Blog posts

Our friends Emily and Aaron took us to see The Terminal on Friday. Trailers had suggested that it might appeal to me more than the star-power of Hanks/Zeta-Jones/Spielberg might otherwise suggest, and given recent experiences a film based entirely around immigration procedures seemed somehow appropriate. It didn’t disappoint. Normally, I find Spielberg films hard to watch, finding either his heavy-handed, black-and-white approach to issues, or the schmaltz suffocating. While some, such as Charles Taylor writing in Salon, seem to think the film has an agenda to highlight and protest immigration bureaucracy, I didn’t read it that way. In this case, the bureaucracy seemed more a given than a political agenda. ...

Shell aren’t having a good time of it at the moment. Having recently admitted that their actions in the Niger delta may have contributed to human rights violations, and facing scrutiny for overstating its oil reserves (thereby artificially inflating the value of their assets) they are now facing allegations that they haven’t lived up to their own ‘green pledge’. According to today’s Guardian, Friends of the Earth, the environmental group, today accused oil giant Shell of failing to live up to its promise of environmental and social responsibility. ...

The irony of the headline US accuses Iran of ‘bullying’ UN will hopefully be immediately apparent. Outside of its own borders, the US government hasn’t retained much credibility to make accusations of that sort, whether true or not. Iran has recently— notoriously—elected a new majlis (parliament), one much more dominated by conservative groupings than its predecessor. This majlis has been elected in a time when Iran sees US troop presence in countries on its Eastern (Afghanistan) and Western (Iraq) borders, increasing disturbances in Saudi Arabia, and a heavy-handed clampdown by Israel on Palestine. ...

We’ve been sorry to miss Sam Phillips’ pair of relatively local concerts over the past couple of weeks. The new album is sounding rather good, and all reports are positive. At least in the absence of a live experience there’s this KCRW session. Worth a listen just for the string section’s rendition of Radiohead’s “Just” alone.

It’s unclear that an Ofcom report will have much impact on Fox News, but it’s good to see them trying. For those who don’t remember, I blogged about the incident in question here.

Back in 1999 when the G8 (the leaders of the Group of Seven “leading industrialised nations”, plus Russia) met in Cologne, Germany, they won headlines with their apparent new commitment to debt relief for some of the world’s poorest nations. They revamped the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) process, promising another $100 million to fund the cancellation of some debts owed by the 42 countries deemed eligible for that system to multi-lateral lending bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank. ...

“Where’s the nearest letter box?” read the text I sent to Kari as she approached her lunch destination just outside Cleveland. In my hand was a DVD from netflix ( La Femme Nikita) that needed returning, and I didn’t want to expend extraneous effort working out where to post it. A minute later the phone started ringing. “What’s a letter box?” came the (not entirely unexpected) response. “Where do I post a letter?” I attempted to clarify, and received directions into Eastown to the nearest Post Office. ...

One of the key criticisms of negotiations at the World Trade Organisation headquarters in Geneva is the significant disparity in negotiating capacity between different countries. According to a WDM report in September 2001 some 30 WTO members countries cannot afford an office in Geneva, and few developing countries are able to attend the 40 to 50 important trade meetings held in an average week. Just as most democratic countries have over the centuries moved to paying their elected representatives in order to reduce corruption and provide equivalence of representation, it would seem sensible for the WTO to devise some method of pooling resources so as to level that particular playing field. ...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has, over the past decade, been the subject of intense debate. It was the spark that lit up the zapatista uprising in Mexico, and in the years that followed—particularly this past one—has fired debates about the state of the US and other economies. No-one, it seems, can agree on whether NAFTA has been good for the US economy. The signs from some of the other economies involved are more stark. ...

One of these days I’ll find some client-side photo gallery creating software that works exactly as I’d like. Until I do, the lack of such software is always my excuse for not getting photos up faster. Excuses aside, a small selection of wedding photos is now online. It comprises some photos from the ‘wedding shower’ and the honeymoon as well as the ceremony itself. We’re still awaiting the return of print photos and may (or may not) supplement this collection upon their arrival. ...