Cold War, the sequel

The grand-grandsons of Napoleon’s mutts took over Animal Farm. And they are rich.

Let's face it and stop being naive: the Caucasus is Russia's backyard. The whole region holds an immense economical and geostrategical value for the ex/new/never ceased to be superpower. In the old times, when the vetuste, archaic Soviet Union exported almost nothing, we still could think that the problem was most of all ideological. But not anymore. It's about money.

Were the Americans really expecting that the Russians would let Tbilisi regain total control of the region? No, they weren't. They were just trying to stir things up a little, maybe to test Medvedev's strength, and at the end it's up to Europe to try to calm things down and pick up the pieces (one quarter of our energy depends on it) . And up to the Georgians and the Ossetians to bury their dead. It's "those Washington bullets again". Or Moscow bullets.

(In a country where L'Essentiel is such a success, it was very plesant to find a decent defying article about this subject here. It's the online edition of the Woxx, l'autre hebdomadaire.)

Globalisation: To kill a Chinese

Guilt, moral and distance.

In The Genius of Christianity, published in France in 1802, Chateaubriand formulated one of the most repeated questions of the XIX century: would you agree to the killing of an old, sick Chinese mandarin in distant China, just by wishing it, to inherit his immense fortune?

Today we don't kill the Chinese, nor the Indians, nor the Uzbeks - we eat them. We feed ourselves on human flesh, we dress ourselves on human skin, and our houses are made of human bones.

"Go, buy yourself another pair of jeans", said the fake priest to the fake blind man.

"O conscience ! ne serais-tu qu'un fantôme de l'imagination, ou la peur des châtiments des hommes ? Je m'interroge ; je me fais cette question : « Si tu pouvais par un seul désir tuer un homme à la Chine et hériter de sa fortune en Europe, avec la conviction surnaturelle qu'on n'en saurait jamais rien, consentirais-tu à former ce désir ? » J'ai beau m'exagérer mon indigence ; j'ai beau vouloir atténuer cet homicide en supposant que par mon souhait le Chinois meurt tout à coup sans douleur, qu'il n'a point d'héritier, que même à sa mort ses biens seront perdus pour l'État ; j'ai beau me figurer cet étranger comme accablé de maladies et de chagrins ; j'ai beau me dire que la mort est un bien pour lui, qu'il l'appelle lui-même, qu'il n'a plus qu'un instant à vivre : malgré mes vains subterfuges, j'entends au fond de mon cœur une voix qui crie si fortement contre la seule pensée d'une telle supposition, que je ne puis douter un instant de la réalité de la conscience." - François René de Chateaubriand , in The Genius of Christianity

Biofuel: filling your tank with hunger

The UN is calling for action to avoid the "silent tsunami of rising food prices which threatens to push more than 100 million people worldwide into hunger" (http://www.un.org/). Protests against rising costs of basic foods already started in Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines, Bangladesh, South Africa.... Sub-Saharan Africans continue their decades-old silent protest, dying slowly, quietly, dryly.
I recall now the bad feeling I had last year when I read about Bush's visit to ethanol-driven Brazil.

Biofuel production is said to be responsible for at least one third of the recent increase in food prices. It was already being called “deforestation fuel”. Now it’s also “hunger fuel”.

But it’s bio. «Quand je dors chez mon copain, on mange tout le temps bio» (Sanseverino, «Cette conne m'ennuie»).

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which discusses the problems caused by not considering the eventual outcome of an unbalanced economy. This phrase and book are popular with libertarians and economics textbooks. (Wikipedia)

"Citing disagreements with the organization, Intel Corp. said Thursday it has abandoned the One Laptop Per Child program, dealing a big blow to the ambitious project seeking to bring millions of low-cost laptops to children in developing countries.""Intel decided to quit the nonprofit project and the OLPC board because the two reached a "philosophical impasse," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. Meanwhile, Intel will continue with its own inexpensive laptop design called the Classmate, which it is marketing in some of the same emerging markets OLPC has targeted." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_hi_te/intel_one_laptop_per_child)