Friday Links

By John Ballard

This is Earth Day but I'm not sure if the designation has any importance. I looked for a good recent You Tube video and found none. Voice of America put together something about the Great Pacific Gyre which is pretty good, but with captions and overly articulate speaking it seems more for an audience practicing English as a second language than anyone interested in eco-activism. And the Wall Street journal couldn't resist a snarky swipe at global warming with a hat tip to the climate zombies. Those eco-fascists are out to rule the universe, you know. Thanks to the political Right, Green is the new Red.

A rash of recent catastrophic natural events may contribute to a sense of helplessness as we confront the challenges of climate change. In addition to record-breaking weather extremes in the US, disasters of human origin seem to be reaching new extremes. I'm thinking not only of the oil well blowout but the Haitian and Japanese disasters as well. After all, we can blame "nature" for these human losses, but just as our own big rivers wreak destruction by flooding they are doing nothing new. Floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions may not be predictable to our liking but they are no less inevitable. When they occur, taking away human lives and property, it is man's initiatives to be in the way, not the rhythm of nature, that causes the losses. It's not an Earth Day video, but here is a link to a fifteen-minute video featuring Canadian photographer Donald Weber whose professional interest in Chernobyl and Fukushima is richer than most.

?Sebastian Junger Remembers Tim Hetherington
One of may remembrances of several journalists killed this week in Libya. My Twitter feed erupted with shock and pain within moments of the news as several people I follow, professional colleagues of those killed or injured, heard what happened.  In memoriam, the National Geographic Channel will air Hetheringron's academy award nominated Restrepo Monday night. (Link to trailer.)

?Easter reminder: Kinder Eggs banned in the United States
File this under Eyes-rolling-in-disbelief...

  Not all eggs are created equal in the eyes of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  

Kinder Eggs, a popular European chocolate egg that contains a toy inside, is banned from importation into the United States because it contains a "non-nutritive object embedded in it."

With the Easter holiday around the corner, the agency issued the reminder this week, warning that the candy is considered unsafe for children under 3. Last year, Customs and Border Protection seized 25,000 of them in 1,700 incidents.

The hollow egg, which is sold by the Italian confectioner Ferrero, is available in Europe, Canada, Australia and parts of Latin America under various names including Kinder Surprise and Kinder Sorpresa. It has taken on a cult status among adults who collect the toys, which vary from rings to animals and cartoon characters.

?The Coming Arab Renaissance
Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the new book How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.
He video-blogs at khanna.foreignpolicy.com.

The Arab realm's last period of borderless coexistence was under Ottoman suzerainty, but despite their inchoate rule the Ottomans also built vital infrastructural linkages such as the Hejaz Railway, which traveled from Istanbul to Medina and even had an offshoot to Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the Hejaz rail line lies in tatters due to lack of investment and rigid border policies.

Yet no greater step could be taken to alleviate Arabs' economic and political woes than investment in cross-border infrastructure. A new pan-Arab rail network could connect Tripoli to Cairo to Amman to Baghdad, and Damascus to Dubai. Remember that the stunningly massive granite columns and marble baths of the majestic Roman port city of Leptis Magna (just east of Tripoli in present-day Libya) were largely imported overland on roads all the way from Aswan in ancient Egypt. (There was, then, something sensible to Qaddafi's symbolic bulldozing of Libya's border fence with Egypt in 1974.) More pipelines and canals could connect oil-rich and low-population states with poor, heavily populated ones. Where borders are straight and arbitrary, these fluid and deliberately curvy lines -- railways, pipelines, and water channels -- will be the necessary and natural consequence of the opening of Arab societies to the logic of globalization.

[...]    It is important to emphasize that the Arab world is to a large extent not the Third World. Some oil-rich Arab countries are among the wealthiest societies on Earth, and Arab states together possess all the capital -- financial and human -- necessary to build themselves up without major outside assistance. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates could easily finance the Palestinian Arc project through the proposed Arc Development Bank, literally paving the path for a two-state solution. They could also underwrite the trans-Arab transport corridors necessary to stimulate broad-based Arab economic development, much as they have already pledged an estimated $3 trillion toward their own infrastructure projects in the coming decade leading up to Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup.

Arab politics are modernizing even if not immediately democratizing. Each government will by necessity become more accountable, with more active political parties, civil society, and independent business forces seeking opportunities to represent themselves and their constituents. This new Arabism deserves strong Western support. Its goals are secular: jobs, education, women's rights, and good governance. If Europe and the United States play their relations with emerging leaders in government, the private sector, and civil society correctly, they can be more certain to have good ties with whoever prevails in future elections.

More at the link. 
As a geography student I often thought how un-natural straight lines are on maps. Rivers, mountain ranges and other features make more sense than the geopolitical constructs which are for the most part remnants of a colonial past.
A thought-provoking vision, indeed.

?Pakistan rape case acquittal seen as setback to women's rights
This is a stupid and disappointing conclusion to a story which began almost nine years ago. This is how a Dawn blog writer opened.

I am at a loss of words today. No words can describe the dejection, pain and anguish that many of us felt on hearing the Supreme Court�s verdict on Mukhtar Mai�s case. After nine arduous years of waiting for justice, five out of six accused in Mai�s rape have been acquitted. It was the Supreme Court that took suo moto notice on the LHC�s decision and now its decision to uphold the initial verdict is extremely disappointing to say the least.

As a blogger I was part of a group assembled by Tom Watson to bring the case to a higher profile.

I like to think the attention helped but here we are years later and Pakistan's courts turn out to be as retrograde as our own Republican party.  Advancing liberal causes is like watching trees grow. Sometimes all you can do is plant the seedling and hope that some day a coming generation will sit in the shade. 

It is some consolation that in this case the victim has not only recovered but prevailed in a world-class manner.