{"id":30,"date":"2013-06-23T17:35:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T17:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2013-06-23T17:35:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T17:35:54","slug":"four-themes-for-the-week-of-june-23-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Four themes for the week of June 23, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>China \u2013Russia<\/strong>: \u00a0The radio Station Ekho Moskvi had a great interview \u00a0(Cvoimi glazami\u2014in our eyes) on the on-the-ground state of trade and relations in two towns along the China Russia border, chock full of all the common Russian views of the Chinese.\u00a0 \u00a0While in the western press there have been a long-running theme of the political relations between these two countries, and previously, which one had taken the proper route for reform from communism, there have not been that many stories about the situation along their long border in the Far Eastern region of Russia.\u00a0 Any aerial picture will show just how unequal the two places are:\u00a0 Russia looking nearly untouched small villages and forests while China is developing factories surrounded by well plotted out farms.\u00a0\u00a0 The Amur (Russian) or Heilongjiang (Chinese) river forms the border for most of the way.\u00a0 Control of some of the islands in the river has been a dispute; nearly ten years ago there was a large benzene spill from a Chinese factory that polluted the river and the river still suffers from pollutants in China.\u00a0 The radio piece focuses on the two towns across the river of Heihe and Blagoveshchensk. Some of the tidbits of views:\u00a0 The Chinese work much harder;\u00a0 it\u2019s cheaper to live in China but much better to earn money in Russia; the Chinese all like the strong man Putin; people in this Russian city are some of the best dressed with Chinese fashions, though the clothes only last a year or two;\u00a0 northern Chinese are of a more strong stock than the southern Chinese and they can put down the alcohol, though they prefer beer to vodka\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bantering about the Nile basin:<\/strong> Both Le Monde (Geo &amp; Politique) and the BBC had stories about disputes along the water use of the Nile.\u00a0 For the first time the new nation of South Sudan was participating in the forum of nations (actually hosting the meeting in Juba).\u00a0 This comes a few months after the Entebbe Accord where a number of upstream countries agreed to no longer agree to respect the colonial accords of 1929 and 1959 \u00a0that gave Sudan and Egypt \u00a022% and 66% respectively of the water from the river.\u00a0 Of particular note is Ethiopia which is building a new mega dam just before the Blue Nile enters Sudan.\u00a0\u00a0 The Ethiopians think this is at the heart of their development strategy.\u00a0 Egypt views this as an aggression against their country.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Southeast Asian integration?<\/strong>:\u00a0 Radio Australia in its Asia Pacific show gave the latest dispute among the group:\u00a0 What sports to include in their upcoming\u00a0 games in Myanmar.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s emblematic of the way this and ASEAN (the political and increasing economic grouping) have been run:\u00a0 friendly consensus and non interference in each others internal affairs.\u00a0\u00a0 So, there is no set list of sports for each time the games are held;\u00a0 the host country has been allowed to make the list.\u00a0\u00a0 This time the Philippines are up in arms about the nixing Olympic sports as gymnastics in preference to previously unheard of Chinlone, a Burmese dance sport and vo vinam, a Vietnamese style of martial art.\u00a0\u00a0 The Philippines is thus sending a small delegation in protest and appealing for a set list of sports to be established before the next games in Singapore in 2015.<\/p>\n<p><strong>French depression\/recession<\/strong>:\u00a0 Le Monde had a piece titled:\u00a0 Liberte, egalite, morosite.\u00a0\u00a0 More than even the Afghans and Iraqis, the French are more pessimistic about the future.\u00a0 Though this may be nothing too new, there is no improvement in the way they feel. \u00a0\u00a0Some argue that it all starts at school, weeding out kids along the way, making the notorious \u201cbac\u201d the road to success or ruin depending on your result.\u00a0 My host last year in Nice fit the mold well too, complaining about all the neighbors, the Armenians, and the Russians who take advantage of what France has to give. The immigrants come, stay\u00a0 illegally, get into crime, work for low wages and leave the French with high unemployment.\u00a0 \u00a0The BBC got at one contradiction that France is caught in here:\u00a0 \u201chow are you ever going to be competitive if you insist on a 3,000 page labor law that protects workers and punishes investors.\u201d\u00a0 The BBC story centers in on a comparison between two tire plants in Amiens:\u00a0 \u00a0Goodyear plant that is closing and a former Dunlop factory that is making it through.\u00a0 Granted the American executive of the former wrote just about the silliest letter about his French workers; \u00a0still, it\u2019s true that the French consumer does not care much about where his tires come from, as long as they\u2019re quality and affordable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China \u2013Russia: \u00a0The radio Station Ekho Moskvi had a great interview \u00a0(Cvoimi glazami\u2014in our eyes) on the on-the-ground state of trade and relations in two towns along the China Russia border, chock full of all the common Russian views of the Chinese.\u00a0 \u00a0While in the western press there have been a long-running theme of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimparys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}