[LINK] Three Inter Press Service Articles

[rfmcdonald]

The Inter Press Service has recently posted three articles that struck me as particularly interesting.

• First came Marcela Valente's "Blogs – a Shortcut to Fame?", an article examining how some Argentine writers have been gaining national and international fame thanks to their blogging, winning awards and spinoffs and the like. The writers interviewed don't expect blogs to displace more conventional forms of literature, but rather to supplement and enrichen the media universe.
  
• Servaas van den Bosch's "China in Africa – South-South Exploitation?" wonders, after observing the situation in Namibia, whether the ongoing influx of Chinese investment in Africa is actually helping the continent as a whole, with the frequent use of imported Chinese workers, the very low wages paid to African workers, and the undermining of local industry with cheap Chinese imports, additionally gaining a back door into European markets through the various Europe-ACP trade agreements.


• Finally, Mario de Queiroz interviews East Timorese president José Ramos-Horta on the subject of East Timor. Ramos-Horta hopes that oil exploitation and good agriculture will help East Timor grow out of its structural poverty, the products of more than four centuries of Portuguese colonialism on top of the devastating Indonesian occupation and continuing political instability.