Growing Pains

A pair of truly horrific building related calamities in the world's two most populous countries this week. First, a high rise fire killed 53 people in Shanghai, a city of 20 million that has seen an explosion of construction in recent years, and unsound building practices seem to be the culprit:

Chinese police are holding four suspects after a Shanghai apartment fire that killed 53 people and injured 70 others was blamed on unlicensed welding, state media said.

The fire, which gutted a 28-storey building in China's commercial hub, was sparked by "unlicensed welding carried out contrary to rules," Xinhua, the official news agency, reported without citing a source.

The report did not say whether those detained were workers or managers. 

The swift arrests come as authorities tackle public concern over why the fire took more than four and a half hours to extinguish.

A second and even more deadly disaster transpired in New Delhi, when a tenement housing mostly migrant workers from India's eastern countryside collapsed, killing 64 people. Apparently, it might as well have been built on a swamp:

The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear, but suspicions immediately centered on this year’s heavy monsoon rains, the building’s location near a swollen river and shoddy, illicit construction.

“There is already a question mark on the legality of the construction of buildings in this area,” said Tajendra Khanna, the city’s lieutenant governor, and the owner of the building, Amrit Singh, was being sought for arrest.

 New Delhi has upwards of 15 million people, and some say it is poised to overtake Mumbai in the that arena if current rates persist. China's and India's big cities are swelling so rapidly they seem tragically overwhelmed and at a loss to keep up; these twin disasters are certainly symptoms of that.

Top: A high rise burns in Shanghai (AP) Bottom: Rescuers search for survivors in New Delhi (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

A New Faith

On Veterans' Day I was inspired to pluck the Civil War novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara off my shelf and began reading it. The book is enthralling and magnificently written. I attempted to read it once when I was 14, but I remember it only being a chore. Now, however, I can't put it down. Each page is so packed with deep brilliance and revelation, yet at the same time is spartan and to the point.
One passage I found fascinating and rather timely comes early in the book when Colonel Chamberlain of the 20th Maine Regiment is lost in thought:

He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God.
...
But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigners; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

 Photo: November 12th, 2010, U.S. Marines help their wounded comrade to a helicopter during a Medevac mission in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province. (REUTERS/Peter Andrews)

Sometimes Creeps Do Look Like Creeps

CNN reports on developments in an ongoing missing persons case out of Ohio:



And witness accounts of the alleged perpetrator, Matthew J. Hoffman, now in custody, don't line up with the typical "he was normal but quiet" descriptions of men who turn out to be rapists and serial killer:

Donna Davis, who lives on the same street as the home where the girl was found, told WBNS Hoffman was a "weirdo" and that she made her children come indoors when he was outside.

 The rescued 13-year-old's brother, mother, and her mother's friend are still missing.

The Sad Fate of the Discovered Native

Just when you think there are no more unexplored corners of the world, one suddenly presents itself. Oh, if these people only knew the fate that awaits them now, should the pattern that afflicts their cousins' remain the same.

Eric Cantor Flirts with Treason

Andrew Sullivan highlights a shocking trend among GOP congressional leaders:

It is not the first time that this kind of direct attack on the president's ability to conduct foreign policy has occurred under this administration. John McCain and Joe Lieberman have gone abroad to assure Israel that they will undermine their own president to advance the interests of a foreign country in a critical diplomatic discussion with the US on that country's soil. But Eric Cantor has gone one further, openly bragging about something he once described as a felony.

Eric Cantor, a US lawmaker, has given assurances to the leadership of a foreign nation, namely Israel, that he and his fellow party members are putting Israeli interests ahead of those of their own Commander-in-Chief. The same US politicians who would, during the previous administration, accuse any critic of the President of being a traitor are now promising the leaders of another country that they will actively work against the American President.

Aung San Suu Kyi Released

NPR reports:

Myanmar's military government freed its arch rival, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
Suu Kyi appeared at the gate to her home, smiling and dressed in a traditional Burmese jacket. "There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk," she told the  hundreds of cheering supporters. "People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal," she said.

Al Jazeera gives some good historical context:



Is Myanmar edging closer to some semblance of democracy? Their recent elections might have been racked with fraud and accompanied by violent skirmishes with ethnic rebels, but it was the first national vote in two decades there. While their votes may not have counted this time around, perhaps a new generation of Burmese have acquired a taste for democracy that they will find hard to ignore until it is truly satiated.

(Photo: Suu Kyi greets the crowd outside her compound in Yangon. Getty Images)

For Women's Rights or for Politics?

