Grapes of Wrath” in the Soviet Union to showcase the depredations of life under capitalism. Russian audiences watched the final scenes of the Okies’ westward trek aboard overladen, broken-down jalopies — and marveled that in the United States, even poor people had cars. “Dallas” functioned similarly.

Communist officials reasoned that the depradations of J. R. would teach their people the evils of capitalism. But, instead, Iron Curtain viewers saw the swimming pools, Cadillacs, and blockbuster business deals and lusted after them and the economic system that, for better and worse, made them possible.

As evident in last week’s blog about cricket, India makes for a good case study about the effect of pop culture on a traditionalist society. In this article about the struggles of India’s “untouchable” caste to break into the country’s “Bollywood” film industry–Bollywood No Longer A Dream Too Far for India’s Lower Castes - washingtonpost.com–we learn just how much the poor people are taken with the fantasies they see on screen:

Going to the air-conditioned cinema is a popular national pastime without parallel in this country, especially for low-caste laborers who work under India’s unforgiving sun — in construction, in farming, as cow herders and as fruit vendors. For Indians, most of whom subsist on less than $2 a day, the masala mixes of drama and dance are the ultimate escape.

So beloved are Hindi film stars that there are Hindu temples named after matinee idols. Political rallies always include a Bollywood starlet. Some political leaders are former actors. And in small-town theaters, audiences are so personally involved in the melodramas — often four hours long — that they whistle, clap, imitate dance moves and sing along with the songs.

“India is really a special place for film. It’s second only to religion in the way it occupies people’s minds and dreams,” said Barry John, a longtime drama teacher.

Nearly 70% of Italian gynecologists are now refusing to perform abortions, citing moral grounds. And the number is growing. See this:

Between 2003 and 2007 the number of gynecologists claiming the conscience clause to avoid carrying out abortions rose from 58.7 percent to 69.2 percent, according to the report.

Europe’s right-wing scene–including its FAR right-wing scene–is undergoing some interesting changes and some new popularity. The anti-semite (that is, the anti-Jewish) parties are finding favor with Muslims! Other groups are building on the public’s unease with the Islamisation of their countries by appeals to traditional European culture. There are also some new anti-immigration, anti-Islamic parties grounded in libertarianism that are becoming more and more prominent. See this article, Islam and the Evolution of Europe’s Far Right.

According to this article in a British newspaper, China already is the world’s dominant nation.

Charles Krauthammer observes that we have utterly failed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, as that country announces new centrifuge breakthroughs that are necessary for the production of an atomic bomb. Therefore, he says, we must go back to the cold war policy of deterrence. The prime target for an Iranian nuclear weapon, judging from what Iran’s president keeps saying, would be Israel. Krauthammer urges that the United States make this pledge, based upon what President Kennedy said to the Soviets if they attacked any of our allies:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.”

Are we up for that?

China just sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3 1/2 years in prison for writing this article. Here are some excerpts:

China has consistently persecuted human rights activists, political dissidents and freelance writers and journalists. The blind activist Chen Guangcheng, recipient of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award and named in 2006 by Time Magazine as one of the most influential 100 people shaping our world, is still serving his sentence of four years and three months for exposing the truth of forced abortion and sterilization. . . .

China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35 Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90 percent were arrested or tried after Beijing’s successful bid for the Olympics in July 2001. For example, Shi Tao, a journalist and a poet, was sentenced to ten years in prison because of an e-mail sent to an overseas website. . . .

Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles. Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running an “illegal operation” for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. Among them were humanitarian workers and language educators who had been teaching English in China for 15 years. During this so-called Typhoon 5 campaign, authorities took aim at missionary activities so as to prevent their recurrence during the Olympics.. . .

China has the world’s largest secret police system, the Ministry of National Security (guo an) and the Internal Security Bureau (guo bao) of the Ministry of Public Security, which exercise power beyond the law. They can easily tap telephones, follow citizens, place them under house arrest, detain them and impose torture. . . .

Chinese citizens have no right to elect state leaders, local government officials or representatives. In fact, there has never been free exercise of election rights in township-level elections. . . .

Please be aware that the Olympic Games will be held in a country where there are no elections, no freedom of religion, no independent courts, no independent trade unions; where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited; where torture and discrimination are supported by a sophisticated system of secret police; where the government encourages the violation of human rights and dignity, and is not willing to undertake any of its international obligations.

Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with religious persecution[,] labor camps, modern slavery, identity discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity.

Meanwhile, the Olympic torch has made it, after going out several times due to protests along the way, to the United States.

Yes, we decry the way Communist China (at least I’m not saying “Red China,” tODD) is oppressing the Tibetans, as well as Christians and just about everybody else. But that does not excuse the Tibetan Buddhists who murdered at least 19 innocent people just because they were Chinese. From Eyewitnesses Recount Terrifying Day in Tibet - washingtonpost.com:

It was a heady feeling, being part of a howling pack that had forced police to turn tail and run, some dropping their shields as they fled a barrage of rocks. Then the Tibetans in the crowd slowed and began turning back, grinning and patting one another on the back.

The ebullient mood did not last long. The pack broke into smaller groups, gathering rocks and pulling out knives, looking for the next target.

“There was no more crowd to be part of. It looked like they were turning on everybody,” said Kenwood, 19, describing the scene to reporters last week when he arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, after 10 days in the Tibetan capital. “It wasn’t about Tibet freedom anymore.”

What he witnessed next was a violent rampage unlike any in decades in Lhasa, a city where Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered temples sit among office buildings and concrete markets built by Chinese bent on developing the remote Himalayan region. Hundreds of mostly young Tibetans broke up into roaming gangs and attacked Chinese passersby and vandalized shops, killing 19 people and injuring more than 600 over two days.

During the riots, looters set fire to a clothing store, burning to death five young employees who were huddled on the second floor. Most police officers kept their distance while the center of Lhasa descended into chaos.