Blog posts

Juan Cole’s commentary on Middle Eastern issues over at Informed Comment remains essential reading. I was particularly amused by his response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s suggestion that the Iranian public had, by voting for the hardline candidate, “humiliated” Bush: that in some ways Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad are soul mates. For those of us who have been hoping for a gradual opening up of Iranian society, the election result is rather a blow and, despite the similarities Professor Cole points out, is only likely to increase aggression between Iran and the West in the short-term. ...

Capping off a walking tour of New York, our second night in the city saw us at two concerts: Susan Enan at Rockwood Music Hall, and Bell X1 at Sin-e. Susan moved to New York earlier this year, but the way she greeted almost every member of the crowd assembled in Rockwood Music Hall made it very clear that she’s settled in quickly. Rockwood sits right on the edge of the East Village and has been operating for about six months, hosting intimate musical gatherings in a bar-space that will accommodate maybe 50 people. ...

As I’ve touched on before, one of the areas I’ve been exploring as part of the Social Documents projects is ways of managing document revisions. With a major United Nations summit coming up in September (and the 60th anniversary of the charter on Sunday) I’d like my UN Charter site to be better equipped to handle any amendments to the charter that might be made, but as more and more public documents come online it will be important to be able to look back through their histories and see how they’ve evolved. ...

There was a qualifier clearly missing from my recent posts on the G8 announcement on debt cancellation. It’s not quite so clear what that qualifier should have been, but ‘public’ is probably close to the mark. The G8 announcement of “100% debt cancellation” only applied to those debts owed to a few multilateral bodies which are, effectively, extensions of rich governments. Debts that are effectively owed to the taxpayers in the world’s richer countries. ...

Our time in New York prevented me from following the first round of the Iranian Presidential elections in the detail I might otherwise have indulged, but I’m glad to be able to follow the run-offs a little more closely. It was disconcerting to wake up this morning to hear NPR continually referring to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani as ‘moderate.’ It’s the same sort of political spin that left this European bemused at the attacks on the “liberal”, “left-wing” Democrats in last year’s US Presidential election. When your opposition is quite that conservative, almost anyone can look moderate and liberal. ...

Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings and Queens has been attracting a considerable share of critical attention. It’s not often that you get reviewers like Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir making statements like: A lot of filmmakers talk about bridging the gap between high-gloss pop spectacle and independent auteur cinema, but “Kings and Queen” is one of the best, and most alive, attempts to do that in at least a generation. The film tells the story of two ex-lovers. At the outset their paths are clearly divided, with Desplechin’s deft style-shifting providing most of the insight into who they each are, and the forces that drove them apart. As their stories unfold and become once more entangled, the style becomes more uniform, but the deftness remains. ...

The intention to blog has been with me all week, but yet again it hasn’t turned into action. Tomorrow, we set off for Rhode Island for Kate and Nathan’s wedding. From there we’ll head to Long Island and NYC for a few days’ break, visiting Sara, Susan, and others. The intention to blog while we’re away is here. Time will tell whether it turns into action.

T Longren trackbacked to my last entry on debt cancellation. I’ve never been fond of trackbacks from entries that don’t in turn link to me, but this post got my attention because it seemed to misunderstand the origin of the debts which the G8 has announced plans to cancel. The debts which are to be cancelled are not the result of overseas development aid. While it’s true that some of what rich governments describe as ‘aid’ is in the form of loans, most of the debts are the result of loans (explicitly described as such) granted in the 60s and 70s. Those loans were granted on terms derived from an economic situation which quickly deteriorated and many argue that they were only granted because the west was at the time cash-rich and wanted to turn much of that cash wealth into investment wealth. ...

This month’s round of developments at Grand Rapids Wifi was the first to be completed since I started using the combination of subversion and trac to manage the site, and I have to say that I’m fast becoming a firm fan of that pairing. While at the moment I’m keeping access to them restricted (until I finish reworking the configuration storage) it’s been a massive aid in keeping track of work to do. ...

Salon is carrying a piece (reprinted from the Guardian) about philosopher, novelist, and Canada’s Vice Regal Consort, John Ralston Saul, largely focussed on his new book, " The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World." The interview provides some interesting insights into the formation of the G7 (now G8) and why its focus has so long been on seeing the world through economic eyes, laying the blame at the feet of former French President Giscard d’Estang (notable of late as the writer of the proposed EU constitution). ...