The Jim Parys Pages

Posted By jimcwaters on July 7, 2013

Inequality in education increases in China:  Asia Weekly of June 23 has a piece of how Chinese are more and more protesting the selection of university students.  More are going to the streets complaining of corruption in the selection of students and the growing disparity between kids from the city or with parents in the government and others in the countryside.  The former are 17 times represented in the nation’s colleges and universities.      Those with the means are “voting with their applications” forgoing the national test in favor of the SAT, some traveling to Hong Kong to take it.  In Shanghai, centers for studying for the SAT continue to grow but the number taking the national Chinese test dropped from 108,000 in 2008 to 53,000 this year.

Is the ICC a “white man’s Justice?”:    Le Monde asks this question this week  and tries to answer in four separate articles.   Even with the replacement of the Court’s prosecutor from the activist Argentinian Luis Moreno Ocampo to an African, nothing has changed.   Since 2002, the court has nine primary cases, and Le Monde has a nice graph where each one, all against Africans only, is.   It has only finished two cases, one acquittal and one currently under appeal.   The greatest failure has been its indictment of Omar Al-Bashir, the president of Sudan.  The African Union and several states, members included, have opposed the indictment and have hosted him. One former colleague of mine in Sudan who worked for de Campo claimed that he turned to this hunt as a personal mission when in fact many of his staff thought Bashir was mostly trying to hold on to power and balance a whole host of those who led the killing in Darfur against others.     In response to this situation, the African Union has taken on its first case in a court in Senegal against the former Chadian leader, Hissene Habre who was accused of having a hand in the deaths of 40,000  people during his rule 1982-1990 by a national commission.

Exuberance in Espana explained:   The Times Literary Supplement reviews Antonio Munoz Molina’s new book (not translated into English, yet), Todo Lo que Era Solido (Everything that was solid).  This Spanish author, who himself had decamped to New York, describes a litany of stories of crazy Spaniards who got lost in a dream of continued growth and profit.   In 2006, one invites 20,000 New Yorkers to paella in Central Park, importing most of the ingredients from Valencia, including 4,143 liters of water.  Next year he’s nearly broke and moves to Brazil.   He takes the causes to Franco and the lack of real institutions following.   Much of this resonates to me when I studied the treatment of juvenile delinquents during the seminal year of 1982, which under Franco was completely given to catholic clergy.  Like everything, the Spaniards were opening up to modern methods and it seemed the real final nails to Franco’s coffin were only in after the Socialists took power that year. Four terms of control, the Socialists did give the foundations to this modernization, but seemed to have left out the need to build a disinterested bureaucracy that could have questioned the back and forth between the reformed conservatives (People’s Party) and the Socialists.

All Awaiting in Algeria:  In a multi-article special, Jeune Afrique describes the current state of suspense in Algeria after the longest serving leader of 14 years, Bouteflika,  had a stroke and before next April’s presidential election.   No one has yet to declare their interest in running for president next year.    Dependent on gas and oil, this country still faces a great challenge to provide education and employment opportunities for its oversized youth population, not an uncommon state for many Arab countries. 

The mal of Monsanto:  The French press continues its attack on GMO products.   France24 has an extensive expose on cotton in India where it reports 90% of production is now GMOed.   One farmer family is interviewed where the household head killed himself after he could not pay back for the GMO seed, a cost four times traditional cotton.  The cotton crop has not given the yields Monsanto had promised and some pests had adapted some years later.   It reports there are 10,000 such cases.  Le Monde¸ for its part, reports that the banning of GMO corn (MON810) by the government of May 2012 was excessive based on little evidence and so, with a picture of lots of protesters showing all sorts of images of “Frankenfood.”  The government still has the union of beekeepers on its side since they maintain this corn is problematic for pollination.

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