On Wednesday, The United Nations launched UN Women, a new agency devoted to promoting and protecting women's rights around the world, with seats for 41 member nations. Many nations, including Nigeria, DR Congo, and Saudi Arabia applied and were granted seats on this new council. One notable and controversial exclusion was Iran, who applied as one of the 10 members from Asia but was replaced at the last minute by East Timor. The AFP reports:

"They lost and they lost handily," commented US ambassador Susan Rice on Iran's defeat.
"We have made no secret of our concern that Iran joining the board of UN Women would have been an inauspicious start to that board," she told reporters.

The claim of Iran's exclusion being due to their abysmal women's rights record would be easier to buy were it not for DR Congo's and especially Saudi Arabia's easily obtained seats on the council. The epidemic of mass rape in DR Congo would not seem to make the nation an exemplar of protecting women, and Saudi Arabia oppresses their female citizens to such a complete and inhuman degree (they are not allowed to even leave their own homes without the company of either a spouse or blood relative, and of course must remain covered when in public) its like the Islamic Kingdom is trying to win some bizarro Nobel prize for violating human rights.
This is not to diminish the suffering of Iran's women at all; from the Islamic dress code, to being banned from places like soccer matches, to unjust and cruel imprisonment and execution by stoning, the gross mistreatment of Iranian women is legendary and ongoing. But for the UN to imply that Iran's record is worse than a country like Saudi Arabia, the world leader in oppressing women, is just ridiculous. Iranian women outnumber men at universities, and, unlike Saudi Arabia, women in Iran are allowed to go pretty much where they choose, although not without hazarding threats from the Morality Police should a headscarf be out of place or a blouse be too formfitting.
It seems blatantly political that the UN would take care to keep Iran off this new council while accepting Saudi Arabia and DR Congo seemingly without issue. One must not ignore the ongoing sanctions against Iran, which today brought this development:

Nigeria has vowed to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council if Nigerian investigators find evidence that an apparently illegal arms shipment seized in Nigeria violated UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

 Is Iran's seemingly deliberate exclusion from UN Women yet another sanction against this moment's global pariah? If the United Nations prime concern here was truly protecting and advancing women's rights, then they would keep Saudi Arabia as far away from that council as possible.

"Goodbye, baseball!"

It's being reported that beloved sportscaster Dave Niehaus has passed away at the age of 75. Dave was the announcer for the Seattle Mariners for their entire existence until he retired from broadcasting at the end of last season; he was deservedly inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Dave Niehaus was a Seattle institution and a giant in sports broadcasting. Many have rightfully dubbed him the Voice of the Mariners, a moniker I whole-heartedly agree with. As a kid, I listened to Dave call games all the time, and I credit his boundless joy and infectious enthusiasm for baseball with helping to form my rabid Mariners fandom, and I know I'm not the only one. It's hard to imagine the Mariners without him.

This glorious moment in Seattle sports history would not have been nearly as electric and memorable without Dave Niehaus:

Islamophobia Backfires, ala France

Across the pond, outcry against the recently passed French "Burqa Ban" is taking a number of forms. One of the most notable is the ongoing work of a mysterious graffiti artist who goes by the moniker Princess Hijab.

Princess Hijab is Paris's most elusive street artist. Striking at night with dripping black paint she slaps black Muslim veils on the half-naked airbrushed women – and men – of the metro's fashion adverts. She calls it "hijabisation".

 The Guardian managed to snag a rare interview.

"The veil has many hidden meanings, it can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism on race, sexuality and real and imagined geography."

 Meanwhile, a pair of women who call themselves Niqabitch have taken a stand against the burqa ban with this video:




(Top: photo by Princess Hijab)

"Ken lives on in our hearts."

Today is the 15th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, a political activist who campaigned against the insidious activities of Shell Oil in his native Nigeria, specifically the Niger Delta region, but you wouldn't know it by reading or watching the major US news media. When it happened in 1995, Saro Wiwa's murder at the hands of his own government, ordered by Shell, was a huge international story that got loads of coverage in the American media, but today passed without so much as a mention of it.

I did find this article by the AFP, which gives some good historical context as well as how Saro Wiwa is being commemorated in Nigeria today. And yesterday, the Guardian published an article about Shell's efforts to control negative PR after the execution.

The suffering and injustice that Saro Wiwa fought against so many years ago persists; the lives and livelihoods of the Ogoni people continue to be sacrificed at the alter of corporate greed and western petrol-lust. And no one is listening.

