A few Wortschatz

Wortschatz, German for vocabulary (literally word treasures), accurately describes all the new words I've been learning! How erudite of me.


The imperious preacher exhorted the apostate to revert, but the apostate remained intransigent.

1. apostasy
   
2. exhort
   
3. hortatory
   
4. imperious
5. intransigent

I feel so verbally well endowed...

Truth Be Told: Rwanda's Indictment

Kagame, in a sexy oversized leisure blazer, at right.

Aha! Perhaps Rwanda's indictment of senior French officials is not as altruistic as it seems. An IHT article published yesterday suggests that Rwanda's government, which is run by Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front, is distracting international attention away from itself. The International Criminal Tribunal has accused the RPF of killing tens of thousands of Hutus in the aftermath of the genocide. The indictment is more of a political ploy than a legal proceeding. It may also be a response to France's effort to bring Kagame before the UN Tribunal for plotting the plane crash that killed the former Rwandan president, an event that, when it occurred two years ago, set off more violence in the fragile country.

Says Kenneth Roth, president of Human Rights Watch, and a personal hero of mine:

"The timing of this report is no coincidence. At a moment when international pressure to pursue the RPF trials is at its height, this is an effort to change the subject and put the international community on the defensive."

Read the Katrin Bennhold IHT article.

New Vocab

1. mercurial


2. truculence


3. peremptory


4. dilettantish


5. exegesis

Hitler was truculent and imperious in conquest. Up to a certain point, his peremptory nature, while scaring the mercurial former Allies, elicited only dilettantish reference to collective security.

**Most of these words and ideas are courtesy of Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy.

Some Humpday updates

I just returned from a lovely vacation in Chicago. It was fabulous, but I am happy to be back in Cbus. Just in time to find some great reads in the Financial Times and Le Monde.

It looks like international law is going to get a lot more interesting in the coming weeks and months. The Rwandan government has indicted top French officials, including former Prime Minister de Villepin, in the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in the 90s. Further, the Spanish judiciary has determined itself fit to investigate charges of genocide in Tibet against Chinese Communist Party officials. What a brouhaha!

Financial Times gems:

1. Free Trade: The key to Britain's food security
2. French government indicted in Rwandan genocide
3. Greenspan's take on the state of the world's finances
4. The consequences of China's weak civil society

Le Monde (en francais)

1. Spanish court to investigate charges of genocide in Tibet against Chinese officials
2. Coup d'etat in Mauritania

10,000 Ohio Jobs Up in the Air Pending DHL and UPS Air Service Consolidation

Oh no! German mail carrier DHL may consolidate their North American air delivery service with UPS. Should that occur, the DHL North American hub, located in Wilmington, Ohio, will be closed. Some 10,000 jobs would be lost!

The issue has become a point of contention between the US and Germany. A possible anti-trust suit may be brought by the US against DHL. Both presidential candidates have voiced their concern over the merger. The State of Ohio and representatives of Ohio are particularly disconcerted. Says Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown:

"They [Wilmington] laid out the welcome mat for DHL by providing more than $400 million in incentives.Workers and their families rightfully feel betrayed by the callous decision made by Deutsche Post. This is a foreign company that frankly hasn't played it straight with us."

Hopefully, this talk will scare DHL from finalizing the deal with UPS. But even if the deal is struck down, what will become of the DHL plant in Wilmington? As the hub of its North American operations, perhaps it is too important to shut down without a way to maintain its share of the US/Canadian markets. Time will tell just how valuable the Wilmington hub truly is.

Read Der Spiegel International's article DHL Hub Closure? by Mark Pitzke.

You're On Your Own Eritrea and Ethiopia: UN Peacekeepers to Depart

War is the likely outcome of the long standing border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, now that the UN peacekeeping mission has committed to withdrawal. The UN mission was disabled after Eritrea began restricting access to the border. The UN Security council voted unanimously today to end the peacekeeping mission between the two countries. Tomorrow, the end of the mission will be official.

This is an unfortunate outcome to a situation that has been brewing and spewing forth for the last 15 years since Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia. The declaration of independence was interpreted by some as a colonial constructed identity crisis for Eritreans. Prior to Italian occupation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia and Eritrea) preceding the Second World War, there was not a true Eritrean identity. It is said that the colonial government somehow managed to construct the Eritrean identity, as was the case of ethnic identities in many colonized areas of Africa. 

Regardless of the causes of the split, it severely crippled Ethiopia as it left the country landlocked. And as anyone who has ever taken a class on international economics and economic development knows, a lack of access to the seas translates into a severe handicap for a nation's economy. Perhaps this explains Ethiopia's perpetually stagnant economic performance and lack of development.

 It would be preferable for the mission to maintain the boundary, but it seems that this is no longer possible due  to the lack of cooperation from both sides. Gun shots have already been fired. The only question left is when will the war begin? Read the the AP article on CNN's site.

World Gun Violence

I found this map to be very interesting. Who knew that Mexico has a higher rate of gun death than the US? It is important to note, though, that among the core countries, the US has by far the highest rate of gun deaths. Furthermore, the peripheral countries that are characterized by a higher number of gun deaths are either destabilized by warfare, as is the case in many of the Sub Saharan African countries, or places where mobsters and drug lords operate. Thus, America's position is not as enviable as it might appear.

A Brief Communist Rant

The city dwelling bourgeois demands cheap labor to deliver their fancy lattes and serve as their doorman, but they certainly do not want affordable housing in their neighborhood where those service people might be able to live, as that would be near suicide for property values. Those poor bourgeois. Meanwhile, we non-salaried, minimum wage workers are stuffed miles away from the people we service in unsafe conditions (see Harlem and the Bronx at the service of Manhattanites), so as to not create an eyesore. This arrangement works out quite nicely for the affluent, as they get the service they demand without any low income spillover. Oh to be bourgeois!

The Graduate Record Exam: Vocabulary

Casey and I have begun studying for the GRE. We go to our local Barnes & Noble and use one of their Princeton Review study guides. Don't tell B&N! I feel so very incompetent. My vocabulary is especially ignominious. (YAY! New word!) For those of you who are gifted, or whose parents have cultivated in you a grand vocabulary (like my boyfriend), please wipe that supercilious look from your face (YAY! Another!) Below is the first list of words I have compiled. I have decided to divide words into groups based on similar definitions, and maybe sometimes antonyms. The first group of words all have to do with lacking energy or weakness. Some of them I was familiar with. The other words I have just never seen and or used.

1. listless

2. languid

3. lassitude

4. indolent

5. wan

6. supine

Alas, I feel so supine after learning all these new words... the lassitude of a summer afternoon nap is calling...

A $10 Twinkie?

It may sound crazy, but $10 is the true cost of a Twinkie, according to anthropologist Richard Robbins. The cheap price we pay now is due to directly and indirectly subsidized transportation and sugar.  The other $9.85 in externalities that the Twinkie costs is hidden, that is, paid for by society. These hidden costs consist of the aforementioned subsidies in transportation and agriculture, environmental damage from processing and growing sugar, and the damage to our health caused from eating processed foods. Read Robbin's The Political Economy of Twinkies for more information. 

Also, check out The Apple vs. the Twinkie in the Washington Times Editorials. Twinkies are four times cheaper than apples, despite all of the value added required to process the sugar into unrecognizable goo. The author argues that agricultural subsidies, which primarily benefit megafarms, are to blame. The result: Americans' consumption of Twinkies, along with their wasteline, is growing.