Islamophobia Backfires

Oklahoma may have just banned official use of the Ten Commandments along with Sharia Law. From The Raw Story:

Residents in Oklahoma thought they were voting to ban Sharia law last Tuesday but it turns out that the new constitutional amendment may also extend to the Ten Commandments.

The Oklahoma ballot measure orders judges not to consider Islamic or international law when deciding cases. 

But Rick Tepker, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Law believes the "Save Our State" constitutional amendment may have the unwanted side effect of preventing judges from referencing the Ten Commandments. Tepker called the measure "a mess."

As Patton Oswalt puts it:

Ha ha! AHHHH-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, good Lord, this is just...HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! HAAAH-HAAAH-HAAAH-HAAAH!!! 

A Forsaken Country

A tent city set up for earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Haiti has narrowly avoided another level of devastation recently as Hurricane Tomas brushed by, soaking the place but leaving things relatively unharmed. The Associated Press:

U.S. Marine helicopters buzzed the southern coast from the USS Iwo Jima, reporting back good news.
"It sounds like from what everybody's seeing that it's no worse than after a major storm here. There's some standing water out there but nothing's washed away," U.S. embassy spokesman Jon Piechowski said.

Unfortunately, what little flooding Tomas did bring is only exacerbating the on going cholera epidemic that has already killed 500 people in recent months.

Cholera? Why is this allowed to happen? How can such massive and protracted suffering take place so close to the richest country on earth? Recession or not, the US could easily fund the reconstruction of Haiti. But what do we spend our vast national wealth on? Market Watch reports that campaign spending during our recent midterms reached nearly $4 billion. That's equal to more than half of Haiti's GDP. Where does all that money go? Meg Whitman alone spent over $140 million to lose the California Governor's race, the most ever spent on a campaign in US history.
Luckily there are ways to help the people of Haiti, by donating money or even your time and energy if you are able.

UNICEF

Food For The Poor

All Hands Volunteers

Checking in with Kyrgyzstan post-Bakiyev

Above is a really fascinating profile from Radio Free Europe about a group of disabled young people who have taken up residence in ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev's burned out former house. They're selling the bread that they make, fixing the home, and building a community in the aftermath of great political turmoil and ethnic violence in their country. Unfortunately, not all is well in Kyrgyzstan:

A group of ethnic Kyrgyz today occupied land belonging to ethnic Uzbeks in the villages of Kyzyl-Kyshtak and Ishkevan, just outside Osh, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports. The group of some 500 Kyrgyz -- mainly from the Nookat, Aravan, and Alai districts -- showed up in the villages in the morning with plans to divide the land into parcels. District authorities have warned the land occupiers to vacate the area by November 8 or face "severe measures."

Future Overlords Watch

Above is the trailer for a documentary by director Weijun Chen called Please Vote For Me, which chronicles a democratic experiment carried out using a typical class of Chinese 3rd graders. Three students are nominated for class monitor, and then set out to campaign for their peers' votes. What the trailer hints at is a fascinating and kind of frightening study of the ruthlessness of these tiny politicians; these kids, raised in the world's largest Communist state, take to democracy, in all its good and bad facets, so naturally you'd think they had run some of the most amoral campaigns in the latest US midterms. These are the future leaders of government and commerce in China and most likely the world at large.

Meanwhile, the current Chinese business leadership is renting white people to pose as foreign investors in order to impress the locals:

A Hoosier in 2012?

There's a movement underway to draft Indiana governor Mitch Daniels into the 2012 presidential race. He's apparently very well liked in his home state, having been elected to two terms so far, but I don't know if he has a chance at the presidency or even the nomination. He's rather moderate for a Republican, having signed the Healthy Indiana Plan, which, to many of his likely GOP primary opponents, would too closely resemble President Obama's health care reform that is so hated on the right. He also presided over the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, during which time a surplus of $236 billion sank to a deficit of $400 billion, not exactly lining up with Republicans' stated goal of fiscal responsibility or the Democrats' actual practice of fiscal responsibility. In his favor, however, he had managed to lower taxes for businesses and homeowners in Indiana, as well as taking steps to create thousands of jobs in that state. If anything, he will appeal to independents, and moderates from both major parties, but who knows what things will look like in 2 years. He's certainly a more appealing candidate than any of these characters:

CNN asked Iowa Republicans leaving their polling places last Tuesday who their likely 2012 favorites were. Romney and Huckabee tied at 21 percent, followed by Palin at 18 percent and Gingrich at 7 percent.

 (Above: Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana. AP photo.)